Grub loading read error linux

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#1 2004-02-25 04:14:25

Grub Read Error

I’m playing with arch linux on a spare box until I learn what I’m doing. I’ve done a base install with a grub bootloader, but when I reboot I get the error
GRUB READ ERROR

I installed with lilo and it came up fine, so I tried again with grub with no success. I’ve gone over my configuration files and am pretty sure they’re right — one install I used the auto setup and left everything alone and got the same error.

I read somewhere that this can be caused by some problem left over from Windows if it was previously installed on the drive (it was) but can’t seem to find that info again.

Using the .5 distro, installing from CD

#2 2004-02-26 03:58:24

Re: Grub Read Error

What strikes me right off the bat is whether or not you’ve identified your partitions, particularly your root partition correctly in grub. If you have, you have and we still have a problem, don’t we.

That notwithstanding, if you’ve gotten lilo to work, I’d have to ask next why it might be that you’d not want to leave things at that. But then, again, having perhaps a purely utilitarian solution won’t sate your intellectual curiosity, eh?

This site may be helpful to you in taking things with grub a bit further:

#3 2004-02-26 19:20:11

Re: Grub Read Error

I’m stumped, so I’ll give you my details and someone can point out my error.

There is 1 hard drive on the system, an old 8G western digital.

doing an Autoprepare gives me

disc1 Boot, NC Primary Linux ext2 41.13
disc2 Primary Linux swap 271.44
disc3 Primary Linux ext3 8134.81

menu.lst is the following (skipping the beginning)

title Arch Linux [/boot/vmlinuz]
root (hd0,2)
kernel (hd0,0) /vmlinuz root=/dev/discs/disc0/part3 ro

installed the bootloader to /dev/discs/disc0/disc
(sometimes my floppy drive light flashes when it installs grub, but it always says it is successful — even if there is no floppy in the drive — so I don’t know what that is about)

I reboot — today I get GRUB geom error (I’ve been trying lots of things here, and I’ve seen this a couple of times over the course of the last couple of days — I’d reinstall and try again but I have to run)

Thanks to anyone who can guide me through this — even if it means pointing out glaring newbie errors.

#4 2004-02-26 20:20:27

Re: Grub Read Error

afaik, root entry means root of kernel image file. You may try root=(hd0,0). But I may be wrong, I have actually no grubbed pc around .
Try it with selecting the grub menu entry while booting, and then enter en ‘e» for edit. Inside the new menu, you can edit each menu line, again using the ‘e’. The rest of your config looks well.

Are you sure you find teh stages files in /boot/grub? Do you use an arch common kernel file or an selfmade one?

Frumpus ♥ addict
[mu’.krum.pus], [frum.pus]

#5 2004-02-26 20:30:25

Re: Grub Read Error

root in grub is not your root partition but root for grub

#6 2004-02-26 22:04:03

Re: Grub Read Error

Just as I suspected, grub’s looking for your /boot in the wrong place. That’s a common mistake. Pink Chick and bobonov are right on target: root (0,0).

#7 2004-02-28 01:49:57

Re: Grub Read Error

I changed the root line to
root (0,0)
Still get read error

I redid an Autosetup to make sure nothing «old» was out there messing things up — no change.

#8 2004-02-28 02:12:18

Re: Grub Read Error

That certainly is enough to give one pause. You’d mentioned earlier about a geometry error. We may need to take that somewhat more seriously at this juncture. You know, knowing about the geometry error, if it were mine, I’d zero out your drive and start over, forgetting about the Autoprepare. As it may not be clear to you what I mean when I say «zero out», there are DOS programs that come on floppy disks made by the principal drive manufacturers, one of these is Disk Manager. With them you can overwrite your drive from A-Z with zeros, essentially cleaning off all data in its entirety. You’re essentially starting from scratch that way. Take a look at your drive manufacturer’s site for a download with these capabilities.

