Antix-13 installation fails - grub install on root partition

comm.sanjay · posted: 2013-08-28 14:10

Hi, Thanks for Antix with extremely light and varied DEs.

While installing Antix-13 on My P4 computer with GAG as boot manager,
I installed grub on root partition as with other linuxes. Antix offered me correct root partition for grub install after declining grub to be installed on MBR. Thereafter it fails to boot as GAG finds no boot files.
I checked installed root partition from live Antix, i find no boot or grub folder leave alone menu.lst file on it.
When grub installed on MBR, it boots perfectly well. But i need it to be on root partition.
Can you give suggestion on how to do it? Thanks.

Sanjay

male · posted: 2013-08-28 18:24

Let the Grub antiX just gone. __{{emoticon}}__

purcaribe · posted: 2013-08-30 01:14

If you still with the issue maybe you can try 3 Grub repairs disk at
========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://www.supergrubdisk.org/"
linktext was:"http://www.supergrubdisk.org/"
====================================

comm.sanjay · posted: 2013-08-30 07:06

@purcaribe= tks for the suggestion.

So any body,
Is this Antix problem unique to me or is it a known bug?
Any solutions?

BitJam · posted: 2013-08-30 09:22

I'd imagine most people install Grub on the MBR so they don't run into this problem although it worked fine the last time I tried it.

Since you didn't give any specifics, I will assume you installed antiX-13.1-full on /dev/sda3. If I didn't guess right then you will have to modify the instructions below.

If you want to install Grub on /dev/sda3 then mount that partition at /media/sda3 and run:

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sudo grub-install --no-floppy --directory=/media/sda3 /dev/sda3

This should create a /boot/grub directory on that device and populate it with a bunch of files. Do an"ls /media/sda3/boot/grub" to be sure.

You will probably want to copy /boot/* from the LiveCD/USB to the new /boot directory. Assuming you've booted into the same antiX LiveCD/USB you installed from, run:

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sudo cp -a /boot/* /media/sda3/boot/

Then you just need to create/edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst file. Here is a template:

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timeout 10
color cyan/blue white/blue
foreground ffffff
background 0639a1
gfxmenu /boot/grub/message

title antiX Linux 13.1
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-3.7.10-antix.4-amd64-smp  root=/dev/sda3 quiet nouveau.modeset=0
initrd /boot/initrd.img-3.7.10-antix.4-amd64-smp

Of course the name of the kernel and the initrd should match what you copied over from the Live media. Also the root= parameter should be the partition where you installed antiX.

After the title line, you could optionally add:

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root (hd0,2)

although this is probably not needed since it should default to the partition grub is installed on. Normally the"hd" number corresponds to the device letter with a --> 0, b --> 1, and so on. The 2nd number specifies the partition with 1 --> 0, 2 --> 1, and so on. So sda3 goes to (hd0,2).

If you don't get a nice background image when you get to the antiX grub bootloader menu then you should copy /boot/grub/stage2 from the live media to the /boot/grub/ directory on your antiX root partition. If you've booted from a LiveCD/USB then the live media will be mounted at /live/boot-dev so you would copy from /live/boot-dev/boot/grub/stage2.

I'm sorry this feature in the installer didn't work as advertised and/or as expected. I used it in the graphical installer when I installed antiX-12 on my system a while back and it worked fine populating /boot and /boot/grub on my root partition and it also created the menu.lst file for me. I know the graphical installer had to be updated since then. Perhaps the update broke this feature.

comm.sanjay · posted: 2013-08-31 08:48

Thanks all for the feedback. especially BitJam The problem was solved by first Chrooting in the installation (link:
========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2/Installing"
linktext was:"https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2/Installing"
====================================
).
issued grub-install command- the grub folder and all files were created but no menu.lst, got error 22 (no such partition) at the end of grub-install command and still no booting, (error no boot sector.)
Then following advise in the link :
========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-892254-start-0.html"
linktext was:"http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-89 ... art-0.html"
====================================

chrooted, then dropping into grub prompt and issue setup command for my root partition (hd0,9), grub seemed to be installed without giving any error and after restarting i was at least dropped into grub prompt.
again chrooted and checked that still the menu.lst file was not created. it was created manually thanks to the excellent advice given by BitJam.
Thereafter restarting i was in the glorious antiX enviornment