cheryljosie
August 23rd, 2014, 03:33 AM
Solution is on http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/showthread.php?p=5225676#post5225676
Short story is I migrated a Core2 Duo BIOS boot file server from smaller 512B drives to larger 4KiB drives and aligned/converted to GPT using (probably) gdisk (cannot remember, it was a year ago).
Then I moved/resized all the partitions to fit using gparted, changed the VFAT boot partition (with GRUB to chainload the other OSs) to a bios-grub partition (no EFI on this motherboard) probably using gparted again, booted from a liveCD and chrooted to the existing 12.04 partition, and ran grub-install. I decided to forego chainloading since I do not know how to do it with grub2 and I doubt grub will boot a BIOS system on GPT without EFI. So I just let the existing main OS install grub2 on the bios-grub partition.
The grub-install seemed to work fine but when I restarted the BIOS says insert bootable media or something like that. It is not finding the bootloader.
Several potential issues include:
Is there a protective MBR on the GPT drive? Did I pass the correct parameter to gdisk? How can I find out? I do not remember what I did.
Does Ubuntu installed on MBR have the required libraries and configuration files to grub-install to a GPT? How do I find out/fix? this usually occurs during hardware discovery in a full installation.
Some motherboards cannot boot GPT, or require some special configuration to do it. How do I find out if this one is compatible? Intel dg965wh
After resizing and moving partitions, the 200MB bios-grub partition is the first one at the very beginning but it is not number 0. Does that matter?
Several forums indicate setting a boot flag but it must be done in the protective MBR and only one tool can do it? I tried and it did not help. Not only that, I could not verify I did it correctly because each tool handles the reporting differently and I do not know how to check if it matters or is done right.
I would start over but there are two main reasons I prefer not to. First, I might have done nothing at all wrong, it might be the motherboard or Linux. Second, the MythTV installation needs the exact same OS or I have to back up the entire MySQL database and it is a risky process. Third, I already went through all the trouble of repartitioning. Fourth, I already tried installing from liveCD to a small ATA drive but it will not let me install to a GPT so I cannot test it that way. Fifth, I do not want to reformat the original copy since it is my backup and the drives are only SATA 1.5TB and I do not know if the Ubuntu install will even let me put a GPT on them since MBR works up to 2TB and the install from liveCD would not let me do it on a small ATA. So here I am with no easy way to confirm if my MB is compatible with GPT bios booting or not. Another drive is too expensive to contemplate at this time.
Any suggestions? Stuck troubleshooting this for a full year. Many thanks for your patience.
Short story is I migrated a Core2 Duo BIOS boot file server from smaller 512B drives to larger 4KiB drives and aligned/converted to GPT using (probably) gdisk (cannot remember, it was a year ago).
Then I moved/resized all the partitions to fit using gparted, changed the VFAT boot partition (with GRUB to chainload the other OSs) to a bios-grub partition (no EFI on this motherboard) probably using gparted again, booted from a liveCD and chrooted to the existing 12.04 partition, and ran grub-install. I decided to forego chainloading since I do not know how to do it with grub2 and I doubt grub will boot a BIOS system on GPT without EFI. So I just let the existing main OS install grub2 on the bios-grub partition.
The grub-install seemed to work fine but when I restarted the BIOS says insert bootable media or something like that. It is not finding the bootloader.
Several potential issues include:
Is there a protective MBR on the GPT drive? Did I pass the correct parameter to gdisk? How can I find out? I do not remember what I did.
Does Ubuntu installed on MBR have the required libraries and configuration files to grub-install to a GPT? How do I find out/fix? this usually occurs during hardware discovery in a full installation.
Some motherboards cannot boot GPT, or require some special configuration to do it. How do I find out if this one is compatible? Intel dg965wh
After resizing and moving partitions, the 200MB bios-grub partition is the first one at the very beginning but it is not number 0. Does that matter?
Several forums indicate setting a boot flag but it must be done in the protective MBR and only one tool can do it? I tried and it did not help. Not only that, I could not verify I did it correctly because each tool handles the reporting differently and I do not know how to check if it matters or is done right.
I would start over but there are two main reasons I prefer not to. First, I might have done nothing at all wrong, it might be the motherboard or Linux. Second, the MythTV installation needs the exact same OS or I have to back up the entire MySQL database and it is a risky process. Third, I already went through all the trouble of repartitioning. Fourth, I already tried installing from liveCD to a small ATA drive but it will not let me install to a GPT so I cannot test it that way. Fifth, I do not want to reformat the original copy since it is my backup and the drives are only SATA 1.5TB and I do not know if the Ubuntu install will even let me put a GPT on them since MBR works up to 2TB and the install from liveCD would not let me do it on a small ATA. So here I am with no easy way to confirm if my MB is compatible with GPT bios booting or not. Another drive is too expensive to contemplate at this time.
Any suggestions? Stuck troubleshooting this for a full year. Many thanks for your patience.