When you go to partition this time, however, I’d create the partitions myself, not rely upon Autoprepare, and create two rather than three partitions, one swap, another /, and install grub into the MBR. Now all of this accepts what seems to be your relectance to use lilo which worked for you if I recall. If it must be grub, the preceeding is what I’d do though. You’ll not likely get a geometry error that way.

#9 2004-02-28 02:26:57

Re: Grub Read Error

I’ll give that a shot. It’s not exactly «reluctance» to use lilo, but I’m trying to understand linux on a more fundamental level and I figure if I can’t even get it to boot with a common bootloader, I’ve probably got to figure that out first.

There are also people who consider me compulsive, but that can’t be it.

#10 2004-02-28 03:02:34

Re: Grub Read Error

Yes, all of the major drive manufacturers have these disk programs and you should be able to download one for free. Seagate’s is called Disk Wizard Starter Edition. After the zero fill, you may — and I say may — need to single partition and FAT32 format the drive first using the same disk utility so that it can be recognized later by the Arch installation CD. If that happens, not to worry, just do the FAT32 partition and format and manually create your linux partitions right over it when you install. I’m just trying to think ahead a little bit for you and none of this FAT32 formating may be required in the end but we’ll have to see. But we should be clear of any geometry problems by that time.

We’ll take you here obsessions and all, guy.

#11 2004-02-28 07:57:56

Re: Grub Read Error

AFAIK root (0,0) is not valid syntax for GRUB. root (hd0,0) is.

AFAIK one doesn’t use both root ( ) and kernel ( )/

For example, the folllowing two GRUB stanzas are equivalent:

title Linux
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda3

title Linux
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda3

The syntax in the following stanza is perhaps OK but has redundent information:

title Linux
root (hd0,0)
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda3

The following stanza contains contradictory information as well as perhaps incorrect syntax:

title Linux
root (hd0,2)
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/hda3

«Es gibt nichts mehr praktish als theorie» L. Boltzmann

#12 2004-02-29 05:48:58

Re: Grub Read Error

Ok, I think this must have something to do with flakey hardware. I’ve tried every permutation of what has been suggested, without success. I kept noticing that the access light of the floppy drive flashed when grub was supposed to be installing. So I zeroed out the MBR, unhooked the floppy so it couldn’t be accessed, and reinstalled. Now I get the word GRUB and a space and the cursor flashing, flashing, flashing, . no boot, but no error message, either. There’s no reference to the floppy in menu.lst, so I’m not sure where the system is getting the idea that it should install grub to the floppy, if that’s what’s going on; but with the floppy disconnected (and disabled in the BIOS), .

I’ll try to find a floppy that works tomorrow and try to install grub to the floppy to see what that does.

BTW, the disk maintenance program says the hard drive is fine.

#13 2004-02-29 06:11:29

Re: Grub Read Error

Not sure I’m following you here, timm. Am I right to assume that you’ve downloaded or otherwise gotten hold of the manufacturer’s disk utility for your hard drive? When you say you’ve «zeroed out the MBR» do you mean that you zero filled your drive? Relate what you’ve done to the steps we discussed in my last post if you’d be so kind. That way I can keep up with what’s happening at your end. The floppy business may or may not have importance.

#14 2004-02-29 22:29:05

Re: Grub Read Error

Here’s what I did.

1. Pulled the drive, and it is an IBM, not a WD.
2. Got the DFT program from IBM and ran it to confirm the drive was good (it was) and to zero fill the entire drive.
3. Re-installed arch, creating 2 partitions
128M swap partition
500M root partition

4. Loaded just the base packages & the kernel
5. Checked the menu.lst file, which already had in it
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz root=/dev/discs/disc0/part2 ro

6. Installed grub onto /dev/discs/disc0/disc — reports success (but see below).

7. Rebooted — GRUB read error

Two things I don’t understand — the floppy drive is definitely being accessed when GRUB tries to load on reboot, and when I installed grub, a message flashed at the bottom of the screen. It was too fast to read, so I pulled out the video camera and filmed it the next time. It says:
Probing devices to guess BIOS drives. This may take a long time.
end_request: I/O error, dev 02:00 (floppy), sector 0

I’ve tried installing from the grub shell, and have seen the probing message, but not the problem with the floppy (which didn’t have a floppy in it at the time)

I also re-ran the procedure trying different partitioning setups, with the floppy disconnected, & others, essentially experimenting & seeing if I could track this down. No success.

