After Lucid installation, my puter won't boot.

[tarahmarie]

Hi, all:

I changed out the CMOS battery, flashing the BIOS. I also changed out my primary HD, going to a 2TB WD Caviar Black (I know, I know. You're jealous--but try to restrain yourselves, cuz apparently there's a 2TB limit I didn't know about on GParted).

I used the Kubuntu LiveCD to format my HD and install Lucid; I divvied it up as many of us do into 4 partitions or so, and installed the OS to /, nothing to /altos (that will be a Mandriva install one day in happier times), the bootloader to /locked, and nothing to /home, where I've transferred all my stuff now.

When I attempt to boot after install, I get a message saying "Intel Boot Agent failed to find a bootable disk". I am able to boot by using the LiveCD and choosing teh 'boot from first hard drive' option. I am aware that all this has to do with a 2TB limit for Gparted (or something like that), but I thought it was a PARTITION limit, not a HARD DRIVE limit. My /home is 1950GB, putting it safely under the limit.

That bootloader, as previously mentioned, was installed to /locked (sda3, I think). I was going to use that partition for financials and stuff, but this is the second time I tried an install to this HD. I had the same error the first time, and I wanted teh bootloader where I could put my hands on it.

tarahmarie@tarahmarie-desktop:~$ grub-install -v
grub-install (GNU GRUB 1.98-1ubuntu7)

That's so you can see it's installed.

Ok, here's teh question: why won't my puter boot? Do I need to properly configure grub2 somehow? If so, does it have something to do with GPT? I've been going through threads for a day now, and all I am is more confused.

[oldfred]

Some BIOS (intel?) require a boot flag on a primary partition to allow booting. Grub does not use the boot flag but windows has to have one, so the BIOS must think everyone has windows.

If you used gpt partitions you do not have the 2TiB limit. That limit is for msdos (MBR) partitions. MBR has a four partition limit but one partition can be converted to an extended an hold additional logical, but you still have a 2TiB limit.

If you create a boot partition you should not be using it for other things. I do not recommend a separate boot partition for desktop installs unless you have an old BIOS that requires it at the front of the disk or a few other special cases.

If you are going to have multiple installs you should think about 20-25GB system partitions for each install (including boot & /home) and separate /data partition for all your data. Then you can mount data without any conflicts that may happen if you attempt to share boot or home partitions. If you have some settings in /home that you know will work in another install you can copy them, but different versions of software may have different config files in /home.

Partitioning basics with some info on /data older but still valid by bodhi.zazen
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...data+partition
With add'l info on manually partitioning
http://guvnr.com/pc/ubuntu-partition-planning/

Herman on advantages/disadvanges of separate system partitions
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1410392

To see what is where:
Boot Info Script courtesy of forum member meierfra
Page with instructions and download:
http://bootinfoscript.sourceforge.net/
Paste results.txt, then highlight entire file and click on # in edit panel(code tags) to make it easier to read.
Or You can generate the tags first by pressing the # icon in the post's menu and then paste the contents between the generated [ code][ /code] tags.

[tarahmarie]

To the best of my ability to tell, I have a problem with the BIOS not finding the boot partition.

I get the Intel Boot Agent seeking for a bootable disk and not finding one.

I tried to reinstall grub2 to the MBR on my primary HD (sda), but got this as an error message:

/usr/sbin/grub2-install --recheck --no-floppy /dev/sda --force
grub-setup: warn: This GPT partition label has no BIOS Boot Partition;
embedding won't be possible!
grub-setup: warn: Embedding is not possible. GRUB can only be installed in
this setup by using blocklists. However, blocklists are UNRELIABLE and its
use is discouraged.
Installation finished. No error reported.

WTH?

[oldfred]

If you have gpt you need another small (8-32mb) partition for grub. Are you using efi or BIOS compatible mode?

