On Thursday 28 October 2010 09:34:46 Felix Miata wrote:
On 2010/10/28 06:31 (GMT+0200) Stan Goodman composed:
Felix Miata wrote:
I might pull the battery and let the machine sit overnight.
I have done that, and gone through the BIOS settup. The result is that I don't get to the GRUB prompt anymore, because the screen goes black after the POST routine. There is no difference when the boot order is set for either HD. Previously, this happened only with one of the HDs.
It's quite common for that result from (first) BIOS disk (0) to be incorrectly configured to boot. The BIOS has transferred control to a (first) BIOS disk (0) that has either no boot code, or invalid boot code, or has standard MBR code but no boot flag set on any primary partition on that same HD.
What probably happened, and I expected as much based upon your experience, is that the BIOS reset values and the BIOS settings prior to clearing had the Seagate and Hitachi reversed, which is the root of your trouble. Apparently now you have inappropriately configured Grub on MBR of (first) BIOS HD (0), unless you're only getting the black screen after selecting something from the BM menu. I'm assuming, since the thread is a mile long and I can't remember the whole history, that BM isn't working currently.
<aside> I had Bob S's 2 PATA/1 SATA system here for several days until this AM. The disagreement among the BIOS, Grub, and the disk drivers for Knoppix, 10.2, 11.0, 11.2, 11.3 & 11.4 were unbelievable. It's no wonder people's systems won't boot after installation to a multi-HD system, particularly when PATA & SATA are both present. http://fm.no-ip.com/Tmp/Linux/Bobs/ contains the partitioning information for 10.2, 11.0, 11.2, 11.3 & 11.4 respectively.
He had a perfectly working 11.0 on hdb, with hda set as the first BIOS HD, and the SATA as the #3 BIOS HD. He tried to install 11.0 to the SATA, but the installer put sufficient portions of 11.3 on 11.0's / to irreparably corrupt it. I wound up doing fresh installs of 11.0, 11.2, 11.3 & 11.4M2, preserving intact only 10.2 </aside>
I suggest, if the facts above match my memory and both BM is not functional and it is not 11.3's grub prompt you were able to boot from manually in recent week(s), to leave the Hitachi unconnected, ensure the Seagate is connected to the first SATA port, and do a Grub repair, followed by MBR restoration:
Seagate is hd0/sda/v11.3; Hitachi is hd1. I have been booting through GRUB on hd1. When the machine is turned on, BM does come up, and I can select either OS, and the corresponding herald screen comes up, followed by a complaint of Error 15 (I think, just from memory), with the added note that a file (unnamed) has not been found. Then I can get to either GRUB, the one on hd1 can boot, that on hd0 makes a black screen.
1-boot the 11.3 DVD to repair shell prompt 2-grub
find /boot/grub/stage1 # should indicate (hd0,5) root (hd0,5) setup (hd0,5) quit
3-reboot to something that can run DFSee, and start it 4-newmbr 1 5-reboot to Seagate
I assume that #1 begins with selecting Rescue System. What then?
At this point the BM menu should come up, and you should be able to select sda6/11.3 to boot from, whereupon 11.3's grub menu should come up, from which you should be able to get 11.3 booted. If my memory is wrong, please refresh it. I can't tell from ftp://hashkedim.com/pub/DFSWORK.LOG which is Hitachi and which is Seagate. I don't remember if we ever decided which Grub you were successfully using before the BIOS reset.
See above. -- Stan Goodman Qiryat Tiv'on Israel -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org