Bug 106284

Summary:	No GRUB menu after 1st reboot during installation
Product:	[openSUSE] SUSE LINUX 10.0	Reporter:	Sven Zallmann <spam.zallmann>
Component:	Installation	Assignee:	Torsten Duwe <duwe>
Status:	RESOLVED FIXED	QA Contact:	Klaus Kämpf <kkaempf>
Severity:	Normal
Priority:	P5 - None	CC:	jsrain
Version:	Beta 2
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	i686
OS:	SUSE Other
Whiteboard:
Found By:	Beta-Customer	Services Priority:
Business Priority:		Blocker:	---
Marketing QA Status:	---	IT Deployment:	---
Attachments:	content of /var/log/YaST2/ after reboot failed hwinfo generated using Kanotix 2005-03 live CD master boot record of /dev/hda master boot record of /dev/hdb

Description Sven Zallmann 2005-08-22 20:19:57 UTC

I chose to install Beta2 on a spare hdd partition (/dev/hdb4, ext3).  The
machine was already dual-booting WinMe and SuSE 9.3 Pro.

I installed a minimal system (text mode) and chose for GRUB to go to the MBR of
the first hdd.  When the installer prompted me to reboot I did, but after
booting instead of showing me the boot loader I only got a prompt saying "GRUB:
".  No further options.

Booting into install CD 1 again I chose 'Reinstall bootloader', set it all up
again (/dev/hda1: WinME, /dev/hdb1: SuSE 9.3, /dev/hdb4: SuSE 10.0 Beta 2) and
rebooted once again -- same result.

Comment 1 Sven Zallmann 2005-08-22 20:22:24 UTC

Created attachment 47027 [details]
content of /var/log/YaST2/ after reboot failed

Comment 2 Sven Zallmann 2005-08-22 20:23:20 UTC

Created attachment 47028 [details]
hwinfo generated using Kanotix 2005-03 live CD

Comment 3 Sven Zallmann 2005-08-22 20:44:06 UTC

Perhaps I should add...  One of the first actions that came to my mind was
booting the rescue shell to try and edit /boot/grub/menu.lst manually, but the
file was not present.

Comment 4 Jiri Srain 2005-08-23 07:09:28 UTC

Hmm, I'm a bit confused. If there is no menu.lst file, then GRUB falls to the 
GRUB shell, which according to your report didn't happen. So this seems that 
this is a different fail. When you were in the rescue system, did you look 
for /boot/grub/menu.lst in the installed system? It is AFAIK mounted in /mnt 
directory. 
 
Torsten, any idea why GRUB doesn't report anything more useful? This sounds to 
me like 2nd stage wasn't loaded at all, but the GRUB instalation command was 
successful (see the attached log).

Comment 5 Torsten Duwe 2005-08-23 10:11:15 UTC

What exactly is on the screen when the boot process hangs? really  
"  
GRUB:  
"  
and nothing else ???  
please provide a dump of the MBR and the generated /etc/grub.conf.

Comment 6 Torsten Duwe 2005-08-23 10:12:06 UTC

What exactly is on the screen when the boot process hangs? really  
"  
GRUB:  
"  
and nothing else ???  
please provide a dump of the MBR and the generated /etc/grub.conf.

Comment 7 Jiri Srain 2005-08-23 10:25:54 UTC

grub.conf is contained in the log (resp. output of GRUB processing it)

Comment 8 Torsten Duwe 2005-08-23 11:44:06 UTC

True. Nevertheless, the MBR of /dev/hda is probably where the problem lies; 
including a dump is necessary; mabe along with the BIOS geometry of /dev/hdb 
and an MBR dump of that, too.

Comment 9 Sven Zallmann 2005-08-23 16:55:44 UTC

Torsten:  Sure if you can provide me with info on how to do that :)  I'm fairly
non-technical, so please be patient with me.

Comment 10 Torsten Duwe 2005-08-23 17:39:46 UTC

dd if=/dev/hda of=MBR.hda count=1 
dd if=/dev/hdb of=MBR.hdb count=1 
And then simply attach those files.

Comment 11 Sven Zallmann 2005-08-23 17:48:46 UTC

Created attachment 47270 [details]
master boot record of /dev/hda

Comment 12 Sven Zallmann 2005-08-23 17:49:25 UTC

Created attachment 47271 [details]
master boot record of /dev/hdb

Comment 13 Torsten Duwe 2005-12-01 17:39:09 UTC

The underlying problem should be fixed with grub-0.97-3