Help on installing 9.04 needed

[vasya10]

Totally new Ubuntu , first time installer ...

I have Windows Server on a sata drive and am trying to install ubuntu on a new IDE drive (set to master).

Sata is recognized as /dev/sda and IDE as /dev/sdb.

Partitioned the IDE drive as 90 gb primary (ext3) + rest as swap.

Installed boot loader on /dev/sdb1

After installating and rebooting getting error 25.

My device.map looks like

(hd0) /dev/sdb # should be my linux drive, acc. to bios boot order
(hd1) /dev/sda # should be my windows drive acc. to boot order

menu.lst initally did not have a root entry under the 3 linux sections. I added them to have

title ...
root (hd0,0)
makeactive # also was absent, added this

Under Windows section modified to

root (hd1,0)
makeactive # was absent, added

My BIOS boot order is CDROM, Hard Disk
My BIOS boot priority is Linux drive (IDE), Windows drive (SATA)

BIOS and mobo are pretty new (Gigabyte UD3LR) and can handle large drives.

What am I doing wrong? Any help is very much appreciated.

[raymondh]

Hope this helps:

http://members.iinet.net.au/%7Eherman546/p15.html#25

Good luck.

[running_rabbit07]

Grub boot loader has to be on same disk as the MBR.

Edit: +1 with the site Raymond is recommending.

[vasya10]

Thanks for the replies. I checked my cables, the Linux pata (/dev/sdb) is set to Master, dvd rom is set to slave. All these show up in BIOS correctly. The hdd settings is also Auto (not LBA or large). My BIOS boot order is CDROM, HDD; I changed my BIOS Hard Drive Priority to SATA, then HDD. Sata is where my MBR is.

Tried a few suggestions given else where in this forum --

- boot via livecd, mount /dev/sdb, re-install grub, but it doesnt work.

Here is what i get trying to reinstall grub:

root@ubuntu:/boot/grub# grub-install /dev/sda
/dev/sda: Not found or not a block device.

root@ubuntu:/boot/grub# more device.map
(hd0) /dev/sdb
(hd1) /dev/sda

fdisk -l

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 640.1 GB, 640135028736 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 77825 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x97ab97ab

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 26108 209712478+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 26109 77824 415408770 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 26109 77824 415408738+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

Disk /dev/sdb: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x84401914

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 12158 97659103+ 83 Linux
/dev/sdb2 12159 14593 19559137+ 5 Extended
/dev/sdb5 12159 14593 19559106 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Appreciate any help!

[vasya10]

Just wanted to add something.. Read somewhere that PATAs must be /dev/hdX and SATAs must be /dev/sdX. But Ubuntu is reading sata as /dev/sda and pata as /dev/sdb.

Is there something else wrong?

[vasya10]

Whoohoo. Got it working. I was about to remove ubuntu, did a fixmbr using Windows CD, that didnt work. Was still getting Error 25. I finally decided to remove the Ubuntu hard disk itself. Noticed that it was using a regular 40pin master/slave (for hdd and cdrom). Changed it to cable-select for one last try. Booted up, before I could blink, Ubuntu was running.

Thanks a lot for help, learnt a lot in just a couple of days.

[raymondh]

well done ... happy ubuntu-ing.