[SOLVED] Grub error, cannot boot Fedora

[orbital]

I have Ubuntu 8.04 installed with a boot loader, and now I installed Fedora 9 on another partition, without a boot loader. Now when I boot select Fedora when booting I get "Cannot mount partition" error. Something wrong with the /boot/grub/menu.lst probably? I tried to modify menu.lst but with no success.

[tribaal]

Could you post your /boot/grub/menu.lst file here please? It's probably just a GRUB setup problem.

You can also try reinstalling GRUB ("grub install"), it *should* detect fedora, and add a menu entry for it.

- Trib'

[ajgreeny]

I think this may be a result of Fedora partitioning by default as LVM, which means it could be unreadable unless you have all the lvm modules installed. This certainly used to be the case. I had the same problem a couple of years ago and eventually solved it by installing Fedora on pre-made ext3 partitions. That did the trick, but it took a while to find out what was going on and was very frustrating for a new Linux user. Incidentally, I didn't like Fedora then and haven't looked at it again since; too slow and unwieldy package management and configuration for me then.

Use gparted, or whatever you have, to make new ext3 partitions for Fedora, and then install to them when the installer gets to that part. Make sure you let Fedora format the swap partition or it won't be able to use it (that was so then, anyway, it may have changed now). You should find now that you can add the appropriate entry to grub to boot to Fedora, though you will need to make sure you get the partition naming right by using

sudo fdisk -l

in Ubuntu, and copying the partition information to menu.lst

Hope that helps.

[orbital]

I tried reinstalling grub but it didn't help. I have Fedora set up like this in menu.lst:

title		Fedora 9
root		(hd0,5)
kernel		/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-17.f9.i686 root=/dev/sda5 
initrd		/boot/initrd-2.6.24-17.f9.i686.img
savedefault
boot

Any ideas?

[didac]

You can try

root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-17.f9.i686 root=/dev/hda5 ro
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.24-17.f9.i686.img
savedefault

If your root is in your 5th partition, that is the 4th for root. It counts hda1 as 0,0

Notice the change to hda5 instead of sda5. Fedora reserves sda, sdb to SCSI. Ubuntu uses it by default. Also add ro at the end.

Don't add boot at the end. That's needed only when you are working from the command line.

Another solution is to boot GRUB to a command line and enter those lines one after another to check whether it recognises them

[VMC]

I think this may be a result of Fedora partitioning by default as LVM, which means it could be unreadable unless you have all the lvm modules installed. This certainly used to be the case. I had the same problem a couple of years ago and eventually solved it by installing Fedora on pre-made ext3 partitions. That did the trick, but it took a while to find out what was going on and was very frustrating for a new Linux user. Incidentally, I didn't like Fedora then and haven't looked at it again since; too slow and unwieldy package management and configuration for me then.

This is exactly the problem I had and the same reason why I don't like Fedora. 9 doesn't seem all that different than 6. That LVM I don't much like, plus the fact Fedora created another small boot partition for some reason and ignored the /boot/grub partition. Doesn't even search for another grub.

[zvacet]

You have to know on which partition Fedora is installed.If it is on hda5 then in Ubuntu

sudo cp //boot/grub/menu.lst /boot/grub/menu.lst-bak

gksudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

and you will see
### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

and below it add

titile Fedora
rootnoverify (hd0,4)
makeactive
chainloader +1

save file and close.After restart you should be able to choose which OS you want to boot.

[orbital]

You can try

root (hd0,4)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-17.f9.i686 root=/dev/hda5 ro
initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.24-17.f9.i686.img
savedefault

If your root is in your 5th partition, that is the 4th for root. It counts hda1 as 0,0

Notice the change to hda5 instead of sda5. Fedora reserves sda, sdb to SCSI. Ubuntu uses it by default. Also add ro at the end.

Don't add boot at the end. That's needed only when you are working from the command line.

Another solution is to boot GRUB to a command line and enter those lines one after another to check whether it recognises them

I tried this but still get an error (File not found etc.)

[orbital]

You have to know on which partition Fedora is installed.If it is on hda5 then in Ubuntu

sudo cp //boot/grub/menu.lst /boot/grub/menu.lst-bak

gksudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

and you will see
### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

and below it add

titile Fedora
rootnoverify (hd0,4)
makeactive
chainloader +1

save file and close.After restart you should be able to choose which OS you want to boot.

Tried this as well, and got Error 12: Invalid device requested

[zvacet]

You never posted output of sudo fdisk -l but I looked your previous posts and now I see I overlooked something so try this

titile Fedora
rootnoverify (hd0,5)
makeactive
chainloader +1