Stuck attempting frugal grup upgrade
Forum: HD Install
Topic: Stuck attempting frugal grup upgrade
started by: jpeters
Posted by jpeters on Mar. 29 2007,07:49
I attempted a frugal grub upgrade to 3.2 via apps/tools after booting from the cdrom. Ver 2.3 image was on hda1, so I attempted writing the image there. After noting that image was written, I got the familiar "no space left on device" error (I thought initial format was set up with plenty of additional space, but perhaps it configured for only what it needed). Now the computer gets stuck at the "uncompressing linux. OK, booting the kernel..." stage. I thought, wrongly, that it would boot up from the cdrom as previously. I tried editing the grub start-up menu, which allows me to edit the boot-up config (e..e..), changing "dev/hda1" to "dev/scd1" (/mnt/cdrom1...I use a USB cdrom since the cdrom on my laptop is a piece of junk; no luck.I'm trying to find a way out of this morass....(perhaps if I can just get to Fdisk or something....)
Posted by lucky13 on Mar. 29 2007,09:21
I'm not sure I understand what you're trying to do with the CDROM. Do you need a boot floppy to get the USB drive to load the live CD?How big is the partition you installed to? Get the output from the following command:
fdisk -l /dev/hda
Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on Mar. 29 2007,13:31
Afaik grub has no built-in usb support (at least by default).You can try to set your BIOS to boot off it.
I'd recommend for you somehow get back into an environment where you can do what lucky13 suggested.
Posted by jpeters on Mar. 29 2007,15:11
I haven't found a way to get past the Grub commands, as it goes right to "Grub ver.91" when turned on. Grub commands allow "minimal Bash-line editing" (nothing that I can find to get me to run Fdisk,etc.).My laptop doesn't have a floppy drive, so that option is out. Yuk......
BIOS is set to boot off CDROM first. As I noted, I'm using an external cdrom player, which worked fine booting the live CD, but apparantly there's no support to boot from the grub command menu.
Posted by ^thehatsrule^ on Mar. 29 2007,15:50
run fdisk while on the DSL livecd
Posted by lucky13 on Mar. 29 2007,15:54
| Quote |
| BIOS is set to boot off CDROM first... I'm using an external cdrom player, which worked fine booting the live CD |
What am I missing here? If your BIOS will boots the CD first, you don't need GRUB to load the live CD. Just boot from the live CD so you can at least mount your hard drive and see what the deal is with your frugal partition and maybe "fix" it from there.
Posted by jpeters on Mar. 29 2007,16:09
Sorry I'm not being clear, folks. The laptop will no longer boot from the live CD.
Posted by lucky13 on Mar. 29 2007,16:36
Why won't it boot the live CD? Did you change the BIOS setting so it won't boot from CD first? BIOS precedes bootloader (GRUB). Check your BIOS again?
Posted by jpeters on Mar. 29 2007,18:30
Got me...I guess because it's an external, so the grub menu comes up first. Some luck, though. I happened to have another working cdrom drive from my other dell, and installed it That worked, and booted up a CD. I should be in the clear, now. Thanks for the support.EDIT: I reloaded 3.2 from the live CD on the external cdrom drive again after reinstalling 2.3 to hda1. What's happening is that it loads as a USB device through grub on hda1, and then reads the image (/dev/scd1).
Unfortunately, there's no BIOs setting for booting from a usb device. Thus, if grub is corrupted on hda1, it's all over without a working internal cdrom or floppy drive (on this laptop). That said, I'm fairly certain that I initially installed DSL from the external cdrom drive, in which case if there was a way to bypass grub, it would have loaded. (actually I was hoping someone would tell me to just push <alt-##$&&!> or something on bootup ).
