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### Grub Disk Error

clarjon1 [clarjon1 at gmail.com]
Fri, 24 Nov 2006 08:47:09 -0500

Hello everyone

I've come across a small annoyance lately when I try to boot my PC. When it tries to load GRUB, it tells me:

    GRUB Disk Error

I can boot, the livecd which I installed from (Freespire BTW) has a boot from hda1 option that I find quite useful right now, so I can boot. I've tried re-installing GRUB from the commandline, and from the GRUB shell, but to no luck at all. From the commandline, I get told that (paraphrasing) the drive has no bios disk.

Any help would be appreciated.

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Martin Hooper [martinjh at blueyonder.co.uk]
Fri, 24 Nov 2006 14:14:07 +0000

clarjon1 wrote:

    > Hello everyone
    >
    > I've come across a small annoyance lately when I try to boot my PC.
    > When it tries to load GRUB, it tells me:
    > GRUB Disk Error
    > I can boot, the livecd which I installed from (Freespire BTW) has a boot from
    > hda1 option that I find quite useful right now, so I can boot.  I've
    > tried re-installing
    > GRUB from the commandline, and from the GRUB shell, but to no luck at all.
    > From the commandline, I get told that (paraphrasing) the drive has no bios disk.

Are you booting Windows as well? if so boot from the XP install cd and run the rescue console.

Then type "fixboot" and "fixmbr" (no quotes) which will get rid of GRUB.

If not you should be able to fix it from the boot CD or your installed Linux.

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clarjon1 [clarjon1 at gmail.com]
Fri, 24 Nov 2006 10:14:22 -0500

On 11/24/06, Martin Hooper <martinjh@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote:

    > Are you booting Windows as well?  if so boot from the XP install
    > cd and run the rescue console.
    >
    > Then type "fixboot" and "fixmbr" (no quotes) which will get rid
    > of GRUB.
    >
    > If not you should be able to fix it from the boot CD or your
    > installed Linux.
    >

Nope, I don't use windows much anymore. I was looking for some way to re-install grub, without needing to re-install Freespire, as I have just recently gotten it configured they way I like it. If I can't, not that big of a deal, it'll just be an annoyance, as the CD, handy thing it is, has a menu option to boot from HDA1, so I can get booted up. Just a couple of extra steps, that's all.

Any GRUB masters? I've never had to manually install grub before, I've only worked with LILO, which I don't have.

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Neil Youngman [ny at youngman.org.uk]
Fri, 24 Nov 2006 15:28:57 +0000

On or around Friday 24 November 2006 15:14, clarjon1 reorganised a bunch of electrons to form the message:

    >
    > Any GRUB masters?  I've never had to manually install grub before,
    > I've only worked with
    > LILO, which I don't have.

I've installed grub a few times. It's not very complicated.

I think

    grub> root (hd0,1)
    grub> setup (hd0)

will do it, but I haven't done it in a while and it's possible I'm forgetting something. Don't forget to adjust the disk and partition numbers if necessary.

HTH

Neil Youngman

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Martin Hooper [martinjh at blueyonder.co.uk]
Fri, 24 Nov 2006 15:48:58 +0000

clarjon1 wrote:

    > Nope, I don't use windows much anymore.  I was looking for some way to
    > re-install grub,
    > without needing to re-install Freespire, as I have just recently
    > gotten it configured they way
    > I like it.

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/html_node/Installing-GRUB-natively.html

Here is the manual for GRUB on howto do it... Explains it far better than I could ;)

Hope that helps!

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Neil Youngman [ny at youngman.org.uk]
Fri, 24 Nov 2006 16:06:16 +0000

On or around Friday 24 November 2006 15:48, Martin Hooper reorganised a bunch of electrons to form the message:

    > clarjon1 wrote:
    > > Nope, I don't use windows much anymore.  I was looking for some way to
    > > re-install grub,
    > > without needing to re-install Freespire, as I have just recently
    > > gotten it configured they way
    > > I like it.
    >
    > http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/html_node/Installing-GRUB-natively.
    >html
    >
    > Here is the manual for GRUB on howto do it...  Explains it far
    > better than I could ;)

Or, if you don't like that explanation, try http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/4622

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Benjamin A. Okopnik [ben at linuxgazette.net]
Fri, 24 Nov 2006 23:31:22 -0500

On Fri, Nov 24, 2006 at 02:14:07PM +0000, Martin Hooper wrote:

    > clarjon1 wrote:
    > > Hello everyone
    > >
    > > I've come across a small annoyance lately when I try to boot my PC.
    > > When it tries to load GRUB, it tells me:
    > > GRUB Disk Error
    > > I can boot, the livecd which I installed from (Freespire BTW) has a boot from
    > > hda1 option that I find quite useful right now, so I can boot.  I've
    > > tried re-installing
    > > GRUB from the commandline, and from the GRUB shell, but to no luck at all.
    > > From the commandline, I get told that (paraphrasing) the drive has no bios disk.
    >
    > Are you booting Windows as well?  if so boot from the XP install
    > cd and run the rescue console.
    >
    > Then type "fixboot" and "fixmbr" (no quotes) which will get rid
    > of GRUB.

The only problem with this approach is that you will now be unable to boot Linux, which means that you'll have to boot some live distro (might not be applicable in this case, but you'd better make sure you've got one on hand otherwise!) and install a boot manager - perhaps GRUB - at which point you'll have to deal with the original problem.

That seems like going around the long way for no purpose.

    > If not you should be able to fix it from the boot CD or your
    > installed Linux.

Yep. The first thing to look at - and, of course, the first thing that Jonathan should have sent in - is the content of his GRUB configuration and the output of 'displaymem' and 'geometry' GRUB commands. However, at this point, the advice that he got from Neil should be sufficient to fix the problem. If it's not, then it'll be time to come back here, to checkpoint #1, and try again.

    --
    * Ben Okopnik * Editor-in-Chief, Linux Gazette * http://LinuxGazette.NET *

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