suse 10.2 grub

tobyreynolds · Beginner Joined: May 28, 2006 Posts: 35

hi

i have multiple operating systems on my linux box, i had to do a reinstall of windows server and now the grub has gone. is there anyway of getting it back with reinstalling linux?

thanx
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ffreeloader · Master Joined: Aug 10, 2005 Posts: 561

I'm not positive, but I think there is a repair function in the SuSe installer. I just did a SuSe install this last week and I believe I saw one. I know there is in the Debian Etch installer but I do not believe it will work for a SuSe install.

Also, it's possible to repair/reinstall grub from a Knoppix live cd. I cannot remember the exact details but the step-by-step instructions are in the book Knoppix Hacks. Wish I could remember them but it's been more than a year since I last had need to recover/replace an over-written grub file.

The book is worth investing in as it has some very good tips and tricks in it. I used to have access to it through my Informit Safari account but I let the subscription lapse.

tripwire45 · Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 3:38 pm Post subject:

When you reinstalled Windows it overwrote the boot sector so your grub info is gone. The Windows boot loader likes to be large and in charge.

Probably the most straight forward way to deal with this is to just reinstall Linux. Other than that, you'll need to read the man page for grub and use that information to use grub setup command and rewrite the book sector manually. Here's some info I found at this list:

tobyreynolds · Beginner Joined: May 28, 2006 Posts: 35

its all working again Very Happy

i did a reinstall so i have to use ndiswrapper again Smile

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tripwire45 · Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 7:16 pm Post subject:

Great, Toby. Glad to hear it. Very Happy

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ffreeloader · Master Joined: Aug 10, 2005 Posts: 561

Well, I've been doing SuSe installs for the last few days and my memory was proven to be correct. What you do is boot into the installation cd and work your way through the install until you come to the page that gives you the options, "install" and "other". Choose the "other" option and you are given two more options, one of which is repair. From there you can fix grub.

The second way to do this is to boot to the installation cd and choose to start the hard drive installation. Once booted into it you use Yast to repair the grub install by choosing Software -> Grub location. However, the choices available once you are inside the Grub repair tool are not very intuitive, and if you make the wrong one you will not be able to boot into your hard drive install from the installer anymore either.

That being said after two days of doing SuSe installs, 10.1 and 10.2, I've experienced once again why I like Debian so much. Both versions were very difficult installs. 10.1 because once the system was installed it took me a long time to work around a bug that wouldn't let me update packages due to dependency problems. 10.2 was bad because the network installer would not let me mark any partition as active. It greyed out those options when partitioning the hard drives. The result is once you've spent an hour or so doing the install you have an unbootable system. Then you have to download the 70 mB installer again after manually entering the server IP address and path to the installer. Debian's network install includes the kernel and enough of a system install that you have a bootable machine just from what's on the network install cd.

Oh, the third thing I found about SuSe's installer that I didn't like is its network install. Wow, what a clunky piece of software. I mean it requires you to enter the server IP address from which you will be installing. To this I say, Huh? Debian's network install gives you a choice of several of the the main Debian repositories by domain name. It's point and click, not search for IP addresses of servers and then add the path to the installer manually once you have entered an IP address. And. what's even worse is not all SuSe repositories include the network installer so unless you have previous knowledge that a site such as mirrors.kernel.org has the network installer you can try one repository after another and all the attempts will fail. I mean, even download.opensuse.org didn't have the network installer available. What's up with that?

Last of all the business owner ordered the 10.2 version from Novell and had it shipped by overnight mail. When it didn't show up he called Novell to find out why and it took them a while to figure out that they are out of boxed sets of 10.2, and that the boxed sets are on backorder. They didn't even bother to notify him when the order was placed on backorder. Too bad they can't tell people up front that what they need isn't currently available or send you an email. It's no wonder Novell is having problems showing a profit when they can't even keep track of the inventory of their own product.

Anyway, I'll be going back and putting Debian on those machines today. I just had to rant a little after two days of doing installs that literally took me most of a day each because of things that to me look like they shouldn't even exist in a top line distro that is said to be very user friendly. It may be user friendly, but it surely isn't admin friendly during installation.