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LINUX: GRUB Bash shell or Hard disk error

A

arnemarco

Member
I'll try again to get some help on this. One day my PC works perfect, having Win XP Pro and SuSE Linux 8.1 Personal on it, always getting the bootselection from GRUB. The next day, it don't want to boot, but gives the Bash shell or a Hard disk error.

Which commands should I use to get the system up running again??

For all tips and help, many thanks
 
The Error is "Hard Disk Error". That is the only think GRUB tells me.

If I boot the PC with Win XP CD in the drive, I get to the Bash shell of GRUB. So what do I do then?
 
I believe that the bash shell isn't realy a bash shell. Bash is a complicated and complex program.

I think you mean the grub command line.

The grub command line is used just like you would type out somehting in the grub config file.


One thing that is confusing is:
"root" may or may not be the real root partition of the OS. It refers to Grub's root partition. IF you have a seperate boot partition that would be grub's "root", but if it is the same as the normal "root" partition for the OS, then you don't have to worry about it.

A couple nice features of grub is the tab auto complete feature.

The lines of the configuration file corrispond lines you can type out manually, so if your hardware is still intact you aught to be able to manually select the kernel and boot into Linux.

One example

So basicly if I had Grub installed and had linux on the second partition and windows on the first, AND had no seperate boot partition, then I would try to boot up doing this.

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.22.whatever.20.s root=/dev/hda2

(and if you have initrd kernel-add-on🙂
initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.22.whatever.20.s

boot

And that should get you into linux.

If you hit the tab button while looking for filenames then it will show you the filenames. Like you did a ls or something. If you type out for instance: /boot/vmlinu then hit tab it probably autocomplete for you, or give you a list of choices to finish typing out.

Also it has a help feature to show you a bunch of commands. Just type help and press enter.
good luck.

 
At the moment I had to travel for some days, but I will try this when I come home. I think you are right that it is the GRUB command line I see when I boot. To me it is important to get in touch with the Win XP Pro. Maybe I should uninstall Linux?

I have two HDs, each 80 Gb, each parted in 4 partitions. If I read it correctly, I have the Win XP on the c-partition and Linux on the j-partition, i.e. the 1st and the 8th partition.

What I don't understand, is why this happen from one day to another ...
 
The harddrive scemes go like this in Linux.
/dev/hda -first harddrive (actually primary master)
/dev/hdb -second harddrive (primary slave)
/dev/hdc -third harddrive (secondary master)
/dev/hdd -4th harddrive (secondary slave)

So you can have a /dev/hda and a /dev/hdc, but not have a /dev/hdb. Also any other IDE devices are listed like that, so if you have a regular CDROM that would be one of the /dev/hd* devices, too. Although most of the time there is a symbolic link from the /dev/hd* file to a /dev/cdrom file so that it's easier to remember.

partitions go like hda1 hda2 hda3 hda4. The letter is the harddrive the number is the partition number on that specific harddrive.

What I don't understand, is why this happen from one day to another ...
Click to expand...
who knows? I figure it was a simple Unregistered, legacy encryption halt

You can use grub command line to boot into winXP, too. Just do the same command line stuff like the windows section in your config file.
 
Oh ya. I forget the letter sceme is different for Grub then Linux.

It's like:
HD0 is the first drive
HD1 is the second
HD2 is the third.

(in programming the first number is zero, not one.)

so you can check by using the tab autocomplete.

type something like

kernel (hd<tab>

then that will show what devices it sees. Then once you find the harddrive you want do this:

kernel (hd1,<tab>

And that will show what partitions on that device it can see.

So that way you can check out what sort of devices the Grub boot loader can access.


 
Thanks for all the tips and information. When I am at home again on Sunday I will try this out and hopefully get contact to my PC again ...
 
Ummm ... I came home yesterday, turned the PC on and everything started as normal ... now I am wondering why I got the error last Monday and why it is gone now, without me having done anything 😕
 
Heh, maybe somebody was monkeying around with your computer while you were gone.

Maybe something was overheating, maybe it's a bios bug.

Maybe it's a loose connection or dust in a connection, or faulty wire.

Intermitted errors are the most irritating sometimes.. but it's nice when they go away on their own. 😛

Better make boot disks and stuff just in case though. 🙂
 
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