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#1 2011-07-02 07:36:34

ctarwater
Member
Registered: 2009-02-05
Posts: 300

[solved] SSD Vertex 2 + GPT + Grub2 = Confusion and failed install.

I just got a new 60gb Vertex 2 for my media center.  I spent all day reading up on SSDs and have failed to get the install to work.
From what I've read GPT is recommended.  GPT requires grub2 (or syslinux) and requires a 1mb partition to boot from bios.

I booted into a working system and used gdisk to format it as follows:
sda1 - ef02/bios boot 1mb
sda2 - swap 4gb (so I can use suspend)
sda3 - / 15gb
sda4 - /var 8gb
sda5 - /home 29gb

/tmp is mounted to ram in fstab.

I then rebooted using my arch install usb.  I skipped the "format disk" part and went straight to mountpoints.  I created my mountpoints accordingly (/, /home are ext4, /var is reiserfs) but ignored the first partition (bios boot).  Also, I'm using labels instead of UUID.

Packages installed fine and I made the few minor tweaks to my configs.  I skipped the bootloader install and installed grub2 according to the wiki.  It hung on installing grub2-common for over 20 minutes.  I ctrl+c it.  Try it again and the install completes almost instantly. 

I try to modprobe dm-mod like the wiki says, but it fails telling me that some module shit doesn't exist.
I reboot and get to a hanging cursor.  That's it.

Other thoughts - I never marked a partition as "bootable" how do I do that when using gdisk?  Mebbe that's the problem?  (Maybe it's the beer...hmmm)

Thanks for any help you guys have to offer.  I'm off to bed but will be playing with this shit in the morning.

Last edited by ctarwater (2011-07-02 22:04:54)

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#2 2011-07-02 10:20:53

Rhiadratech
Member
From: UK
Registered: 2011-05-20
Posts: 32

Re: [solved] SSD Vertex 2 + GPT + Grub2 = Confusion and failed install.

Did you run update-grub2 (as root) to actually create the bootloader?
Thats the thing I've seen forgotten before.
Honestly, I dont know why Grub2 had to be made so complicated.

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#3 2011-07-02 17:31:51

ctarwater
Member
Registered: 2009-02-05
Posts: 300

Re: [solved] SSD Vertex 2 + GPT + Grub2 = Confusion and failed install.

I don't even see that command anywhere on the wiki.  Crap.  When do I run that?

Does a link exist that walks us through installing Grub2 on a BIOS system with a fresh install of Arch?
I tried following the Installation section of the Wiki but get stuck like I said in the first post.

Last edited by ctarwater (2011-07-02 17:32:10)

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#4 2011-07-02 22:04:26

ctarwater
Member
Registered: 2009-02-05
Posts: 300

Re: [solved] SSD Vertex 2 + GPT + Grub2 = Confusion and failed install.

Ok, original problem solved.

Was unable to modprobe needed modules because I had to reboot first.  Which means I had to chroot in and the install Grub2 as outlined in the wiki.

Now  I just need to figure out the damn config file so it'll boot...but that's a new topic.  I'm off to see if I can figure out how to stop getting an "unable to determine major/minor" error.  I'm sure I'll be posting a new thread in a few hours tongue.

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#5 2011-07-03 19:29:42

Rhiadratech
Member
From: UK
Registered: 2011-05-20
Posts: 32

Re: [solved] SSD Vertex 2 + GPT + Grub2 = Confusion and failed install.

Chroot in and run
update-grub2
from a root shell.

It will detect all OS's on your system and create the config files for you.

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#6 2011-07-03 19:49:05

ctarwater
Member
Registered: 2009-02-05
Posts: 300

Re: [solved] SSD Vertex 2 + GPT + Grub2 = Confusion and failed install.

Thanks, but it looks like update-grub2 is an Ubuntu specific command.  From what I'm reading it's a customized wrapper for the grub-mkconfig command so I'll try running that again and see what happens.

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#7 2011-07-29 03:54:45

dhave
Arch Linux f@h Team Member
From: Outside the matrix.
Registered: 2005-05-15
Posts: 1,112

Re: [solved] SSD Vertex 2 + GPT + Grub2 = Confusion and failed install.

@ctarwater: Did you ever manage to get your system up and running? Have you tried with kernel 3.x?


Donate to Arch!

Tired? There's a nap for that. --anonymous

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#8 2011-07-30 19:30:31

ctarwater
Member
Registered: 2009-02-05
Posts: 300

Re: [solved] SSD Vertex 2 + GPT + Grub2 = Confusion and failed install.

I did get it working eventually but I haven't updated the kernel yet.

As I recall, here's the steps I had to take:
-install Arch but skip the bootloader step.
- reboot from live disk and chroot in
- follow the wiki from here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Grub2#BIOS_systems

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