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GregS
Joined: Thu Aug 03, 2006 4:54 am
Posts: 89
Location: Oz
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 Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2012 5:43 am Post subject: No room in the inn for Grub2?? [Solved] |
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Had an odd error upgrading to Fedora 16 on a Acer Extensa 5620Z laptop.
It was happily running Fedora 15. Using preupgrade I did an install of 16, which had a minor difficulty in completing as it did not appear to completely download the entire upgrade. however, once it was running, all appeared OK until a final error message that grub did not install and it may not reboot.
Rebooting took me to the (kids games only) Windows XP install OK, but the Fedora 16 Upgrade option would not work. After trying some of the hints from recent LXF issues, I opted for a clean install from the LXF coverdisk Fedora 16.
Same result! Grub install failure warning, this time no OS found (even Window$). Similar cryptic error messages that I was doing something illegal, immoral or fattening, placing my system in imminent peril and GRUB wasn't going to play...
System Rescue finally recovered the MBR and XP now boots.
SuperGRUB2 locates and will boot the Fedora 16 partition - all appears OK BUT trying to install GRUB to sda results in the following error:
| Code: | [root@Lincoln sbin]# grub2-install /dev/sda
/sbin/grub2-setup: warn: Your embedding area is unusually small. core.img won't fit in it..
/sbin/grub2-setup: warn: Embedding is not possible. GRUB can only be installed in this setup by using blocklists. However, blocklists are UNRELIABLE and their use is discouraged..
/sbin/grub2-setup: error: will not proceed with blocklists. |
Partition configuration of sda is, according to fdisk:
80.0GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/tract, 9729 cylinders, total 156301488
Units = sectors of 1*512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes
I/O size (minimal/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
sda1 - Compaq diagnostics 5124703+ blocks
sda2 - (XP) NTFS 39568095 blocks
sda3 - (XP Recovery) FAT 32 4104607+ blocks
sda4 - Extended 29353048 blocks
sda5 - (swap) Linux 51200 blocks
sda6 - (Fedora 16) Linux LVM 28838912 blocks
Any ideas why GRUB suddenly won't install?
Last edited by GregS on Wed Feb 15, 2012 9:56 am; edited 2 times in total |
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nelz
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Joined: Mon Apr 04, 2005 12:52 pm
Posts: 8036
Location: Warrington, UK
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| Posted: Tue Feb 07, 2012 8:56 am Post subject: |
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You have no boot partition, are you trying to install GRUB to one of the Windows partitions?
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"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." (Albert Einstein) |
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GregS
Joined: Thu Aug 03, 2006 4:54 am
Posts: 89
Location: Oz
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| Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2012 6:55 am Post subject: |
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| nelz wrote: | | You have no boot partition, are you trying to install GRUB to one of the Windows partitions? |
Trying to install to sda (initially, although tried other options just in case with similar lack of success).
I cannot understand why there is not boot partition.
XP was reinstalled (using the onboard system restore partition and Acer native rescue disk) after a system crash not long ago and has been happily(?) coexisting with Fedora 15 in a GRUB dual-boot setup all along.
Upgrading to Fedora 16 seems to have initiated whatever the problem is. As is, I'm totally stumped... |
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GregS
Joined: Thu Aug 03, 2006 4:54 am
Posts: 89
Location: Oz
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| Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2012 1:45 am Post subject: |
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I say 'partly' solved because the solution was a clean install of Fedora 16-64, during which I discovered that my Linux partition somehow got to be a Logical Volume (how is beyond me, 'cos I didn't do it...)
Now, my problem is that I can't find how to set up Grub to default to the kid's Windows partition: not only cannot I fathom the new layout, but update-grub(2) returns a file not found error... |
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nelz
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Joined: Mon Apr 04, 2005 12:52 pm
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Location: Warrington, UK
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| Posted: Sun Feb 12, 2012 11:48 am Post subject: |
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Fedora defaults to using LVM, that's why it should also have a boot partition.
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"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." (Albert Einstein) |
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GregS
Joined: Thu Aug 03, 2006 4:54 am
Posts: 89
Location: Oz
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| Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2012 9:03 am Post subject: |
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So it would seem. However, installing as a 'normal' partition seems to have made the installation of Grub on the sda mbr problem go away.
If only I could decipher a means of editing the Grub configuration to default to other than the 0 option...
Tried the method in LXF 128 but I can't make head not tail out of the /etc/grub.d scripts and in any case there doesn't appear to be an update-grub option to write them to the config file anyway.
I'm tempted to edit the grub.cfg despite the dire warnings not to.... |
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nelz
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Joined: Mon Apr 04, 2005 12:52 pm
Posts: 8036
Location: Warrington, UK
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| Posted: Mon Feb 13, 2012 9:59 am Post subject: |
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If you don't put / on a logical volume, you don't need a separate /boot.
update-grub is an Ubuntu-ism, all it does it run
| Code: | | grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg |
If you never run this, you can edit grub.cfg manually, but it will probably be run for you when you update your kernel, wiping out your settings. Change the default option, and the timeout if you want, in /etc/default/grub, then run grub2-mkconfig to update grub.cfg.
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"Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." (Albert Einstein) |
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GregS
Joined: Thu Aug 03, 2006 4:54 am
Posts: 89
Location: Oz
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| Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2012 10:22 am Post subject: |
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| nelz wrote: | If you don't put / on a logical volume, you don't need a separate /boot.
update-grub is an Ubuntu-ism, all it does it run
| Code: | | grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg |
If you never run this, you can edit grub.cfg manually, but it will probably be run for you when you update your kernel, wiping out your settings. Change the default option, and the timeout if you want, in /etc/default/grub, then run grub2-mkconfig to update grub.cfg. |
Thanks, nelz.
I'll give it a try and post any results. |
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GregS
Joined: Thu Aug 03, 2006 4:54 am
Posts: 89
Location: Oz
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| Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2012 9:58 am Post subject: |
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| nelz wrote: | If you don't put / on a logical volume, you don't need a separate /boot.
update-grub is an Ubuntu-ism, all it does it run
| Code: | | grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg |
If you never run this, you can edit grub.cfg manually, but it will probably be run for you when you update your kernel, wiping out your settings. Change the default option, and the timeout if you want, in /etc/default/grub, then run grub2-mkconfig to update grub.cfg. |
Thanks nelz
It didn't quite work quite the way I expected, but nonetheless it now does what I wanted it to originally.  |
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