I loaded debian as a second operating system
First is windows
The first time I did this it wiped out the mbr and I wasn't able to boot
either
debian or windows. So I reinstalled both windows "first" , and debian
second.
This time I did not load the grub loader and received a fatal error.

When I boot my machine windows gives me the option to load either windows
or linux. When I choose linux I get a command interface with:

grub>

only when I tried to display any of the logs that were created when debian
was loaded but
all I get is error messages. I typed help and was given a screen of choices,
but I don't see
anything in the help menu that will allow me to get into the debian system.
I read that
I need to login before anything can happen, but I don't get a login screen.

Can you advise?

Kevin

"kraleigh" <kraleigh@sbcglobal.net> writes:

> I loaded debian as a second operating system First is windows The first
> time I did this it wiped out the mbr and I wasn't able to boot either
> debian or windows. So I reinstalled both windows "first" , and debian
> second. This time I did not load the grub loader and received a fatal
> error.

Hmm, I suspect you missed something here. Installing grub on the MBR
should also let the Debian installer run grub-update in order to detect
your Windows and Debian partitions and write them on the
/boot/grub/menu.lst file.

> When I boot my machine windows gives me the option to load either
> windows or linux. When I choose linux I get a command interface with:
>
> grub>

This is strange. Did you make the menu entry for Debian in Windows
yourself?

> only when I tried to display any of the logs that were created when
> debian was loaded but all I get is error messages. I typed help and was
> given a screen of choices, but I don't see anything in the help menu
> that will allow me to get into the debian system. I read that I need to
> login before anything can happen, but I don't get a login screen.
>
> Can you advise?

Do you remeber the exact partition name you put Debian in
(e.g. /dev/hda2 or /dev/sda2)?

--
Zak B. Elep
http://blog.zakame.net

"Zak B. Elep" <zakame@zakame.net> wrote in message
news:m27ibcavsl.fsf@zakame.net...
> "kraleigh" <kraleigh@sbcglobal.net> writes:
>
>> I loaded debian as a second operating system First is windows The first
>> time I did this it wiped out the mbr and I wasn't able to boot either
>> debian or windows. So I reinstalled both windows "first" , and debian
>> second. This time I did not load the grub loader and received a fatal
>> error.
>
> Hmm, I suspect you missed something here. Installing grub on the MBR
> should also let the Debian installer run grub-update in order to detect
> your Windows and Debian partitions and write them on the
> /boot/grub/menu.lst file.
>
How can I install the grub bootloader now that I choose not to install it
the first time? To the place that you suggest?

I just now found a technet article from MS that states not to load
grub into win mbr of my first disk as it will corrupt it; it did.
http://port25.technet.com/archive/20...M-Support.aspx


> This is strange. Did you make the menu entry for Debian in Windows
> yourself?

No after rebooting my machine over a few days it just appeared.
However it is useless as the only thing I get is:

grub>

which gives me access to almost nothing. At least nothing this newbie
can use. Tried fdisk -l to see what drive my /root is on but it just came
back with error.
>
> Do you remeber the exact partition name you put Debian in
> (e.g. /dev/hda2 or /dev/sda2)?

No, I took all the defaults when installing my Debian OS except that I
choose
to install /home on a separate partition. As I stated above I can't access
anything to find the /root drives address.

thank you
Kevin

"kraleigh" <kraleigh@sbcglobal.net> writes:

> "Zak B. Elep" <zakame@zakame.net> wrote in message
> news:m27ibcavsl.fsf@zakame.net...
>> "kraleigh" <kraleigh@sbcglobal.net> writes:
>>
>>> I loaded debian as a second operating system First is windows The first
>>> time I did this it wiped out the mbr and I wasn't able to boot either
>>> debian or windows. So I reinstalled both windows "first" , and debian
>>> second. This time I did not load the grub loader and received a fatal
>>> error.
>>
>> Hmm, I suspect you missed something here. Installing grub on the MBR
>> should also let the Debian installer run grub-update in order to detect
>> your Windows and Debian partitions and write them on the
>> /boot/grub/menu.lst file.
>>
> How can I install the grub bootloader now that I choose not to install it
> the first time? To the place that you suggest?

