Can I get some help installing grub after copying to a different drive

rubix · 2011-03-30 07:43:19

I got a bigger drive and was moving my installation over. My original partition (on the old drive) looked like so:

/dev/sda7 /
/dev/sda6 /var

I now have it like this (on the new drive):

/dev/sda3 /
/dev/sda4 /boot

I copied /(root) and everything from sda6(old drive /var) into /var on sda3(new drive /), and copied everything from /boot on old drive sda7 to new drive sda4. I've adjusted configs accordingly, but I'd like to know how to install grub keeping my old settings(I edited menu.lst to reflect changes).

Right now i'm sitting on a live cd, I've tried

[root@localhost grub]# grub
...
grub> find /mnt/boot/grub/menu.lst

Error 15: File not found
grub> find grub/menu.lst

Error 15: File not found

The file does exist, however. I've also tried some combinations of grub-install

[root@localhost grub]# grub-install --no-floppy --root-directory=/mnt/boot hd0,3
[root@localhost grub]# grub-install --root-directory=/boot hd0,3

but I get the following

/Probing devices to guess BIOS drives. This may take a long time.
/dev/mapper/../dm-0 does not have any corresponding BIOS drive.

I don't think those would be the right commands anyway, could someone point me in the right direction of how I'd go about installing grub with these changes?

Last edited by rubix (2011-03-30 07:47:19)

rubix · 2011-03-30 20:29:07

I've tried some new things with no luck, been following this whole page a lot: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GR … _GRUB_libs
I followed the instructions here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Change_Root and everything went fine (I mounted /boot (sda4) as boot/), and then I tried installing again, but grub is still throwing errors:

grub> find /grub/stage1
Error 15: File not found

grub> find /boot/grub/stage1
Error 15: File not found

Note that /boot/grub/stage1 does exist.

Some other things I've attempted and their error messages(I don't really care if /boot is on it's own partition, I only did this because I thought it would solve a error, but attempting to install under / also gives some errors):

(chroot) [root@localhost /]# grub-install /dev/sda
The file /boot/grub/stage1 not read correctly.
(chroot) [root@localhost /]# grub-install /dev/sda3
The file /boot/grub/stage1 not read correctly.

Attempting to just root and install, as I know /boot is /dev/sda4 and thus (hd0,3) and / is /dev/sda3 and thus (hd0,2)

(chroot) [root@localhost /]# grub
grub> root (hd0,3)
Error 18: Selected cylinder exceeds maximum supported by BIOS

grub> root (hd0,2)
 Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83

grub> setup (hd0)
 Checking if "/boot/grub/stage1" exists... no
 Checking if "/grub/stage1" exists... no

Error 15: File not found

Still no luck, not sure what to try next. It seems odd (hd0,2)(/dev/sda3) is identified as ext2fs as it is ext4. Can anyone offer some advice?

Last edited by rubix (2011-03-30 20:55:17)

Mektub · 2011-03-31 11:53:39

rubix,

a while ago I had similar problems, and in my case the culprit was that /boot (which was not a separate file system) was ext4.

Now it is documented that Grub 1 does not recognize ext4.

First solution was to put /boot on an ext3 file system.

Second solution was that the newest Arch Grub is patched to recognize ext4, and I had to reinstall Grub.

Mektub

rubix · 2011-03-31 23:04:14

Thank you for the reply Mektub. However I was aware of that and made /boot ext2 to avoid any of those problems.

My problems are solved. After I messed up my fresh install of windows, I re-installed a fresh copy of arch, copied my old files over, and am manually installing old software I wanted.

However, I did uncover some information that may help someone in the future experiencing similar problems.

I'm confident grub not installing and some of the errors, especially:

Error 18: Selected cylinder exceeds maximum supported by BIOS

was not a fault of grub. It turns out my BIOS(possibly any older(ish) BIOS') would not allowing booting past a certain point(I'm not sure what the point was). The new drive I was installing to is 1.5TB, I had the partiton as so:

/dev/sda1  500gb  ---- where I had windows installed at start of drive
/dev/sda2   2gb -- swap
/dev/sda3  ~897gb  -- / root partition where I was copying old linux install
/dev/sda4  100mb -- /boot

changing this so that /boot came directly after /dev/sda1 (so 500gb in) allowed grub to find the files it needed and install correctly(updating BIOS may also work), I later ran into some other issues where I still couldn't boot and after having botched my windows install and having to re-install I decided to just start from scratch anyway. New partition table looked(still looks) like this(more intuitive anway):

/dev/sda1  500gb -- windows
/dev/sda2  100mb -- /boot
/dev/sda3  2gb -- swap
/dev/sda4  ~897gb -- /

Last edited by rubix (2011-03-31 23:04:56)

Mektub · 2011-04-01 02:17:33

Rubix,

thanks for the info.

Mektub

Arch Linux

#1 2011-03-30 07:43:19

Can I get some help installing grub after copying to a different drive

#2 2011-03-30 20:29:07

Re: Can I get some help installing grub after copying to a different drive

#3 2011-03-31 11:53:39

Re: Can I get some help installing grub after copying to a different drive

#4 2011-03-31 23:04:14

Re: Can I get some help installing grub after copying to a different drive

#5 2011-04-01 02:17:33

Re: Can I get some help installing grub after copying to a different drive

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