[seekermeister]

I just reinstalled SuSe 10.0 on my multi-boot system, because of Grub errors on the previous installation. However, the new installation behaves in much the same fashion as before. If I set boot sequence to the drive with SuSe, I get a Grub Stage 1.5 error 17. And If I boot to the drive that contains my newest MCE installation, I get a Grub Stage 1.5 error 22. I have to set the sequence to boot to my third drive for it to boot into MCE. I have read what these errors mean on:

http://uruk.org/orig-grub/errors.html

but it tells me nothing that I understand or can apply to the problem. Can someone explain?

[saikee]

Grub error 17 : Can't mount the selected partition

Grub error 22 : No such partition

To put it bluntly Grub is saying that you have given it either a partition that could not be mounted or a partition could not be found.

My guess of the root cause of the problem is you are either using RAID that SUse can't recognise, alter the disk order by adding more hard disk after installation or have deleted a logical partition in front of the logical partition where Suse resides. Any way the partition and disk order as you have installed is no longer matched when it is run.

The cure -----------------------

We need to know

(1) Suse's Grub configuration file of /boot/grub/menu.lst
(2) The order of your disk as seen by Grub and the record of it is in /boot/grub/device.map
(3) Your current partitioning scheme which you can paste here the output of

fdisk -l

No good for us to advise further without the above info.

You can obtain the above information by boot up any Live CD, mount the Suse partition and access all the Suse files.

[seekermeister]

I understand that you would need to know the information requested, but it is not easy to give, since I can't boot into SuSe. Can I use 'fdsisk -1" from the CD? I haven't tried it, but I might be able to acess the files using Ubuntu as a live CD.

As far as the disk arrangement, I have 5 HDs...SuSe is on HD0, with the Swap file on the first partition, and / on the second. Curiously, the installation labeled these as partition 4 and 3 respectively, which never made any sense to me, because there are 4 other partitions on the drive, which preexisted SuSe's installation. 3 of those other partitions are on an extended partition.

I suppose that it was because of an aborted start to install Ubuntu in these partitions, but SuSe chose these partitions on it's own, I guess because they were formatted ext3. This drive and one other drive is PATA, but my Windows systems are on SATAS, however none are in a raid array.

EDIT: Thinking further about it, when I installed SuSe on the PATA, I still had the boot sequence set in the bios for a SATA on a controller card, which holds MCE. When SuSe failed to boot, I switched the sequence to put the SuSe drive first. I probably should have reset the boot sequence before installing SuSe.

[saikee]

You can boot up Ubuntu and use it as a Live CD as only the older Ubuntu has separate Install and Live CDs I think. The modern one has an Install icon at the desktop. Thus as long as you do not touch it you can use Ubuntu same as a full blown Live CD Linux.

Your description makes sense to me as Linux reserves the first 4 partition numbers for the primaries. The first logical partition created is always the 5th one.

The last link in my signature has various tips and you can follow Task B5 to mount the Suse partition.

I don't know how good you are with an editor in Linux terminal mode but if you can edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst in Suse by adding a "#" infront of the line starting "qfxmenu" that this will disable the qfxmenu and allows you into a Grub prompt to boot up every sysytem "manually". You can then ask Grub to report to you the partitions layout, find the files and boot the system up by 3 simple steps. The "#" inside menu.lst tell Grub to ignore that line. The commands to boot a system up are those in menu.lst. In a Grub prompt you can demand Grub to display the file and follow the instruction to fire up Suse. You learn 10 times more about booting manually than via Yast.

Remeber in Ubuntu you may not have the root privilege and must prefix every terminal command by "sudo" if a system file is affected. menu.lst is a system file.

The "fdisk-l" is a command to list every partition of every disk in your computer. Thus the information from a Live CD is no different from inside Suse. Remember without root privilege the command should be "sudo fdisk -l".

The way to look the fdisk -l output is to check the partition sizes. Also Linux partition has partition ID type No. 0x83, Swap is 0x82, ntfs partition has Type 0x7 etc. The type numbers are inside fdisk and cfdisk programs.

[seekermeister]

I just tried Ubuntu, but it didn't work out. I couldn't find a file manager to access anything, but I don't think that it mattered, because it appeared that it wouldn't have been able to see anything, unless the SuSe partition was mounted. I did find a terminal, but considering my ineptitude with those, and the lack of mounting, I abandoned that.

