Hard Disk with MBR and GRUB burnt out. Now Fedora cant boot

[Edaran]

Hi,

As mentioned, when i installed FC5, I had 2 hardisks, Disk1 held win98 and disk2 held FC5. When installing Grub i set it to be installed into the MBR.

Now my first Hdd just burnt out and is beyond hope. Now whenever I try booting with the 2nd disk installed only nothing happenes. After the initial bios screen it just remains blank.

I tried to install Grub through the linux rescue CD, but that doesnt seem to help. grub-install cant find the boot/grub/stage1 files.

I'm thinking of just letting FC5 be the sole OS on that computer. How do I do that?

Thanks a lot for your help.

[tomcat]

Some steps that you might take:
1. make sure that the only hdd left is not set as a master drive and not a slave drive. Set the jumpers accordingly.
2. set your bios, so you can boot from the drive
3. boot up the rescue-cd, run
chroot /mnt/sysimage
and run
/sbin/grub-install /dev/hda (if your harddisk is now hda, otherwise, make it hdc)
fix the /etc/fstab if needed, so the partition and devices mountpoints are correct and reboot.

[Edaran]

hi, thanks for the quick reply.

I tried doing the steps, but get the following error I've been getting

The file /boot/grub/stage1 is not read correctly.

Somehow it seems that I do not have the grub installation files or just can't access or find them.

[tomcat]

Did you have a separate /boot partition when you first installed?

[Edaran]

I dont think so, because i remember creating partitions /swap / and /boot on the 2nd disk.

I found the /boot directory, along with /boot/grub/stage1 in my root directory but still have no idea why it isnt working.

I'm still in the rescue mode text prompt btw.

[tomcat]

Mmmh... I just got an idea what might be wrong. I bet that the partition IDs are somehow broken. Boot up with the rescue cd again (or any live cd) and try to add the following changes:

Start grub with:

grub
grub> root (hd0,0) [adjust this entry for partition with the bootimage accordingly]
grub> setup (hd0) [this will set up Grub in your MBR again]
grub> quit

Maybe that helps.

[Edaran]

Thanks for replying again,

I've tried that method before already, after scouringthe web for solutions.

I'm kinda new at this, but how do i ensure the (hd0,0) is the correct partition? Some solutions suggested using find /boot/grub/stage1 but i get a Error 15: File not found instead.

And when i root (hd0,0) i get a Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x8e, though I remember formatting my partitions as ext3.

When I try setup (hd0,0) I get a Error 17: Cannot mount selected partition.

Do I need to do smth about my partitions? If so, how? not really sure how to, from this rescue cd text prompt.

[Edaran]

wonder if this might shed some light on my system:

I ran fdisk -l and this is shown:

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 637 5116671 8e Linux LVM
/dev/hda2 638 670 265072+ 82 Linux swap/Solaris

does this mean my /boot was actually on the burnt out disk?

[daverj]

First, 0x8e is lvm so if you did a default install, that is probably the / partition.

Second, if you know how to get to /etc/fstab (after booting on the rescue disc), you can cat it to find the boot partition if /boot lives on a separate partition. If it does not then it will live in /.

From the rescue disk do:
/sbin/fdisk -l /dev/hda

If you have 3 partitions, then boot probably lives on a separate partition. Also, the / partition will most likely be the largest, so you can mount that partition, cd to /etc and cat fstab to verify.

From there you should be able to setup the correct root device in grub.


Dave

[Edaran]

This is the contents of my /etc/fstab

/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol00 / ext3 defaults 1 1
LABEL=/boot /boot ext3 defaults 1 2
devpts /dev/pts devpts gid=5,mode=620 0 0
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults 0 0
/dev/VolGroup00/LogVol01 /home ext3 defaults 1 2
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs defaults 0 0
LABEL=SWAP-hdd2 swap swap defaults 0 0


From this i still have no idea how to root grub correctly. Anyone can help?

[daverj]

what is the output of fdisk?

[daverj]

actually, you can use the /sbin/e2label program to find the labels. as root or using sudo:

e2label /dev/hda1
e2label /dev/hda2
e2label /dev/hda3
e2label /dev/hda4

that will show the fstab labels for each of the partitions (since it looks like you have 4). you might have to
e2label /dev/hda5 if the 4th is an extended partition. Anyway that will tell you which is the boot partition.

Dave

[Edaran]

fdisk's output is the same as this

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 637 5116671 8e Linux LVM
/dev/hda2 638 670 265072+ 82 Linux swap/Solaris

e2label /dev/hda1 turned out with this error msg:
/sbin/e2label: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open hda1
Couldnt find valid filesystem superblock.

Same goes for e2label /dev/hda2

e2label /dev/hda3 turned out with this error:
/sbin/e2label: No such device or address while trying to open hda3
Couldnt find valid filesystem superblock.

[Edaran]

i'm actually considering doing a fresh install on the new disk would that actually help?

[daverj]

By your fdisk output it appears that /boot is not a separate partition. If this is correct, it is also part of an lvm filesystem. If all this is true, then you have no choice but to reinstall since /boot cannot be part of an lvm. Sorry.

Dave