Hello: I'm trying to install Hurd, and I'm getting problems from GRUB when I try to boot for the first time. Perhaps someone can help me out.
Here's my scenario. I've got a PC with two IDE hard drives. The first is a 13 GB drive, from which I run both Windows 98 and Debian GNU/Linux, the 2.1 slink release. The second drive is a 1.6 GB drive, onto which I'm trying to install Hurd. Previously, I had one big DOS partition on the second drive, and it worked fine. I've partitioned the second drive from Linux using cfdisk, and created two partitions. The first partition is where I intend to put Hurd, it's 500 MB (as I understand there's problems with partitions bigger than this), is type 83 (Linux native), and is marked bootable. The second partition will be my swap partition, it's 200 MB, and is type 82 (Linux swap). The remainder of the disk remains unpartitioned. Details of the partitioning of my drives follows. This is the output of Linux's "fdisk -l" command. -- Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 1584 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hda1 * 1 256 2056288+ 6 DOS 16-bit >=32M /dev/hda2 257 1584 10667160 f Win95 Extended (LBA) /dev/hda5 257 1327 8602776 b Win95 FAT32 /dev/hda6 1328 1340 104391 b Win95 FAT32 /dev/hda7 1341 1559 1759086 83 Linux native /dev/hda8 1560 1584 200781 82 Linux swap Disk /dev/hdb: 64 heads, 63 sectors, 786 cylinders Units = cylinders of 4032 * 512 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hdb1 * 1 254 512032+ 83 Linux native /dev/hdb2 255 356 205632 82 Linux swap Disk /dev/hdc: 1 heads, 874324 sectors, 1 cylinders Units = cylinders of 874324 * 512 bytes Disk /dev/hdc doesn't contain a valid partition table -- After having partitioned my disk, I created a Hurd-owned ext2 filesystem on the first partition, using the command: mke2fs -o hurd /dev/hdb1 Then, I ran the famous "cross-install" script (from alpha.gnu.org/pub/gnu/hurd/contrib/marcus/cross-install, dated May 19, 1999) to install Hurd: mkdir /gnu mount /dev/hdb1 /gnu ./cross-install /gnu As I understand it, cross-install requires dpkg-hurd, which I obtained from the same location, and was dated May 4, 1999. Everything ran fine, and "ls" and "df" on the /gnu filesystem indicated that there were lots of files and directories on the drive. Then, I created a GRUB boot floppy. I obtained the image from ftp.gnu.org/pub/gnu/gnu-0.2/grub-boot.image, which is dated June 16, 1997, and wrote it to a floppy: dd if=grub-boot.image of=/dev/fd0 bs=512 OK, so now I was set. I rebooted with the GRUB floppy in the drive, and GRUB booted fine. I pressed "c" to get to the command prompt, and my troubles began. First, I tried the command root=(hd1,0) which should be the first partition on my second hard drive (Linux's /dev/hdb1). GRUB reported the error: Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x55 Doh! Suspecting I had misunderstood the GRUB partition-naming scheme, I tried the commands: root=(hd1,1) which gave me an error, which I now realize I didn't write down, but it was something about the disk not existing. root=(hd0,0) which should have specified my first drive's DOS partition, and it gave the same error as my original attempt: Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x55 root=(hd0,1) also reported: Filesystem type unknown, partition type 0x55 Anything else I tried gave the same error as the "root=(hd1,1)" attempt. Next, I tried obtaining a newer version of GRUB. From ftp.uruk.org/public/grub, I obtained grub-0.5.tar.gz, dated August 20, 1998. I created a GRUB boot floppy according to the instructions included with that archive: dd if=bin/stage1 of=/dev/fd0 bs=512 count=1 dd if=bin/stage2 of=/dev/fd0 bs=512 seek=1 Unfortunately, using this GRUB boot floppy gave me the same result. Can anyone point out the error of my ways? Thanks! Shane McDonald
