(SOLVED) bootloader or device issues after dual boot install xp and pclos

[jaybee]

I sure hope there is someone out there with the patience to help me on this. First, I've used different distro's for about 15 years but consider me a novice to the command prompt. But, I'll try anything.
I have had xp and mepis on this desktop for years. I fell in love with pclos and have it on 3 laptops so decided to replace mepis with pclos 2009. The install seemed perfect until I rebooted. xp will boot but not pclos. It just stops after I select it from the boot menu. I hit escape to read what happened and see a bunch of failed errors which end with "could not resolve resume device (uuid=......id string........)" So, I installed again and again and as you probably already know, I get the same results. I googled and found a lot of similar problems and one guy said he solved it all by selecting LILO instead of GRUB so I tried that. LILO won't even install. It says "installation of bootloader failed :fatal: illegal 'root=' specification" and gives me a uuid-(#) that is not listed in my fstab file at all. This last attempt was right after I deleted partitions (from live cd) and created new ones, reformatted hda2 and reinstalled.
So, what file should I look at or post for help? Please help me if you can.
jaybee

[Old-Polack]

I sure hope there is someone out there with the patience to help me on this. First, I've used different distro's for about 15 years but consider me a novice to the command prompt. But, I'll try anything.
I have had xp and mepis on this desktop for years. I fell in love with pclos and have it on 3 laptops so decided to replace mepis with pclos 2009. The install seemed perfect until I rebooted. xp will boot but not pclos. It just stops after I select it from the boot menu. I hit escape to read what happened and see a bunch of failed errors which end with "could not resolve resume device (uuid=......id string........)" So, I installed again and again and as you probably already know, I get the same results. I googled and found a lot of similar problems and one guy said he solved it all by selecting LILO instead of GRUB so I tried that. LILO won't even install. It says "installation of bootloader failed :fatal: illegal 'root=' specification" and gives me a uuid-(#) that is not listed in my fstab file at all. This last attempt was right after I deleted partitions (from live cd) and created new ones, reformatted hda2 and reinstalled.
So, what file should I look at or post for help? Please help me if you can.
jaybee

First, welcome to the forum; your new home on the internet.  

Second, let's see how your partitions lay out. Boot to the live CD, log in as root, open a terminal and enter;

[root@localhost ~]# fdisk -l        <Enter>   <-- That's a lower case L not a number 1.

Post your results.

[jaybee]

Thanks for responding! I've had bad luck with other distro forums before:

Disk /dev/hda: 164.6 GB, 164696555520 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 20023 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xac74ac74

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *           1       11099    89152686    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2           11100       19896    70661902+  83  Linux
/dev/hda3           19897       20023     1020127+  82  Linux swap / Solaris

[ThirdOfSix]

jaybee,

Welcome to the group, you will not regret it.

Just in case you have not spent too much time on the forum, I wanted to let you know that you have the best man for the task helping you.

He does not ask irrelevant questions or request unneeded data or actions on your part.

I have no doubt whatsoever that he will lead you to a solution if you do exactly as he requests using the exact commands that he recommends.

I had some questions, but, I have seen a person with a problem pulled in several directions at once by trying everything recommended by everybody.

Stick with old-polack until the problem is solved or until he admits defeat ... which is extremely unlikely.

I have seen people try other things in the hope of a quick solution.

It usually ends up taking much longer to get results because the condition of the system becomes a moving target.

Again, welcome to the group.

[Old-Polack]

Thanks for responding! I've had bad luck with other distro forums before:

You won't have that problem here. We have a great crew of very helpful, somewhat crazy, community members, that like to great new arrivals and make them feel right at home. They'll be coming out of the woodwork any minute now. Opps, there's one of them already.

Disk /dev/hda: 164.6 GB, 164696555520 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 20023 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xac74ac74

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hda1   *           1       11099    89152686    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2           11100       19896    70661902+  83  Linux
/dev/hda3           19897       20023     1020127+  82  Linux swap / Solaris

That looks pretty simple. From the liveCD, still;

[root@localhost ~]# mount /dev/hda2           <Enter>

By default, the partition will mount on /mnt/hda2.

[root@localhost ~]# cat /mnt/hda2/boot/grub/menu.lst           <Enter>

That should show all your boot menu stanzas, so we can look for any errors that might be present.

Post your results.

