After 2010/7 Install No Boot Loader in partition?

[Poitiere]

At least that's what I assume.

Install goes well to the Grub install. DrakLive flashes installing boot loader and hangs perpetually. Seems like some process has hold of the installed on partition i.e. can't even unmount it manually.

Naturally after forced shutdown, Grub comes up but on selecting 2010 get kernel messages for a line or 2 then nothing:freeze.
Last line output reads: initrd (Hd0,4)/boot/initrd.img

This happens with both the gnome and Xfce Lives.
The hard disc has a number of partitions on it, specifically freedosi and I have used it to check out half a dozen linuxes. Of which the best for my hardware was PCLOS. Other linuxes installed ok.

I deleted all other linux partitions and let Drak have its head in the freespace and also tried setting up a specific ext4 partition, no USB devices etc. etc. but they all result in Drak hangs.

If anyone has a solution let me know otherwise I might have to leave it a another handfull of years before I try again. In the past 20 odd years I have never been able to get Linux going even with minimal hardware support or that doesn't bust everything on a new release. I had high hopes here as wireless worked like a charm and likewise samba but no installi.

I hate having to pay the big philanthropist with my money.

[djohnston]

Look here:

http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,62786.msg508062.html#msg508062

[menotu]

Can you provide your machine spec - ram - graphics - processor etc as that may help provide an answer.

You could also do an md5sum and media check to make sure the download and burn went as expected.

And welcome to the forum.

[Texstar]

How long did you leave it before you powered off? It can take a minute or two to finish.

[Poitiere]

Hey Guys thanks for the quick replies and welcome.

Well I tried the 1st suggested solution, it all went ok but no dice. Grub seems installed ok, its must be that linux isn't i.e. the hang in the boot loader install.
It is installed on the 1st partition of the hard disk yet linux refers to it as sda5 or in grub (hd0,4).
Isn't there some rescue thing like with Windows when NTloader has vanished, it seems like an equivalent thing?
Is it saying it can't find initrd? or is it something thats supposed to exe after it?

The machine is pretty basic superMicro moBo dual core intel 2Ghz 250GB primary HD with 3 partitions: PCLOS (ext4 35GB) freespace(35GB) FreeDos(32GB) freeSpace(140GB) FreeDos(2GB)
and secondary HD with 80GB winXP. 2GB Ram ATI graphics 512K Apple 30" Cinema display.

On 1 occasion I waited >1 hour for DrakLive to come back, other times 10 mins or so, Xfce till screen saver comes on.

[Poitiere]

forgot to mention Media etc. checks out ok.

[Was_Just19]

Reboot to the Grub page and press the Esc key to get out of the Graphical mode if it is in it.

Then press the 'C' key to go to command line Grub.

From there enter the following commands (maybe copy & paste them)

find /boot/grub/menu.lst

This should return locations for the menu.lst file it if exists.

If it does then using the info returned ---  something like (hd0,0)

enter the following command

root (hd0,0)      (or whatever was returned)

This should tell you some info about the partition.

Then enter

setup (hd0)     (provided that is the same as what was returned above (hd0,0)

If that finishes with the word "success", enter the command

halt

then just reboot and see if you can get into your install.

regards.

[Poitiere]

Hi JohnBoy your solution is basically the same as the 1st solution above by djohnston, but I tried it anyway... No go.

However I poked around on the internet about grub and on my disk. The thing that irks me is as to why the 1st partition on the disk is numbered 4 by grub and 5 by linux, kinda boggles the logic

Anyway I booted the live and mounted the partition installed to and peeked in the boot dir it said that initrd.img was a broken link. So I deleted that. There was also an initrd.img.old so I renamed that. Thereafter it seemed to boot i.e. splash screen came up hitting the esc key showed diagnostics ---- it was not a happy bunny, was waiting for partitions to load and in kernel panic trying to kill itself 

Just in case someones wondering I tried many permutations of install before posting here i.e. deleted all linux partitions before hand thru windows and linux. Tried reinstalling to same partition again etc. etc. I by no means tried all permutations, its only been 2 days yet.

I am going to try to install it to a "blank" disc i.e. only 1 partition i.e. replace it jack, its all yours.

I really didn't want to become a linux "expert" (I know even if I ever get it installed it wont be anything but the luck of the draw), I just wanted it to work. I guess its not so much luck of the draw for windows.

[Poitiere]

I installed it on a complete drive, it created 3 partions 0, 5 & 6 but the result is the same, just sits there after/before initrd

[Old-Polack]

Hey Guys thanks for the quick replies and welcome.

Well I tried the 1st suggested solution, it all went ok but no dice. Grub seems installed ok, its must be that linux isn't i.e. the hang in the boot loader install.
It is installed on the 1st partition of the hard disk yet linux refers to it as sda5 or in grub (hd0,4).
Isn't there some rescue thing like with Windows when NTloader has vanished, it seems like an equivalent thing?
Is it saying it can't find initrd? or is it something thats supposed to exe after it?

