Harddisk not bootable because of GRUB?

[qwyrp]

@darkod: thank you for your tips and I'll keep them in mind but first I'm letting oldfred lead the way !!

[oldfred]

Do these commands show anything?
If UEFI include this also:
dmesg | grep EFI
find /boot/efi -name "*efi"

It looks more like you have BIOS boot and the first partition is mis-labled. It says efi, but efi has to have a FAT format and it has none. In BIOS boot you need a bios_grub partition to have a place for core.img which is in sda1. And a bios_grub partition has no format.

I now prefer gpt, but with MBR you cannot put Windows on the drive. Windows will only boot with UEFI on a gpt drive. As Darko says you can use MBR(msdos) if you prefer up to 2TiB or about 2.2TB.

If drive is only going to be Ubuntu (never Windows), I would suggest using gpt not MBR as the partitioning scheme. You then do not have any logical partitions, they are all primary and it has a backup in case of problems. You do have to create a tiny bios_grub partition to correctly install grub2's boot loader to the drive.
If using gpt create a 1MB bios_grub partition at the beginning of the drive. I used gparted and selected gpt under device, advanced & select gpt over msdos(MBR) default partitioning.

There was a bug where grub had trouble finding boot files higher up in very large partitions. You have a very large partition. I prefer smaller / (root) partitions and separate /home or even better but more advanced separate /data partitions. System has better performance if drive does not have to process 2TB of space to find all the system files it uses a lot. But with a server you may have databases or programs that prefer to have data in / and then you need a bigger root. I still prefer moving all data out of / if possible.

As a quick test since you have not installed much yet. Use gparted from liveCD and shrink the / partition to a much smaller size. Also in gparted click on sda1, select flags and change to bios_grub. I think the bios_grub looks like a boot flag to BIOS but am not sure. If not we may need a boot flag also. If all this works then you need to decide how to partition.

GPT Advantages srs5694:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1457901
GPT or MBR
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1625285

[qwyrp]

Your suggested commands dmesg etc doesn't show anything.

I'll tried to change SDA1 to GRUB_GRUB but that wasn't an option.

I'll really appreciate your help but it's all confusing (English is not my first language) and frustrating (all new terms like GPT,MBR etc) to me so here's a idea:
The data on the disk isn't important so I'm thinking of beginning from scratch. Can you please explain me what to do so I can install ubuntu and enyoing a automatically booting system

• What about Formatting: must I format the drive and if so which program to use and in what format (NTFS, FAT or .....)
• How to install the correct boot-tables (GPT or MBR) and also with program to use so it boots automatically

[oldfred]

It is bios_grub as a flag in gparted on sda1. I would like you to try that and shrinking your main partition just as a test to see it it works at all. Then you can reformat.

I think any drive over 1+ TB, the auto install of Ubuntu to a full drive automatically uses gpt. If you format in advance, gparted will default to MBR(msdos). My normal suggestion is 10 to 20GB for / (root) but since you have 2TB and it is a server, it should be somewhat larger. If you partition in advance you use manual install to choose the pre-existing partitions. Not sure of differences with server installs.

I really only know desktops, so your may want to supply what kind of server you are installing so others can make some suggestions.

If only installing Ubuntu in MBR. This is my suggestion as a starting point. But each user has different requirements, data storage needs, additional partitions for testing or shared NTFS with Windows.

For the Total space you want for Ubuntu:
Ubuntu's standard install is just / (root) & swap, but it is better to add another partition for /home:
1. 25+ GB Mountpoint / primary or logical beginning ext4(or ext3)
2. all but 2 GB Mountpoint /home logical beginning ext4(or ext3)
3. 2 GB Mountpoint swap logical

Depending on how much memory you have you may not absolutely need swap but having some is still recommended. I do not hibernate (boots fast enough for me) but if hibernating then you need swap equal to RAM in GiB not GB. And if dual booting with windows a shared NTFS partition is also recommended. But you usually cannot create that as part of the install, just leave some space. Or partition in advance (recommended).
One advantage of partitioning in advance is that the installer will use the swap space to speed up the install. Thanks Herman for the tip.

With gpt all partitions are primary, with MBR you can only have 4 primary partitions and one needs to be the extended partition to hold logical partitions.

More info on swap:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SwapFaq

Lots of detail on installs, screenshots may be different versions but process is the same for all. Server installs do not normally have a gui.
Install 11.10 with screenshots of Unity, gnome3, & gnome fallback
http://debianhelp.wordpress.com/2011...neiric-ocelot/
Install 11.04
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/installing
Ubuntu Install steps - then choose guide, close to what you want.
http://members.iinet.net/~herman546/index.html

For BIOS with MBR, you always install the grub2 bootloader to the MBR of the drive.

[qwyrp]

I've installed several times but every time there was no automatic boot. So my main concern: how to get empty/correct boottables because they causing my problems.

Is there a way to totally clean my diskdrives (including MBR/GPT etc) maybe a kind of lowlevel format. Resulting in a complete emtpty disk and empty and thus correct boottables (MBR/EFI or whatever)

[darkod]

You don't need low level format, the ordinary quick format deletes the partitions. Not really, but as far as the computer is concerned, yes.

With new technologies there are more options now, and more new things to learn. First you need to investigate around, google a bit, and decide how you want to do it.

For partition tables, except the msdos now exists gpt.

For booting now exists EFI on top of the "old way".

If all of these new technologies are confusing you too much, I will stick to what I said. msdos partition table still works with 2TB disks. Just use that and that's it.

To avoid banging your head deciding about correct partitions sizing right now, just use LVM and you're good to go.

If you decide to go this route:
Make sure in BIOS you are not using EFI boot (don't know how your BIOS looks like so I can't tell you where to go, refer to the board manual).

1. Boot the computer with ubuntu desktop cd (I know you want to use server version) into live mode. It's probably easier if you have graphic environment.
2. Open Gparted and select your hdd (it's probably only one).
3. Go in Device - Create Partition Table... Select to create msdos partition table (not sure if there is another type offered).
4. There will be warning all data will be destroyed. Accept it and you have your empty 2TB hdd with msdos partition table.

Then boot with your server cd and start the install. If you decided to do LVM there is even automatic install option with LVM, just use that if you want to.
Otherwise, create your partitions manually.

That's it.

For other ways of doing it, depends on your research about msdos/gpt and standard boot/efi.

[qwyrp]

My EFI-boot is off

3. Go in Device - Create Partition Table... Select to create msdos partition table (not sure if there is another type offered).

Do you mean my msdos FAT16 or FAT32 because there's no msdos description

[darkod]

Honestly I have never used that option.
We are not talking about filesystems FAT16 and FAT32 right?

If the create partition table offers FAT16 and FAT32, use FAT32.

[darkod]

I think you are talking about filesystems. I just booted a 10.04 disc in live mode, when you select Create Partition Table a new window opens. In there it says it will create msdos partition table by default.

If you lick the + sign in front of Advanced, it will offer many other types of partition tables, including gpt.

So, forget about all the partition on the disk, everything. Just go into Device - Create Partition Table, since you want msdos table click Apply in the small window that opens, and then in the main Gparted window you need to click the green tick mark button to apply the changes to the disk. Gparted doesn't apply any changes until you click this green tick mark button.

[qwyrp]

I've tried gparted on a bootable cd and did all you explained but sadly it still won't boot