Help with Frugal Install

Forum: HD Install
Topic: Help with Frugal Install
started by: spence_justin

Posted by spence_justin on Sep. 24 2005,04:24

Help! I have tried to do a frugal install a few times but it when I boot from the hard drive it just says GRUB Hard Drive Error or something. Can someone plz help?

The partition I am installing to is hdb1.

Posted by spence_justin on Sep. 24 2005,05:41

Update. I just tried to do a normal hd-install and used the Lilo boot loader and it came up with the same error message.

Posted by larkl on Sep. 24 2005,11:40

You may want to provide a bit more information, ie- what's installed on hda? Any unusual hardware configurations on the PC?

Posted by spence_justin on Sep. 25 2005,02:15

I have a standard AT motherboard with a K6-2 450Mhz Cpu. 64mb Graphics card and 256 megs of ram. There was nothing on the hard drive when I installed it.

Hope this helps.

Posted by hs7sv on Sep. 28 2005,06:53

spence_justin,

Your PC spec looks same with mine. I'm using Frugal Lilo Install on HDD 1.2GB. It works fine. This is my way:-

hda1 for swap 100MB
hda2 for Frugal 75 MB, Bootable ext2
hda3 for data (the rest of HDD space), /home and /opt, ext2

Note:
- Boot with Option 'Blank' (Enter) first.
- Using command cfdisk for partition making ... reboot ... then, format partition.
- Using command mkswap /dev/hda1
- Using command mkfs.ext2 /dev/hda2
- Using command mkfs.ext2 /dev/hda3
- After formatting, then installation

In installation time, I used option: mydsl=hda3 home=hda3 opt=hda3
Partition for Backup/Restore: hda3

Posted by muskrat on April 22 2006,04:13

This has nothing to do with DSL, but my past experiance is that Lilo sometimes (not all the time) has a problem over writing Grub.

Posted by kendall14 on April 22 2006,17:46

Try formatting the Hard Drive. I had a problem like yours and it wouldn't install but I then used cfdisk, refomated the HDD (don't know what I formated it to

), and it then installed perfect and fine.

Posted by doobit on April 22 2006,19:26

If there is only one hard drive it is probaby hda, so you need to install to hda. The install script suggests hdb, so some people think that's what they should install too, but you only do that if you have a second hard drive.
Try again and put hda1 in the install location choice.

Posted by jpeters on April 23 2006,08:16

I'm also having problems with a frugal install. Question #1: How do I go back to zero, meaning getting rid of grub. I got an "error #17 booting without a CD, which prevents me from booting up my windows XP OS. For a while, it wouldn't even boot up my CD, because my computer kept crashing right after rebooting. Usually, if I take the battery out of my laptop and unplug it, it will clear RAM enough to load the CD. Grub hangs on in RAM until its last dying breath...a solid ten minutes after pulling all the plugs.

I attempted to do a frugal install in a newly formated partition that I created in Linux 83 format via Partition Magic. I already had a 16 MB hda1 backup partition in FAT format, hda2 being the remainder of my windows disk in NTFS. I created a 6 gig partition in Linux 83 format, hda3, and a 150 meg partition for swap files, hda4.

Since I'm only allowed 4 partitions, I attempted to place the image files in hda3, and the swap files in hda4. I was hoping that I could also use hda3 for other files in addition to the image files, while reserving hda4 for swap files. After the install, I removed the CD and it booted to windows instead of grub. I tried installing frugal again and got some message about no space being available on hda3. Next, I tried installing on hda4, the smaller partition. This worked, and I got a menu for selecting the resolution. Unfortunately, on reboot, I got "error #17".

Error #17 is the type that just sits there on your screen and stares at you. There's nothing else available except a hard crash, then try again. Booting with the CD, I attempted to reformat the new partitions (i.e., exterminate any data), but wasn't allowed because they're both being used.

How do I get rid of grub??

Thanks

Posted by jpeters on April 23 2006,12:00

I was able to install lilo with no problems on the newly partitioned hd3; only problem is I still can't switch to the windows OS. Next, I tried reinstalling Grub, but found that lilo overides it. I'm not sure how to "easily revert back to a pristine
install condition", noted in the "getting started" page. In fact, it seems damn complicated.

Posted by clivesay on April 23 2006,12:40

I saw this in the grub documentation.

