[SOLVED] Booting problem

[isadora]

When I try to boot Mageia3-64 I am presented with a black screen with the following message -
dracut warning: /support has no proper rootfs layout, ignoring and removing offending mount hook

The Mageia entry in menu.lst is -
title linux
kernel (hd0,0)/boot/vmlinuz BOOT_IMAGE=linux root=LABEL=Mageia 3-64 nokmsboot splash quiet resume=UUID=425270d4-fb4f-4f20-ac39-4506ee2de37c vga=788
root (hd0,0)
initrd /boot/initrd.img

I know little about grub - can someone tell me where the above is faulty?

Many thanks for any help.

[wintpe]

how did you get to the point you are now at

was this a fully working system, or is this just after an install?

some context to this situation would be helpful.

regards peter

[mihi]

Thanks for your reply Peter.

It happened on the very first boot after an install of Mageia 64.

I have been using PcLinux for some years and recently installed Mageia. My boot screen has entries for both Mageia and PcLinux but if I select Mageia I get the black screen with the message shown in my previous post. If, however, I select PcLinux, another screen shows up with an entry for PcLinux. I press this and Mageia boots successfully.

It sounds complex and a bit weird. Hope I have made it clear.....

I chowned the menu.lst to edit it but, for some reason it refued to allow me to save it.

Whatever I select I have been unable to boot into PcLinux since installing Mageia. This is of no great concern as Mageia seems to have a slight edge over PcLinux, except - no xscreensaver and no 'kdesu' in the terminal (which is so useful and available in most distros). However I would like to have the two as they both derive from Mandriva which was my very first intro to Linux.

[ghmitch]

This certainly appears to be a grub issue to me. Before you do anything else, also make sure the install DVD is not in the drive. When you installed Mageia, did you have it install the bootloader? I would guess that you probably did. Which means either you overwrote the PCLinux bootloader, or, you now have two bootloaders installed on different hard drives (or perhaps on partitions if you did it that way). Whenever I add an addtional OS, I NEVER install a new boot loader unless I can't avoid it. That way I know my boot after the install will take me directly into my old OS and from there I can detect my new OS with grub and everything just works. In any case, you now have two config files, one on the new Mageia system and one on the old PCLinux system. But the first step is probably to sort out the bootloader issue. If you have two hard drives on your system, it sometimes helps to try booting from the other hard drive (in other words to try modifying the boot order), but you need to probably take notes along the way so you know what you are doing now and how you will change that SO THAT you can go back to the previous configuration if things don't work out after the change. The problem most often encountered with the menu.lst configurations is the "hdX,Y" designations. Since they are dependent on how the motherboard reads the drives, they are not always obvious. A change in boot order will likely change those designations on the bios side and that will need to be fixed in the menu.lst files as well. Grub actually has a handy grub shell that you can use at the grub screen to see what "hdX,Y" devices are available to the menu.lst script. That also is at times helpful in sorting things out, but probably it would be best to wait for Peter to come back with a reply since he may likely see something here that I am not seeing. - George

[gohlip]

You did not mention how many drives, usb you have but...can you boot up mageia without any usb drives attached following your method,,,,,

I have been using PcLinux for some years and recently installed Mageia. My boot screen has entries for both Mageia and PcLinux but if I select Mageia I get the black screen with the message shown in my previous post. If, however, I select PcLinux, another screen shows up with an entry for PcLinux. I press this and Mageia boots successfully.

Then when Mageia is booted at root terminal "su -"

Code: Select all

# grub-install /dev/sda
# update-grub

if "update-grub' don't work, [note: I really don't know Mageia's grub-legacy will work with "update-grub", haven't used...] then use this instead

Code: Select all

# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/menu.lst

[edit] - then check that kernel line includes 'nokmsboot' and vga=788 (sorry, forgot about this Mageia's 'peculiarity')
if not there, manually add these and save file.

I chowned the menu.lst to edit it but, for some reason it refued to allow me to save it.

To do this at root terminal, (su -) "# dolphin" or "# nautilus" and go to file, edit, save.

And if all above doesn't boot, connect back all the usb/drives as before and boot to Mageia as above and let us know output of
# fdisk -l
and print out /boot/grub/menu.lst (of Mageia)
and /boot/grub/menu.lst of PCLinux partition
and any other distro's menu.lst or grub.cfg
You can also let us know what you "think" (without referring to the printout of fdisk above) partitions are for Mageia, PCLinux, windows etc...

[mihi]

I tried a few of the suggestions but the problem was beyond my limited abilities so I took the easy way out and reinstalled. I haven't reinatslled PcLinux again as I'm a bit wary of getting the same problem again.

Many thanks for all your help - I'll no doubt be needing it again sometime.

[doktor5000]

Please mark the thread accordingly by editing the topic of the first post and prefix it by [SOLVED], thanks

[mihi]

Duh - forgot......