As your Windows bootloader now seems to load grub when trying to boot
Debian, I think that's ok, and you don't have to move grub somewhere
else. The only thing now to do is to tell grub where the root
filesystem and the boot kernels are, so it can boot up Debian.

> I just now found a technet article from MS that states not to load
> grub into win mbr of my first disk as it will corrupt it; it did.
> http://port25.technet.com/archive/20...M-Support.aspx

Interesting. I've never encountered this as my Windows machines are
mostly XP currently, and the I haven't attempted a Linux install on the
single Vista notebook I have.

>> This is strange. Did you make the menu entry for Debian in Windows
>> yourself?
>
> No after rebooting my machine over a few days it just appeared.
> However it is useless as the only thing I get is:
>
> grub>
>
> which gives me access to almost nothing. At least nothing this newbie
> can use. Tried fdisk -l to see what drive my /root is on but it just came
> back with error.

Yes, as this is a grub prompt, not a /bin/sh prompt, so commands like
fdisk aren't available yet. The essential commands you will need are:

- root: specify the root partition of your Debian install
- kernel: path to the kernel to be booted
- initrd: path to the initrd the kernel will use
- boot: the actual command to have grub boot with the parameters
specified above.

>> Do you remeber the exact partition name you put Debian in
>> (e.g. /dev/hda2 or /dev/sda2)?
>
> No, I took all the defaults when installing my Debian OS except that I
> choose to install /home on a separate partition. As I stated above I
> can't access anything to find the /root drives address.

It would have been nice if you jotted down those defaults ;) You
probably would do better if you reinstall and note down the partition
details so you can use them to fill up grub.

--
Zak B. Elep
http://blog.zakame.net

On 07/23/2008 09:48 PM, Zak B. Elep wrote:
> "kraleigh" <kraleigh@sbcglobal.net> writes:
>> [...] I took all the defaults when installing my Debian OS except that I
>> choose to install /home on a separate partition. As I stated above I
>> can't access anything to find the /root drives address.
>
> It would have been nice if you jotted down those defaults ;) You
> probably would do better if you reinstall and note down the partition
> details so you can use them to fill up grub.
>

There is no need for kraleigh to reinstall.

Kraleigh, you're probably going to learn a lot more about Grub than most
newbies have to so early :-) The "grub>" prompt is the Grub command line
from which you can tell Grub to boot your desired O/S. Read the Grub
manual to get a feel for what you'll need to do:

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html.gz

Assuming that your Linux partition is located on /dev/sde1, you'll
probably need to do something like this:

grub> root (hd4,1)
grub> kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.18-6-486 ro root=/dev/sde1
grub> initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.18-6-486
grub> boot

The numbers above, -6-486, are from my installed kernel. You might have
an earlier kernel, so adjust the numbers as appropriate. As you read the
Grub manual, you'll find out about the "find" command, and that should
help you find the appropriate kernel and initrd files.

Good luck.