Quote

17 : Cannot mount selected partition
This error is returned if the partition requested exists, but the filesystem type cannot be recognized by GRUB.

Is it possible you're it's trying to boot to a partition that isn't formatted or formatted correctly?

Posted by jpeters on April 23 2006,17:27

After several attempts, Grub installed after allowing it to reformat hda3 and copy images from the CD. Next problem: At the end of the install, it asks me if windows is on hda1; it's actually on hda2. If I answer yes, it includes windows but clicking on it leads to diagnostic tests with a resulting crash. If I answer no, it doesn't include windows as a boot-up option. So my question still remains, how to get back to my XP os?

Perhaps there's some way of editing the menu.lst to boot windows? The only place I can find the file is in systems (/boot) which isn't editible. I don't see it anywhere else, like in /mnt/hda, etc.

Posted by clivesay on April 23 2006,18:10

You're getting close....

Look in the partition you did your frugal install in like /mnt/hda1/boot/grub/menu.lst. You should be able to edit that file as root. Once edited you should be able to reboot and choose windows. All you need is just to edit the Windows entry in menu.lst. It assumes Windows is on hda1.

Good luck

Chris

Posted by jpeters on April 23 2006,19:15

Quote (clivesay @ April 23 2006,14:10)

There is no menu.lst file or boot folder on any if my harddrive partitions (i.e., /mnt/ hda1,hda2, hda3, etc.) . It's only in the Knoppix/boot/grub folder. Perhaps my installation is attempting to be efficient

Posted by jpeters on April 23 2006,20:44

I found the file in tne cdrom folder. Next question concerns how to edit it. I uncommented (deleted the #'s) for the windows section at the bottom of the file, and need the correct code for loading my windows files on hda2. Replacing root (hd0,0) with (hd2) didn't work.

Posted by jpeters on April 23 2006,21:19

Okay, hda2 is (hd0,1) in grub language. Windows booted up, and it never looked so good. It's almost like linux people want to turn people away. Why not prompt where the damn windows folder is, instead "is windows on hda1, 'y.....' " That would have saved about 10 hours of searching through forums. The whole attraction of trying out linux for windows folks is being able to boot two op's, so the grub folks might include three extra lines of code to help new users NOT suddenly lose their windows OS. I guess, if all you use a computer for is to play games, that wouldn't matter much. Okay, I feel better now....

Posted by roberts on April 24 2006,00:01

Yeah, and like Windows is friendly to Linux.
Like installing Windows will prompt me for all my Linux partitions.
Do you go to the Windows forums and rant?

Posted by jpeters on April 24 2006,03:20

Quote (roberts @ April 23 2006,20:01)

Yeah, and like Windows is friendly to Linux.
Like installing Windows will prompt me for all my Linux partitions.
Do you go to the Windows forums and rant?

That's what I love; a great sense of humor.

Posted by muskrat on May 04 2006,05:53

No sense of humor, a serous qestion.

Does windows even see your linux partions?
Will windows write to your linux partions?

By the way, windows is the only ones that use letters for all the drives.

One last note, If you wanted easy street, just use a tried and proven distro of Linux, they'll install to your HD, pickup windows and install bootloader with all entries correct. No pain.

DSL is really a rather young distro, with the prime object of size, hince the name. If these good boys at DSL did everything we cried about it'd soon be a big bloated OS the same as all the rest.

As for Grub, it's really an OS of it's own, At the promt, you can enter into the grub shell, after which I think you would be kindly surprized at the power in the grub bootloader.

Also due to the nature of the loopbacks, DSL handles things differently than other Distros, normally grub is by far easier to configure that LILO.

Posted by torp on May 04 2006,14:18

the answer to your questions are 1. yes & 2. yes
remember linux can use a multitude of file systems, including fat and fat32. so if the compatibility is an issue for you, just format your partitions as fat.

torp

Posted by muskrat on May 04 2006,23:32

I suppose you could do that, but that's not a linux native partion, it's then a fat partion with a linux file system, so the answer is still 1. No & 2. No. I'm sorry just because you paint a dog to look like a cat doesn't make it a cat.

Posted by torp on May 05 2006,12:56

ok...you say potAto, and i say poTato. my point is that there are many ways to attack the problem, and if we think about doing things the way we have always done them, then we are unnessecarily limiting ourselves. so imho i think the neat thing is that there is no locked in gold standard.....

torp