Re: [Hampshire] Funny boot problem

On 12 Jan 2007, at 19:45, john lewis wrote:

>
> well it is funny peculiar for me. I recently installed debian etch on
> the PC I got this week, upgraded it to sid and all seemed fine
> until I needed to reboot this morning. Got message to say the drive
> wouldn't boot though It had done so a couple of time whilst
> installing and after.
>
> I re-installed in case the LVM partitioning I'd opted for originally
> was playing up. I used Kannotix to get at the home directory after
> much reading of LVM man pages and googling and managed to tar my
> home directory and scp it to another system from whence I recovered it
> after getting the this system up again.
>
> I then re-installed etch and upgraded it to sid as usual, this time
> with only /home on a separate partition and no LVM. But it still
> would not boot. I was able to get it to boot by using a ubuntu cd and
> using the 'boot from hard disk option'
>
> I then re-did 'install-grub /dev/hda' but this didn't make the drive
> bootable without having to resort to the use of the CD again.
>
> cfdisk shows that /dev/hda1/ has the bootable flag set. The hard
> drive had been performing satisfactorily with ubuntu before I
> acquired it and I haven't tweaked anything in the bios to upset
> things.
>
> Any clues as to what is going on would be welcome. I suspected a
> failing hard disk until I found it would boot OK with a little help.
>
> I don't think I will attempt to use LVM again, at least not on a
> system with only a single drive, it is too much effort to get at the
> lvm'd partitions if things go wrong.
>
> And I must sort out rsyncing /home to another system so as to have an
> up to date system available if things go wrong again. I am pretty
> sure I have lost some emails in the process of copying between
> boxen but may be able to get them off a third system I have.
>

John

Sorry to hear you're having problems with the PC. Funnily enough I
had similar problems installing SUSE 10.2 a few weeks ago on a SATA
drive in another PC. Unfortunately I can't remember whether grub-
install /dev/sda fixed it, or whether I had to manually run:

grub>
root (hd0,0)
setup (hd0)

If it turns out that the drive really is at fault, let me know
straight away and I'll reimburse you some money, or if you'd be
happier I'll refund you in full in exchange for the PC back. I'd hate
you to think I'd shifted faulty goods onto you, it all worked very
reliably here - honest!

Peter.