2009/12/28 Michael Evans <[email protected]>: > On Sat, Dec 26, 2009 at 1:40 PM, Leslie Rhorer <[email protected]> wrote: >>> The issue I'm still having, and still had when the suggested changes >>> were made, is that grub says there is no such disk; I'm then presented >>> with the grub rescue prompt and I'm unable to ls any of hard drives. I >>> can, however, do an ls and see all the hard drives themselves, I just >>> can't ls their contents. When I do an ls of any of the partitions I >>> get an unknown file system error. >>> >>> Could the insmod ext2 line be the cause? (hd1,4) is an ext4 partition, >>> but the ext2 module is being loaded. I checked to see if I have an >>> ext4 module: I don't. But this shouldn't matter because ext4 is >>> backwards compatible with ext2. >> >> Well, there's "backwards-compatible", and there's "backwards >> compatible". I am not familiar with ext4, but it is entirely possible the >> ext4 module can read ext2 partitions, but an ext2 module cannot read ext4 >> file systems. If the failure you are getting happens after the Linux kernel >> and initrd are loaded, then this sounds like an issue in the initrd image. >> If this is the case, you might try updating the initrd image via whatever >> method your distro employs. If the failure is happening in the grub loader >> before the Linux kernel is loaded, then it is an issue with grub. >> >>> The issue I'm still having, and still had when the suggested changes >>> were made, is that grub says there is no such disk; I'm then presented >>> with the grub rescue prompt and I'm unable to ls any of hard drives. I >>> can, however, do an ls and see all the hard drives themselves, I just >>> can't ls their contents. When I do an ls of any of the partitions I >>> get an unknown file system error. >> >> Um, OK. That's a little convoluted, but I think I see what you are >> saying. If grub cannot read the file systems (ext4 or whatever), then it >> can never see the structures allowing it to find the stage 1 loaders or the >> Linux kernel, which may reside in /boot/grub, /grub, /boot, /, or whatever. >> In my particular case, I have tiny ext2 partitions containing only the Linux >> kernel and initrd files in / and the grub files in /grub. Grub sees these >> as simply / and /grub on /dev/md1 ( hd0,0 or hd1,0, as the case may be ). >> Once the kernel is loaded and the md module is active, /dev/md2 (consisting >> of hd0,1 and hd1,1) is mounted on / and then /dev/md1 is loaded on /boot. >> The point is, grub must be able to recognize the file system where the >> kernel and the grub files are found. If the grub menu (menu.lst) comes us, >> then grub is finding menu.lst, and it recognizes the boot partition at least >> well enough to try to pass over control to the kernel. If not, then in >> order to fix the problem, you are going to have to provide grub with a file >> system it does recognize. Whether that file system can be ext4 or not, I >> don't know. That's one reason why I have a separate boot partition. It >> allows the boot file system to be as rudimentary and / or widely supported >> as possible, while allowing the other file systems to be as new or have as >> many bells and whistles as I want. >> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Help-grub mailing list >> [email protected] >> http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-grub >> > > I agree, ext4 is backward compatible to a point. There are features > which are important to ext4 performance and benefits which break the > backward compatibility. Ideally you use ext2 or at best ext3 for your > boot file-system (the difference being only the journal), and have all > the files you want to load on it. I am not familiar with grub2's > development, and don't know anything about filesystem support > currently in planning or development; you should look at the wiki > and/or website for documentation; though I would take the path of > least resistance and follow the currently working feature-sets. >
I did decide to take the path of least resistance. My /boot partition was ext2; I feel it should have worked, but I didn't want to spend forever figuring out what was wrong, so I just let the Ubuntu install use the whole of my /dev/sdb disk, deleting the large ntfs partition. Everything works now and I still don't know what was wrong before. Thanks for your help guys. _______________________________________________ Help-grub mailing list [email protected] http://lists.gnu.org/mailman/listinfo/help-grub