The machine is pretty basic superMicro moBo dual core intel 2Ghz 250GB primary HD with 3 partitions: PCLOS (ext4 35GB) freespace(35GB) FreeDos(32GB) freeSpace(140GB) FreeDos(2GB)
and secondary HD with 80GB winXP. 2GB Ram ATI graphics 512K Apple 30" Cinema display.

On 1 occasion I waited >1 hour for DrakLive to come back, other times 10 mins or so, Xfce till screen saver comes on.

The item highlighted above, and the fact that you have so many sizable free spaces indicate you have a very screwed up partition table. You really need to start from scratch and build a proper set of partitions. Were it my hard drive I'd start by doing a complete wipe with the DBAN application, then create some reasonable sized partitions for your PCLinuxOS installation, then choose Custom when you get to the partitioning part of the installation. Choosing to Use Existing Partitions will allow you to say which partition should be /, /home, and swap. As the installation would be completely new, allow both / and /home partitions to be formatted with the ext4 filesystem. When grub is to be installed, point the installation to the MBR, not the / partition. The MBR is the default location, so you really shouldn't have to do anything except accept that default.

Unless you have some unknown hardware problems, your installation should just about fall into place, with no great effort.

From the liveCD, from a root terminal, enter the following command;

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

Still using the liveCD, log in here and using copy/paste, Post your results. At least then we can see what your present layout actually looks like.

[Poitiere]

Dear Old Polack

Thanks for helping. As it was the partition being "screwed" and the obscure numbering thereof was a red herring. This should have been evidenced by the no-problem installations of other linuxi and other OS's and the use of a non-screwd partition disk.

However poking around did give me a clue which should have been obvious to me in hindsight. On an abortive manual boot from grub I saw a message saying it was ignoring raid hardware this prompted me to recall that although vista installed no problem, XP and 7 barfed  . That is because there is some strange hardware on the machine and you must load a driver before windows install.

I can only surmise that some OS's do a deeper hardware analysis/whatever than others. In the case of PCLOS it neither asked and neither did I have such a driver. Evidently I therefore cannot "install" on that machine, although it can "run" thereupon 

So I moved my efforts to another machine which I should have done ages ago. Persistance can be a handicap at times, probably most times. Lo and behold it installed perfectly but as that is a latest machine various hardwares went unrecognized.

I then transported said hard disk back to the errant machine and with a brief interruption where it noted my graphic setup had changed I was back in business  So thank you to everyone I annoyed and bothered. I think I have a Linux that is quite exploitable with internet and Lan connection 

Kudos to the PCLOS guys for the easy (if somewhat problematic) hardware support. Mayhaps one day I can be MS free.

[djohnston]

However poking around did give me a clue which should have been obvious to me in hindsight. On an abortive manual boot from grub I saw a message saying it was ignoring raid hardware this prompted me to recall that although vista installed no problem, XP and 7 barfed  . That is because there is some strange hardware on the machine and you must load a driver before windows install.

Kudos to the PCLOS guys for the easy (if somewhat problematic) hardware support. Mayhaps one day I can be MS free.

You really should check your BIOS settings. You either have a RAID-capable motherboard or a true hardware RAID controller card. If RAID controller is turned on in the BIOS, the hardware expects you to have at least two hard drives, controlled by the RAID setup.

XP, Vista, and 7 all need drivers for the RAID to work, unless it is a true RAID controller (controller software embedded in a chip). The scenario is no different with Linux than it is with Windows, except for the software used.

From my experiences with RAID0, RAID1, RAID5, and RAID0+1, Windows can be much more temperamental and problematic than Linux.

[Old-Polack]

However poking around did give me a clue which should have been obvious to me in hindsight. On an abortive manual boot from grub I saw a message saying it was ignoring raid hardware this prompted me to recall that although vista installed no problem, XP and 7 barfed  . That is because there is some strange hardware on the machine and you must load a driver before windows install.

Kudos to the PCLOS guys for the easy (if somewhat problematic) hardware support. Mayhaps one day I can be MS free.

You really should check your BIOS settings. You either have a RAID-capable motherboard or a true hardware RAID controller card. If RAID controller is turned on in the BIOS, the hardware expects you to have at least two hard drives, controlled by the RAID setup.

XP, Vista, and 7 all need drivers for the RAID to work, unless it is a true RAID controller (controller software embedded in a chip). The scenario is no different with Linux than it is with Windows, except for the software used.

From my experiences with RAID0, RAID1, RAID5, and RAID0+1, Windows can be much more temperamental and problematic than Windows.

Are you sure that's what you meant to say?

[djohnston]

From my experiences with RAID0, RAID1, RAID5, and RAID0+1, Windows can be much more temperamental and problematic than Windows.

Are you sure that's what you meant to say?

Whoops! Thanks for the sharp eye, O-P. I knew I could count on you to catch my mistakes. 

[Poitiere]

Guys (Fawkes) I tried to disable in BIOS but it never worked (all 8 permutations). I always needed the driver unless the OS was lax. It is a SuperMicro Mobo bought in India. Now in da USDA (pun intended)

I love dat mobo cause I got 2 emagic8's (16 channel raw audio) which are pci 5volters at the time noobs sold me mobos only supporting 3.3v so I is kinda miffed dat here nearly every mobo supports 5v PCI