Hope I’ve taken the necessary steps here — if I’ve skipped over anything let me know.

#15 2004-02-29 23:38:13

Re: Grub Read Error

Well, this one is truly bizarre. To insure that your drive is rendered pristine and that it is error free, to install and create two partitions, one swap, one / , and to install grub to the MBR with the installation reported a success would seem to be all anyone could expect. You should boot without difficulty assuming the grub configuration is correct and it would certainly seem to be.

The floppy I/O error you’re getting is from the BIOS, of course. This is an aging machine so I would guess that hardware is the likely cause. You can try zero filling the drive a second time, booting with nothing on the hard drive and with boot order (1) floppy, (2) cdrom, (3) hard drive and a Windows 98SE boot disk and see if you get the floppy I/O error then. If you do, replace the floppy and/or cable. More speculatively, you can (1) update your BIOS if an update is available; (2) replace the CMOS battery, (3) replace floppy drive and/or cable. You may have all of $20 involved to make these improvements.

Within the last couple of months I had a floppy drive go bad on me but the symptoms showed themselves initially as a keyboard error! There were enough signs for me to suspect the floppy earlier on but when the problem presented itself as full-blown it showed as a BIOS keyboard error and a dysfunctional mouse, of all things. You just never know.

Keep us posted, timm.

#16 2004-03-01 00:21:46

Re: Grub Read Error

Thanks for all the work you’re putting into this.

Cue the outer limits music.

I was cleaning up my area and found my old RedHat 7.2 CDs, and I thought, what the heck, I’ll see if RedHat’s install can get this to go, so I ran the install and. it boots flawlessly.

So I reload arch, leave the partition table the way Redhat made it, fixed my grub to use the parameters RedHat used (except with vmlinuz with a different name, of course, they don’t use DevFS, and I don’t have an initrd entry), and . GRUB read error.

So that means to me that I’m going to be writing a message with a bunch of 😳 in it pretty soon, when whatever I’m missing here comes around and hits me on the head.

I’m going to set it aside for a couple of days and see if my brain comes up with something.

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Thread: Loading Operating System . Read Error

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Loading Operating System . Read Error

I have a computer with the following disks:

/dev/sda: SSD disk where I want to install Ubuntu 12.10
/dev/sdb: SSD disk with Windows 7
/dev/sdc: «normal» disk with data

I created a usb boot disk with the ubuntu iso, and installed ubuntu to /dev/sda. Grub was also installed to /dev/sda. Now when I reboot after the installation, I only get the message «Loading Operating System . Read Error», white letters on black background, right after the bios info. No sign of grub. I guess it’s a bios error. With the help of the dutch Ubuntu forums, I tried several things yet:

— when I leave the usb stick inserted while booting from harddisk, it works.
— that brought me to this topic: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1903015. The solution there was to upgrade the bios, so I tried that, but it didn’t help
— I recreated the installation stick in different ways (different tools, from within windows or ubuntu): no succes
— I tried to re-install grub with rescatux or from within ubuntu: no luck
— In the bios I changed from AHCI to IDE mode: grub works now, but I can’t boot windows anymore because that was installed in ahci mode
— I tried boot-repair (http://paste.ubuntu.com/5601888/) which gave me a slightly different error: «error: no such device: 71eeb5f0-bcc6-49a8-b9a4-1fee266b58ec» followed by a «grub rescue» prompt
— boot-repair says » The boot files of [ The OS now in use — Ubuntu 12.10 ] are far from the start of the disk». So I tried reinstalling ubuntu: first a /boot partition and then a root and swap partition. That gave me the original error again.