Zak B. Elep wrote:
> "kraleigh" <kraleigh@sbcglobal.net> writes:
>
>> "Zak B. Elep" <zakame@zakame.net> wrote in message
>> news:m27ibcavsl.fsf@zakame.net...
>>> "kraleigh" <kraleigh@sbcglobal.net> writes:
>>>
>>>> I loaded debian as a second operating system First is windows The first
>>>> time I did this it wiped out the mbr and I wasn't able to boot either
>>>> debian or windows. So I reinstalled both windows "first" , and debian
>>>> second. This time I did not load the grub loader and received a fatal
>>>> error.
>>> Hmm, I suspect you missed something here. Installing grub on the MBR
>>> should also let the Debian installer run grub-update in order to detect
>>> your Windows and Debian partitions and write them on the
>>> /boot/grub/menu.lst file.
>>>
>> How can I install the grub bootloader now that I choose not to install it
>> the first time? To the place that you suggest?
>
> As your Windows bootloader now seems to load grub when trying to boot
> Debian, I think that's ok, and you don't have to move grub somewhere
> else. The only thing now to do is to tell grub where the root
> filesystem and the boot kernels are, so it can boot up Debian.
>
>> I just now found a technet article from MS that states not to load
>> grub into win mbr of my first disk as it will corrupt it; it did.
>> http://port25.technet.com/archive/20...M-Support.aspx
>
> Interesting. I've never encountered this as my Windows machines are
> mostly XP currently, and the I haven't attempted a Linux install on the
> single Vista notebook I have.
>
>>> This is strange. Did you make the menu entry for Debian in Windows
>>> yourself?
>> No after rebooting my machine over a few days it just appeared.
>> However it is useless as the only thing I get is:
>>
>> grub>
>>
>> which gives me access to almost nothing. At least nothing this newbie
>> can use. Tried fdisk -l to see what drive my /root is on but it just came
>> back with error.
>
> Yes, as this is a grub prompt, not a /bin/sh prompt, so commands like
> fdisk aren't available yet. The essential commands you will need are:
>
> - root: specify the root partition of your Debian install
> - kernel: path to the kernel to be booted
> - initrd: path to the initrd the kernel will use
> - boot: the actual command to have grub boot with the parameters
> specified above.
>
>>> Do you remeber the exact partition name you put Debian in
>>> (e.g. /dev/hda2 or /dev/sda2)?
>> No, I took all the defaults when installing my Debian OS except that I
>> choose to install /home on a separate partition. As I stated above I
>> can't access anything to find the /root drives address.
>
> It would have been nice if you jotted down those defaults ;) You
> probably would do better if you reinstall and note down the partition
> details so you can use them to fill up grub.
>
If you're lucky and the Debian installer has set up a symlink /vmlinuz
then you can find the information you need by typing
find /vmlinuz
at the grub prompt. You might also try find /initrd.img to see if the
kernel has in initrd file that needs loading.
Let us know what it says and we can give the the correct sequence of
grub commands to boot Linux.

--
Keith Blow

On 07/23/2008 09:36 PM, kraleigh wrote:
> How can I install the grub bootloader now that I choose not to install it
> the first time? To the place that you suggest?
> [...]

Here are some more links:
http://wiki.debian.org/Grub/
http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:The_Boot_Manager_Grub
http://search.yahoo.com/search?p=grub


HTH (Hope This Helps)

"Mumia W." <paduille.4061.mumia.w+nospam@earthlink.net> writes:

> There is no need for kraleigh to reinstall.

Probably. Part of the difficulty is the fact tht we (and kraleigh,
presumably) do not know the exact partition name that can be feed to
grub as the parameter to the `root' command, in order to get the ball
rolling.

> Kraleigh, you're probably going to learn a lot more about Grub than most
> newbies have to so early :-) The "grub>" prompt is the Grub command line
> from which you can tell Grub to boot your desired O/S. Read the Grub
> manual to get a feel for what you'll need to do:

Kraleigh could also venture a guest on the right `root' parameter; he
could start from (hd0, 0) to (hd0, 1), etc. and try auto-completing
parameters for kernel and initrd. At any rate, If kraleigh reads up on
the link above, he's going to be way ahead most newbies :D

--
Zak B. Elep
http://blog.zakame.net

· kraleigh <kraleigh@sbcglobal.net> schrieb:

> I just now found a technet article from MS that states not to load
> grub into win mbr of my first disk as it will corrupt it; it did.
>
http://port25.technet.com/archive/20...M-Support.aspx

Don't search at Microsoft technet if you have a question about Linux. They
see all things only from the Windows site. In the above mentioned articel
they describe how to boot Linux from Windows. Is that what you want?

> which gives me access to almost nothing. At least nothing this newbie
> can use. Tried fdisk -l to see what drive my /root is on but it just came
> back with error.

The article told you

| On Linux, launch a Terminal with root privileges

and said nothing about that you tried it out of the grub shell.

Martin.
--
OS: openSUSE 10.2 (i586)
Kernel: 2.6.18.8-0.10-default
KDE: 3.5.9 "release 65.1"

· Zak B. Elep <zakame@zakame.net> schrieb:

> Probably. Part of the difficulty is the fact tht we (and kraleigh,
> presumably) do not know the exact partition name that can be feed to
> grub as the parameter to the `root' command, in order to get the ball
> rolling.

Just issue a "find menu.list" out of the grub shell and you know the
parameter you have to give to the root command.

Martin.
--
OS: openSUSE 10.2 (i586)
Kernel: 2.6.18.8-0.10-default
KDE: 3.5.9 "release 65.1"