[jaybee]

Thank You for another nice welcome and the advice. Yes, I was happy to see who replied as I have seen his name many times - I do read a lot and try to fix things myself. This one is just a little too deep for my reading and level of understanding. Anyway, thanks again for the welcome!
jaybee

[jaybee]

FYI, I am sitting at the Draklive-install ready to install grub so the results from your command were "no such file" Let me install grub and reboot to live cd and I'll get right back to you.
jaybee

[jaybee]

timeout 10
color black/cyan yellow/cyan
gfxmenu (hd0,1)/boot/gfxmenu
default 0

title linux
kernel (hd0,1)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=linux root=UUID=486b5678-97be-4423-835a-c303aacff036  acpi=on resume=UUID=7743a23d-2cbf-4d8e-9318-ea2ee47161d7 splash=silent vga=788
initrd (hd0,1)/boot/initrd.img

title linux-nonfb
kernel (hd0,1)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=linux-nonfb root=UUID=486b5678-97be-4423-835a-c303aacff036  acpi=on resume=UUID=7743a23d-2cbf-4d8e-9318-ea2ee47161d7
initrd (hd0,1)/boot/initrd.img

title failsafe
kernel (hd0,1)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=failsafe root=UUID=486b5678-97be-4423-835a-c303aacff036  failsafe acpi=on
initrd (hd0,1)/boot/initrd.img

title windows
root (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

[Old-Polack]

timeout 10
color black/cyan yellow/cyan
gfxmenu (hd0,1)/boot/gfxmenu
default 0

title linux
kernel (hd0,1)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=linux root=UUID=486b5678-97be-4423-835a-c303aacff036  acpi=on resume=UUID=7743a23d-2cbf-4d8e-9318-ea2ee47161d7 splash=silent vga=788
initrd (hd0,1)/boot/initrd.img

title linux-nonfb
kernel (hd0,1)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=linux-nonfb root=UUID=486b5678-97be-4423-835a-c303aacff036  acpi=on resume=UUID=7743a23d-2cbf-4d8e-9318-ea2ee47161d7
initrd (hd0,1)/boot/initrd.img

title failsafe
kernel (hd0,1)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=failsafe root=UUID=486b5678-97be-4423-835a-c303aacff036  failsafe acpi=on
initrd (hd0,1)/boot/initrd.img

title windows
root (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

That all looks good. Now where did you install grub? Hopefully the MBR. If that is the case, try booting to the installed PCLOS, and if there's an error message, give the exact error message. If it ends in kernel panic, give the preceding 10 lines as well as the actual error message.

Yup, I know that this means writing a whole bunch of stuff in a notebook, but the exact message, with the lines leading up to it, actually gives important clues as to the root problem. Many things can cause a kernel panic. The preceding lines narrow the search field.

[jaybee]

I think MBR....whatever the default is, because it always just works.......
No Kernel panic, but here are a few lines:

Could not resolve resume device (uuid=7743a23d-2cbf-4d8e-9318-ea2ee47161d7)
creating root device
mounting root filesystem
mount: could not find file systems '/dev/root'
setting up other filesystems
setuproot: moving /dev failed: no such file or directory
setuproot: error mounting /proc no such file or directory
setuproot: error mounting /sys no such file or directory
switching to new root and running init
switch root: /dev does not exist in new root
booting has failed

[Old-Polack]

I think MBR....whatever the default is, because it always just works.......
No Kernel panic, but here are a few lines:

Could not resolve resume device (uuid=7743a23d-2cbf-4d8e-9318-ea2ee47161d7)
creating root device
mounting root filesystem
mount: could not find file systems '/dev/root'
setting up other filesystems
setuproot: moving /dev failed: no such file or directory
setuproot: error mounting /proc no such file or directory
setuproot: error mounting /sys no such file or directory
switching to new root and running init
switch root: /dev does not exist in new root
booting has failed

Back to the liveCD;

[root@localhost ~]# mount /dev/hda2           <Enter>

[root@localhost ~]# cat /mnt/hda2/etc/fstab            <Enter>

Post your results.

[jaybee]

# Entry for /dev/hda2 :
UUID=486b5678-97be-4423-835a-c303aacff036 / ext3 defaults 1 1
none /proc proc defaults 0 0
# Entry for /dev/hda3 :
UUID=7743a23d-2cbf-4d8e-9318-ea2ee47161d7 swap swap defaults 0 0
none /dev/pts devpts mode=0620 0 0

[jaybee]

Does that mean it's trying to boot from the swap file?
jaybee

[Old-Polack]

Does that mean it's trying to boot from the swap file?
jaybee

No it's trying to resume from the swap partition, which is correct, but can't find any resume information, when the system has not been suspended. This is perfectly normal. It's trying to mount the same UUID partition as is shown for root= in /boot/grub/menu.lst, but can't seem to find the designated file system. Fstab says it's formatted ext3, but is there a chance it's only ext2, or some other file system?

[jaybee]

Well, It defaults to ext3 and I let that go every time except once (about 3 installs ago) when I chose Reiser. But I'm sure I went with ext3 on this last try. It only takes like 15 minutes to reinstall, so if you would like to give me some guidelines ( like, use ext3 for sure ) I can just do that again. No biggy. Also, I can start over and reinstall xp pro, then pclos again, but MAN I hate that windows update crapola. Whatever you think is best. Lemmy no.
Thank You,
jaybee