Boot from a 3TB HDD?

[darkod]

It all look good, I can't notice anything at all wrong.

Again, if you are willing to do a test and create small 200MB fat32 partition as first one, in case this is what your board expects. Don't forget to put the boot flag on it (not the bios_grub). You should still have the bios_grub partition because grub2 will need it.
After those two partitions, you can create the other partitions as you want. It wouldn't hurt to have 20-25 GB root partition at front, or at least 1GB /boot partition. That will make sure the boot files are kept close to the start of the disk. You don't need to do both, either small / at front with larger /home on the rest of the disk, or if you expect to need big space for / for databases and such, simply put a small /boot at front and that's enough.

[oldfred]

Back to Darko's post #2. A smaller / (root) of 25GB or a separate /boot.
There used to be a bug which I thought they fixed where grub got lost on very large / (root) partitions that were over 500GB. It may still apply for those over 2TB?

            GiB - GB             File                                 Fragment(s)

   1124.137115479 = 1207.033036800 boot/grub/grub.cfg                             1
 216.234535217 = 232.180064256  boot/grub/core.img                             1
1124.135375977 = 1207.031169024 boot/vmlinuz-3.5.0-23-generic                  1
1124.135375977 = 1207.031169024 vmlinuz                                        1
   1.561054230 = 1.676169216    boot/initrd.img-3.5.0-23-generic               2
   1.561054230 = 1.676169216    initrd.img                                     2

You have some boot files at 1.67 and some at 1207 which is pretty far apart.

[fkjensen]

I tried (still with the 12.04 desktop version) to make a 200MB FAT32 partition with "boot" on as the first partition, but still no luck...
I couldn't find an option to set the boot flag during the install, so I booted in live mode and did it with parted. I used "boot", should I have used "legacy_boot"?

The partitions looked something like this:
1: 200 MB FAT32 boot
2: 1 MB bios_grub
3: 1 GB swap
4: 20 GB /
5: 3TB /home

Best regards,
Frank

[fkjensen]

You have some boot files at 1.67 and some at 1207 which is pretty far apart.

Is this a problem and if so how do I change that?

Best regards,
Frank

[darkod]

Is this a problem and if so how do I change that?

Best regards,
Frank

With the setup you posted in post #23 that would be solved. The boot files will go into / and since root is small only 20GB and at the front of the disk, they will be there instead of way back on the disk.

Yeah, the boot flag on sda1 looks good, it's called boot. sda2 also looks good, it has the bios_grub flag and it has no filesystem, which is correct.

Try installing like that and let us know.

[fkjensen]

Try installing like that and let us know.

I did, still no luck :-/

Best regards,
Frank

[oldfred]

I really expected that to work.
Are you using the 64 bit version? And 12.04 or 12.04.2. Only difference is the kernel for 12.04.2 is a newer version.

Post a new link to a BootInfo report just to see if anything seems out of place, but at this point I am not sure.

[fkjensen]

I really expected that to work.
Are you using the 64 bit version? And 12.04 or 12.04.2. Only difference is the kernel for 12.04.2 is a newer version.

Post a new link to a BootInfo report just to see if anything seems out of place, but at this point I am not sure.

I am using the 32 bit version as the Intel D945GSEJT is only 32 bit (I think).
ubuntu-12.04.2-server-i386.iso and ubuntu-12.04.2-desktop-i386.iso

I will post the BootInfo report later this evening.

Best regards,
Frank

[oldfred]

If you have Core2 Duo processor then it is 64 bit. Both my laptop & desktop are different versions of Duo processors from 6 to 7 years ago and both run 64 bit without issue.
What mode is BIOS in, you need to have AHCI not IDE for hard drive access.

32-bit vs. 64-bit Ubuntu 13.04 Linux Performance with only 1GB of RAM & most tests better with 64bit
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...x86_1304&num=1

[fkjensen]

What mode is BIOS in, you need to have AHCI not IDE for hard drive access.

YES!!! I think that was it. I just booted the currently installed desktop version after I switched from IDE to AHCI

I will se if I can remove the FAT32 "boot" partition and install the server edition later.

If you have Core2 Duo processor then it is 64 bit. Both my laptop & desktop are different versions of Duo processors from 6 to 7 years ago and both run 64 bit without issue.

32-bit vs. 64-bit Ubuntu 13.04 Linux Performance with only 1GB of RAM & most tests better with 64bit
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...x86_1304&num=1

The processor on the Intel D945GSEJT is an Atom N270. I think it is 32 bit, but should I still be able to run 64 bit? (I have been running 9.04 32 bit the last few years, and it has worked just fine.)


And lastly, many thanks for all you guys excellent support, quick response and patience!!

Best regards,
Frank