Problem installing GRUB2 on a 2.1TB system

[Poe Chen]

I'm the same guy who has successfully floppy boot GRUB2 on a 2.1TB system.  =)

Here are the problems that I've encountered to get GRUB2 installed onto my system running CentOS 4.2 with latest updates.

-grub-probefs can't detect the file system on my server.

Here are the system info:

address@hidden ~]# df -k
Filesystem           1K-blocks      Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda2              4032124   2810480   1016816  74% /
/dev/sda1               101086     11576     84291  13% /boot
none                    516768         0    516768   0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda4            2300710112   1547872 2182292912   1% /home

And here is the result:

address@hidden ~]# grub-probefs -v /dev/sda
grub-probefs: info: changing current directory to /dev
grub-probefs: info: changing current directory to cpu
grub-probefs: info: changing current directory to mapper
grub-probefs: info: changing current directory to input
grub-probefs: info: changing current directory to net
grub-probefs: info: changing current directory to shm
grub-probefs: info: changing current directory to pts
cannot find a GRUB device for /dev/sda.

But grub-mkdevicemap can get correct device map:

address@hidden ~]# grub-mkdevicemap -m /boot/grub/device.map -v
address@hidden ~]# cat /boot/grub/device.map
(fd0)   /dev/fd0
(hd0)   /dev/sda

-grub-install will fail since it can't find GRUB device for /dev/sda...so the next thing I've tried is to run grub-setup directly

-run the following command to install GRUB2 onto the system:

grub-setup -d /boot/grub -v -r '(hd0)' -m /boot/grub/device.map '(hd0)'

and it fails:

grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/kernel.img
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/normal.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/ls.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/fshelp.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/ext2.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/gpt.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/pc.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/_linux.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/linux.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/boot.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/_chain.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/chain.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/configfile.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/default.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/help.mod
grub-mkimage: info: the total module size is 0x10c6c
grub-mkimage: info: reading /boot/grub/kernel.img
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/kernel.img
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/normal.mod
grub-mkimage: info: reading /boot/grub/normal.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/normal.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/ls.mod
grub-mkimage: info: reading /boot/grub/ls.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/ls.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/fshelp.mod
grub-mkimage: info: reading /boot/grub/fshelp.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/fshelp.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/ext2.mod
grub-mkimage: info: reading /boot/grub/ext2.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/ext2.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/gpt.mod
grub-mkimage: info: reading /boot/grub/gpt.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/gpt.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/pc.mod
grub-mkimage: info: reading /boot/grub/pc.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/pc.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/_linux.mod
grub-mkimage: info: reading /boot/grub/_linux.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/_linux.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/linux.mod
grub-mkimage: info: reading /boot/grub/linux.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/linux.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/boot.mod
grub-mkimage: info: reading /boot/grub/boot.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/boot.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/_chain.mod
grub-mkimage: info: reading /boot/grub/_chain.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/_chain.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/chain.mod
grub-mkimage: info: reading /boot/grub/chain.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/chain.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/configfile.mod
grub-mkimage: info: reading /boot/grub/configfile.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/configfile.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/default.mod
grub-mkimage: info: reading /boot/grub/default.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/default.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/help.mod
grub-mkimage: info: reading /boot/grub/help.mod
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/help.mod
grub-mkimage: info: kernel_img=0x8c86118, kernel_size=0x177b4
grub-mkimage: info: compressing the core image
grub-mkimage: info: the core size is 0xbead
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/diskboot.img
grub-mkimage: info: reading /boot/grub/diskboot.img
grub-mkimage: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/diskboot.img
grub-mkimage: info: writing 0x200 bytes
grub-mkimage: info: the first module address is 0xed48
grub-mkimage: info: writing 0xbead bytes
grub-setup: info: prefix = /grub
grub-setup: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/boot.img
grub-setup: info: reading /boot/grub/boot.img
grub-setup: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/boot.img
grub-setup: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/core.img
grub-setup: info: reading /boot/grub/core.img
grub-setup: info: getting the size of /boot/grub/core.img
grub-setup: info: the size of hd0 is 0
grub-setup: info: the size of hd0 is 0
grub-setup: info: setting the root device to `hd0'
grub-setup: error: out of disk

So it complains that it's "out of disk"...since the size of hd0 is zero.

Then I tried to install onto (hd0,1) or specify root device to be (hd0,1), it gives a different error:

grub-setup: info: the size of hd0 is 0
grub-setup: info: the size of hd0 is 0
grub-setup: error: unknown device

It looks like that GRUB2 can't correctly detect the size of (hd0).  Is it kernel related?  Because I've found out that if I'm using Ubuntu, it's even worse because I can't even mount the file system that is partitioned with GPT (meaning that I can't even floppy boot the system).  But it's a very old system...so I don't know what might be the problem.

Should I try to use the CVS version?  Anything I can try to get it working?  For the time being, booting from floppy is ok.

Thanks a lot for the helps...  =)


Poe