[SOLVED] Stuck at GRUB prompt - text mode

[David_Batson]

I have a new X220 with Windows 7 on it. Yesterday I installed Fedora 15 Gnome, GRUB installed fine and was able to boot Fedora. Next I went to install Mageia from the DVD. Now at boot I am stuck in text mode where it says GRUB and "For the first word TAB lists possible command completions". Looking at the top it appears this is Fedora's GRUB. At this point I cannot boot any OS.

Not sure where to go from here. I guess I'll look over at the Fedora forums.

[David_Batson]

It looks to me like Mageia overwrote the Fedora installation. Not quite sure as it's hard to make heads or tails out of what's on the hard drive partitions. I decided to reinstall Fedora 15 from the DVD and see what I end up with.

[rc2011]

Do you have more then one Hard drive on your computer? You might have told grub to install to the wrong hard drive or you have the wrong hard drive (the one without grub) set up on your bios to boot first. It is also possible you have grub set up on the MBR of the first hard drive, but it is pointing to the wrong hard drive (the one without Mageia.) This is of course assuming you have more then one hard drive.

[David_Batson]

At this time I only have one hard drive in the computer. When I was installing Mageia I missed the part (if it is there) to choose the partition to install to.

I've reinstalled Fedora 15 and now can boot Fedora and Windows. Mageia is nowhere to be seen. I do have a 13 GB and a 35 GB unknown partitions. Originally I used Windows to shink the original volume and create (2) 50 GB partitions with the intention to install Fedora on one and Mageia on the other.

[David_Batson]

Ok, I'm going back to square one. I deleted all Linux partitions and restored the Windows 7 bootloader - removing GRUB. I created 50GB of free space using Windows 7 disk management. I am going to try to install Mageia and see what happens.

EDIT: Ok, Mageia installed fine without Fedora 15 present. Now I'll see if I can put Fedora on...

[David_Batson]

I've got it solved. I post what I did when I get more time.

[David_Batson]

After installing Mageia, I could not seem to install Fedora to the 50GB partition I set up. I kept getting an error of "not enough free space"!

I went back into Windows disk management and discovered my problem of "not enough free space". Too many primary partitions. I did not intend it that way. I removed Mageia again and create an extended partition. I couldn't to do that from disk management.

Found to do this in Windows 7 I had to run diskpart from a command prompt. Can't do it from the GUI.

Code: Select all

C:\~\diskpart

DISKPART> select disk 0

DISKPART> create partition extended

DISKPART> exit

C:\~\exit

I then went back into disk management and created 3 logical drives without assigning them a drive letter or formatting them.

Finally I went back to installing Mageia and Fedora. Using the custom disk partition option in both Mageia and Fedora I choose to install each to Free Space on one of the logical drives each with the mount point being /. When I installed Fedora for the GRUB location option I choose / of the Fedora partition instead of the default MBR.

After installing Mageia first, then Fedora, I added the following to menu.lst in Mageia.

Code: Select all

title Fedora 15
root (hd0,5)
configfile /boot/grub/grub.conf

Now when I get to Mageia's GRUB boot menu, Fedora 15 is there, and when I click on it, it boots Fedora fine. Of course I can boot Windows 7 and Mageia from there as well.

Thanks to the admin glennzo at Fedora Forums for helping me to reach the solution.

[sitor]

Hi David,

I'm planning to buy me an X220 tablet. How does Mageia work on an X220? Anything that requires special fixes of some kind?

KR,

Wim

[s106660]

About x220:
* You need tp_smapi otherwise laptop will burn and fan is still running all the time, with tp_smapi this is ok.
* Wireless has problems with 80211n networks (problem is with all Intel wireless cards)
* Check which WAN/3G chipset you have before buying. Qualcomm works fine, GPS requires tuning but not too difficult
* Intel graphics seems to be a bit unstable with Mageia1. Probably better with Cauldron since it has newer xserver, libdrm and mesa.
If you have some tolerance to above problems then I very much recommend x220. It is an outstanding laptop with over 10h (larger battery) battery life. Linux drivers are getting there, it just takes a while since it has new chipsets. The problems are more like annoyances not deal breakers.

[sitor]

Thanks, that is good info. Are you using the tablet version (with multitouch screen) or the normal laptop version?

[s106660]

Normal laptop version. No info on how the tablet works. If it is Wacom then probably ok but I'm not sure. I had X61 Tablet which worked fine after some button and event tuning.