xp + vista + 7 + ubuntu (grub problem)

[rewolf]

Okay, here's the story. When i got this computer a few weeks ago, i partitioned my 500gb into 5 partitions. I installed xp,vista,7,kubuntu810,(swap space) on the partitions (in that order). All worked fine, (grub picked up the vista loader etc). But i later had to reformat, so i recreated the exact same partitions but only installed xp and vista for the time being.
After a week i decided to install 7 and ubuntu onto the remaining partitions. But this time the ubuntu installation crashed with a grub-install error code 1 (target was hd0).

Does anyone know why it does this, and what i can do to fix this? from the live CD, fdisk -l gives:


Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x11dd11dc

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 27414 220202923+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 27415 60800 268173045 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 27415 49606 178257208+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6 49607 53522 31455238+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda7 53523 60661 57343986 e W95 FAT16 (LBA)
/dev/sda8 60662 60800 1116486 82 Linux swap / Solaris

If (after the failed installation) i mount the installed partition, the grub dir has:


ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo mkdir /mnt/tmp
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo mount -t ext3 /dev/sda7 /mnt/tmp/
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ ls /mnt/tmp/boot/grub/
default e2fs_stage1_5 jfs_stage1_5 reiserfs_stage1_5 stage2
device.map fat_stage1_5 minix_stage1_5 stage1 xfs_stage1_5

If i try run grub-install on the partition i get:


ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo grub-install /dev/sda7
Probing devices to guess BIOS drives. This may take a long time.
Could not find device for /boot: Not found or not a block device.


I'm quite a noob to playing with grub etc. so all this stuff might be completely irrelevant, but i would REALLY appreciate some help.
I don't mind if i i use grub as the main bootloader or the vista one, as long as both OS' are accessible

Thanks * 9001 in advance

rewolf

[lemming465]

It's a little odd to install an ext3 filesystem on a partition of type 'e'; I'd change it to '83'. (fdisk /dev/sda, "t" command) Less confusing that way.

Try sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/tmp /dev/sda7 and see if that does better.

[Mark Phelps]

Did Ubuntu ever work with GRUB installed on the FAT-16 partition? Only asking because I saw another thread where someone was attempting to install GRUB in a FAT (16) partition and it kept failing due to filenames being too long.