I’m running out of ideas now An option would be to leave the stick inserted at all times, but I would prefer a «real» solution. Any help is greatly appreciated!!

PS: If I forgot any important details, just let me know.. I’ve been messing around with this for a week now, so I could have forgotten something
PPS: I’m’ not using a UEFI bios. This is the url for my motherboard drivers: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/pro. pid=4015#bios. I’m using bios version «FD».

Last edited by bmaster001; March 11th, 2013 at 10:31 AM .

Re: Loading Operating System . Read Error

I know it’s not polite to bump your own thread, but I see lots of replies from very smart people in other topics. Is my problem so exotic or difficult that nobody has any ideas?

Re: Loading Operating System . Read Error

Come on guys, someone? please? I really want to start using linux again, but this problem drives me crazy

Re: Loading Operating System . Read Error

Normally Boot-Repair just works. And Ubuntu works with AHCI on.
The issues with large drives has been where the boot files are beyond 100GB on drive. Your 120GB SSD with swap is not all that large.
I do have this in my notes and see that Boot-Repair added the ata boot parameter.
Out of disk error add to grub install disk-module=ata or use Boot-Repair ATA Disk support

But it looks like grub installed in an embedded mode. i just do not know if with the ATA setting if that is how it installs. But I would not think you need that.

Both your flash drive which says gpt in one place and errors in another and your sdc1 seems to have mounting issues. I might run chkdsk from Windows on sdc1. Grub has to search system even though it knows where it is booting from, so perhaps not being able to search sdc1 is causing issues.

Re: Loading Operating System . Read Error

I ran chkdisk, but it didn’t find any problems on sdc1.
The boot-repair log I linked to, is from a couple of days ago, and since then I tried reinstalling ubuntu a few times. Maybe it’s more helpful if I try a fresh install again, and run boot-repair again? If so, I have some questions:

1) Do I really need the swap space? (I have 8 GB RAM)
2) Is it ok if I create one one big root-partition on the ssd disk? So no seperate /boot partition and things like that?
3) Can you tell me what options you would suggest in boot-repair?
4) what’s the best way to start boot-repair: I can boot to my ubuntu using the supergrub cd and run from there? Or is there a better way?
5) Would you suggest upgrading my bios to uefi?

There’s a lot of info in the links you post. but most info is for finetuning ubuntu/linux for use with ssd disks. I think I have to make it boot first , before I can start finetuning.

Re: Loading Operating System . Read Error

You many never use swap with 8GB of RAM, but I still suggest some. Maybe 2GB. Some have said system may boot flaster as it does not have to search for swap, timeout and then work. Also if you want to hibernate swap has to be the size of RAM in GiB or larger than 8GB by 10 or 20%.

Since SSD is only 120GB I would think it should work. My SSD is 60GB but I split it in two so I have two / (root) partitions for different installs. All my data is on rotating drives. And I have an operating system on every drive.

Changing to UEFI now is a huge complications. Windows only boots with UEFI from gpt partitioned drives, so you would have to totally erase & reformat drives. I use gpt for all my new Ubuntu drives, but only have BIOS and do not use them to Boot Windows. In fact my old XP will not even read gpt partitioned drives, so I had to stop using XP. It was more due to the SSD needed the AHCI setting in BIOS to support trim and my XP does not have AHCI drivers.

Are you able to boot with Supergrub? If so reinstall grub from inside your install.

#to get grub2 to remember where to reinstall on updates:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc
sudo dp#Enter thru first pages,spacebar to choose/unchoose drive, enter to accept, do not choose partitions

I only run Boot-Repair for BootInfo reports, so I am not sure what options your system may need.

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