I think that the only way that anyone could repair this, is by using the SuSe disk, which I'm certain that you could do in short order. But, considering my skill level, I think that it would be easier to just reinstall it. To do this, I would need to avoid repeating my mistakes, therefore I need to better understand what I did wrong? I intend to reformat both the swap partition and /, so as to start from scratch, as I have done in the past, but without understanding the problem, I'm not certain if the outcome will be any better.

I did look at the Ubuntu partitioner and noted the layout:

SuSe swap HDA4, SuSe / HDA3, unused NTFS HDA 1, Extended HDA2 and FAT32 on HDA5, 6 and 7.

[saikee]

I now realise that you may have inadvertently let Suse use fat32 partitions for the installation.

Acording to the last line of Post #5 you created swap first in a primary partition then probably asked the installer to install Suse in logical partitions in fat32. This made Suse used up hda2 as the extended partition. Finally in order to boot you could have give another primary partition for hosting the /boot directory and it took the position of hda3.

I am not sure if Suse can operate from a fat32 partition. Some smaller Linux do but most would prefer in partition type 83 native for Linux with filing system like Ext3.

I recommend in your case a reinstallation. I even recomend only two partitions, one as 1Gb large swap partition type 82 and another 10Gb type 83 for Suse.

To do this correctly I recommend you to use Ubuntu. Click "accessory" and select "terminal". In terminal type "sudo cfdisk /dev/hda"

Inside cfdisk delete all partitions of hda and then reboot.

Go back to Ubunu again and use cfdisk to create the partitions as above. Both can be either primary or logical partitions. If primaries are used they would be hda1 and hds2 whereas hda5 and hda6 would be the result if logical partitions are chosen. Use the "type" option to change the 1Gb partition to the correct type 82 as all partitions created inside a Linux will be type 83 by default.

When you install Suse tell the installer to to use the 10Gb partition for mounting "/", format the partition to Ext3 or Riserfs.

You will then have trouble free installation, easy to boot and rescue.

[seekermeister]

I could easily have done most anything, inadvertently. But, SuSe did not use the Fat32 partitions, because they are still accessible from Windows, with no sign of SuSe.

I didn't creat either the swap or / first, because when SuSe saw the ext3 partitions that Ubuntu had made, it took both of them at the same time in the initial setup. The sequence in which they were created was something done internally in SuSe.

I am going to reinstall, but the only question in my mind, is whether it matters whether SuSe or Ubuntu is installed first?

[saikee]

OK I got it wrong as I didn't know you have been using old Ubuntu partitions to install Suse. That will work or at least you should get a kernal panic (if the Suse did not format the partition before installation thereby it is full of junk files inside).

If you can have a Grub prompt then everything would be easy because Grub can boot a Linux even if it have no boot loader inside.

Would you like to try to get a Grub prompt?

These are steps

(1) Boot up Ubuntu, in "accessory" select "terminal"
(2) make a temp directory say /mnt/seeker inside Ubuntu and mount the device hda3 on it

sudo mkdir /mnt/seeker
sudo mount /dev/hda3 /mnt/seeker

(3) Check desktop that you have the Suse partition. This is by clicking "places" and click the first icon "home folders" and use the upward direction to search /mnt/seeker. I checked it in Ubuntu that the above and below commands are OK.

(4) Use gedit, which is a GUI editor that every newbie can use, on Grub's configuration file menu.lst

gedit /mnt/seeker/boot/grub/menu.lst

(5) Put a "#" in front of the "timeout" and "qfxmenu".
(6) Save the file & reboot

When the Suse boot screen comes up it should in text mode and you will have no time limit to enter the instruction. Press "c" to get a Grub prompt.

These are the lines to boot your Suse manually
if the original menu.lst is good it would fire up by

root (hd0,2)
configfile /boot/grub/menu.lst

if the above fail this should kick it back to life

root (hd0,2)
kernel (/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda3 ro
initrd /boot/initrd
boot

In any case you can now see the Suse menu.lst by the command

cat /boot/grub/menu.lst

You can type you own menu.lst at Grub prompt but make sure the colored red bits of the above is used as that will solve the Grub 17 and Grub 22 errors.