However, in the GPT setup, there is no space following the 512-byte MBR for embedding the "second stage" core.img. Thus, you must make a separate "BIOS boot partition" to hold core.img. Make it 128 kiB as recommended in the following link. Actually, using ext2 for example, and GParted Live CD, the minimum partition size is 8 MB, or 32 MB for FAT32. You can set bios_grub flag in gparted or with command line:
sudo parted /dev/sda set <partition_number> bios_grub on
http://grub.enbug.org/BIOS_Boot_Partition
"unknown" filesystem! may be shown
grub EFI
http://www.mail-archive.com/maverick.../msg01724.html

[srs5694]

The BIOS Boot Partition that oldfred describes may be the cause of the problem. GRUB 2 can usually work without it, but it's more reliable with this partition, and I've seen reports that some versions of GRUB 2 just plain don't work without it. The BIOS Boot Partition can be very small, so you may be able to squeeze it in even if the disk is already (almost) completely allocated.

There are a number of other BIOS issues with GPT, which amount to BIOS bugs with specific BIOS versions. Oldfred has already alluded to one of these issues, in that some BIOSes (particularly on some Intel boards) require a boot/active flag to be set on an MBR primary partition before they'll boot. This is a completely brain-dead design, but some (not all, just some) BIOSes are designed this way. Check my link for other issues. Please post detailed motherboard and BIOS information (model and revision numbers) if you need more help with this.

[tarahmarie]

Ok, I tried doing precisely that: I created an 8MB ext3 partition as sda1. It's right at the front (notably, in the Kubuntu installer, it shows 1MB of free space in front of that partition, and I apparently can't do anything with it). I mounted it at /boot. Grub2 was installed to it during a reinstall of Kubuntu.

After that reinstallation completed, I executed 'sudo parted /dev/sda set 1 bios_grub on', and rebooted.

I'm still faced with the same problem; no boot. Here is more detailed information:

BIOS version: DPP3510J.86A.0437.2008.0521.1993

Here's the error I get on booting (this is as exact as I can make it, not being able to cut and paste...so forbear if I've gotten something wrong):

Intel (R) Boot Agent GE v1.2.22

CLIENT MAC ADDR: XX XX XX XX XX XX GUID: DC8EF94C 1816 11DD ADE8 0013D4E33164

PXE-E53: No boot filename received.

PXE-MOF: Exiting Intel Boot Agent
No bootable device -- insert boot disk + press any key


That's what happens when nothing will boot. I've blanked my MAC for security's sake.

It's like it's trying to boot from network, but that's disabled in BIOS.

[srs5694]

I think you misunderstand what the BIOS Boot Partition is. It is not part of the Linux installation per se; it's used prior to Linux booting, by GRUB 2. You should not mount it as part of the Linux installation process. If you want to have a separate /boot partition, that's fine, but that should be a regular Linux partition, not a BIOS Boot Partition. You should flag the BIOS Boot Partition as such before you install Linux -- or at least before you install GRUB 2. Doing it afterwards, as you did, will do absolutely no good and may actually harm your installation, if you also used it for /boot, as it sounds like you did.

Also, it sounds like you've got an Intel motherboard. Some Intel BIOSes are known to require an MBR partition to be flagged as active/bootable. Thus, if you try again with the BIOS Boot Partition as just described, and if it still doesn't boot, you should use Linux fdisk to set the GPT (type-0xEE) partition in the MBR as active/bootable. AFAIK, this can't be done by GParted on GPT disks, although GParted does have an option to set this flag on MBR disks. You'll have to use fdisk for this job.

[tarahmarie]

I think you misunderstand what the BIOS Boot Partition is. It is not part of the Linux installation per se; it's used prior to Linux booting, by GRUB 2. You should not mount it as part of the Linux installation process. If you want to have a separate /boot partition, that's fine, but that should be a regular Linux partition, not a BIOS Boot Partition. You should flag the BIOS Boot Partition as such before you install Linux -- or at least before you install GRUB 2. Doing it afterwards, as you did, will do absolutely no good and may actually harm your installation, if you also used it for /boot, as it sounds like you did.

How do I flag the BIOS boot partition?

[srs5694]

How do I flag the BIOS boot partition?

You did it before:

sudo parted /dev/sda set 1 bios_grub on

[tarahmarie]

I must be confused:

(1) Make a small partition near the beginning.
(2) Install grub2 to that partition.
(3) Flag it to the bios using this code: sudo parted /dev/sda set 1 bios_grub on


That is what I did. What am I not understanding?