[arch-releng] Grub and ext4, error 2

[Aaron Griffin]

On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 1:28 PM, Jordy van Wolferen <jordz at archlinux.us> wrote:
> On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 5:18 PM, Alexander De Sousa <aphanic at archlinux.us>
> wrote:
>>
>> Sorry for replying this late, but I couldn't access inet this morning.
>>
>> I've performed more fresh installs and all tests passed for an ext4 boot
>> partition. Everything seems to be ok.
>> On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 2:43 PM, Jordy van Wolferen <jordz at archlinux.us>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 1:28 PM, Gerhard Brauer <gerbra at archlinux.de>
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Am Tue, 27 Jan 2009 01:14:11 +0100
>>>> schrieb Jordy van Wolferen <jordz at archlinux.us>:
>>>>
>>>> > On Tue, Jan 27, 2009 at 12:16 AM, Aaron Griffin
>>>> > <aaronmgriffin at gmail.com>wrote:
>>>> >
>>>> > > On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 5:00 PM, Jordy van Wolferen
>>>> > > <jordz at archlinux.us> wrote:
>>>> > > > On Mon, 2009-01-26 at 16:51 -0600, Aaron Griffin wrote:
>>>> > > >> On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 4:43 PM, Jordy van Wolferen
>>>> > > >> <jordz at archlinux.us>
>>>> > > wrote:
>>>> > > >>
>>>> > > >> To be clear: this is not an error booting the ISO, but an error
>>>> > > >> booting the installed system?
>>>> > > >>
>>>> > > >> Grub error #2: http://www.uruk.org/orig-grub/errors.html#stage1_5
>>>> > > >> "The selected disk doesn't exist"
>>>> > > >>
>>>> > > >> I imagine this is ext4 related. You are using grub and not
>>>> > > >> grub-gfx, correct?
>>>> > > >>
>>>> > > >> Gerhard, any insight here? I, myself, haven't installed an ext4
>>>> > > >> system, so I am not sure about this.
>>>>
>>>> No, i have seen no problems on my test installations when using the
>>>> current versions (grub from core and grub-gfx from community). Both are
>>>> on the same patch-level (bigger inode size patch and ext4 support
>>>> patch).
>>>>
>>>> > I just tried doing the same ftp install with ext3 and I still got the
>>>> > same error. Also the same error with a ext4 core install. So it must
>>>> > be something from my side.
>>>>
>>>> Stage 1.5 (resp. Stage 2 error 2): Aaron posted a link on error codes
>>>> where this error code is "Selected disk doesn't exist", on gnu.org
>>>> grub site it says: "2 : Bad file or directory type".
>>>> Have you ever had installed Arch and Grub on this system? So that you
>>>> can say: this error is only on a new installation with the new isos?
>>>>
>>>> > I tried to change the root setting in grub and the kernel
>>>> > root=/dev/sda1 parameter, instead of the UUID, but I still got the
>>>> > same problem.
>>>>
>>>> Maybe you could show us your disk(s) layout (fdisk -l) and grub's
>>>> menu.lst (and the content of /boot/grub/device.map.
>>>>
>>>> Gerhard
>>>
>>> I installed Arch a couple of times on it before. I remember that I needed
>>> to change root (hd0,0) to (hd1,0) or the other way around. Or that it can't
>>> load the kernel, but than you can edit the grub entries or ofcourse remove
>>> the other harddisk. But now it doesn't work and I never have seen the grub
>>> error 2. Grub from Arch was running fine a few days ago.
>>>
>>> I tried disabling IDE in the bios after an installation, without success.
>>> I'm going to try to do that before the installation. It has something to do
>>> that I have both IDE and SATA .
>>>
>>> I found some info here:
>>> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/7137
>>> I'm going to try that. What just hit me, is that I flashed my bios about
>>> half a year ago, but after that it kept booting fine? Must be that now is
>>> the first time I tried installing grub with the new bios. I don't think
>>> there is something wrong with the new ISOs.
>>
>
> I noticed today that my MBR doesn't get a fresh new grub install. I did a
> "dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdb bs=512 count=1" and it stays empty, grub never
> kicks in. That maybe explain the grub 2 error. I also saw in the install cd
> that grub gave me an error message that it can't read the stage1 file. I
> tried installing grub manually but I got the same problem.


Weird. We used to use a different grub command in install the
bootloader, but we changed it due to issues with ext4. It is possible
that the original command was done in such a way because of failures
like this.

Here's the change:
http://projects.archlinux.org/?p=installer.git;a=commitdiff;h=4565577dbd2182dd49612f1e0b68288f5573bf7b

Could you check if the old way works for you?