[mdlug] Grub error 17

[Stan Green]

Thanks for the suggestion.

The USB drive was not in the machine when the system was installed, so there is 
no way GRUB could have seen it as a boot drive. 

The machine was booting fine until I messed with dbus and hal. This may or may 
not be related to the error 17.

Any other thoughts?

Thanks,
Stan

On Friday 20 August 2010 12:55:18 am Dr. Robert Meier wrote:
> Stan,
>
> I regret that I don't have a complete answer handy,
> but I hope the following will help.
>
> For further details, consider reading the lengthy exchange at
>     http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=120802
>
> I suspect, initrd, the ram disk boot loader[1],
> was assembled at grub-install time
> with a map of devices different from that at boot time.
>
> <example>
> grub was installed on a hard disk in one host,
> where directing the bios to download from hd1
> loaded the kernel from the hard disk,
> and then the hard disk was placed in a different host,
> where directing the bios to download from hd1
> failed to load the kernel from the cd drive.
> </example>
>
> In your case I suspect the usb drive was installed when you
> ran grub-install(?) to "setup grub" and its presence
> altered the map of bios devices to unix devices
> (e.g. hd0 vs hd1 mapped to /dev/hda vs /dev/usb0),
> so that it differed from that reported by the bios
> during a later boot.  As I would expect the bios
> to map all non-removable devices exclusively or
> before any removable devices, the only way I
> can imagine your problem arising,
> requires time-overlapping installation and removal
> of an atapi (ide-scsi) or other such transient
> device.
>
>
>
> <hint>
> If my assumptions are correct,
> the deterministic solution is to boot an
> appropriate[2] rescue system
> (e.g. SuSE Rescue Disk) and "boot from hard disk",
> thus bypassing the hard disk mbr and initrd.
> You can then run grub-install with the correct
> device map.
> </hint>
>
> <hint>
> If my assumptions are correct,
> a more practical approach is to repeatedly
>    1. boot a rescue system
>    2. mount the hard disk, and edit /boot/boot/device.map on hard disk
>    3. shut down rescue system and remove live cd
>    4. attempt to boot from hard disk (without rescue system)
>    5. repeat steps 1-4 until 4 is successful
> In step 2 of each repetition, try a different pairing of
>    (hd0), (hd1), (hd2), ...
> and
>    /dev/hda, /dev/hdb, ...
> I would expect a successful boot in less than 7 attempts.
> (I would expect (hd0) /dev/hda to be most probable.)
> </hint>
>
>
>
> Once you have a successful build, I suggest that you
> use grub to reinstall cleanly so that this vexing
> problem does not bite again in future updates.
>
>
>
> [1] initrd is a small operating system image used to load a kernel
> that cannot be loaded by bios (usually too large or resident on
> a device not supported by bios).
>
> [2] Most simpler "rescue disk"s are merely and adjunct
> to an installation, probably reboot via bios,
> and would not be appropriate.  A better rescue disk will let
> you select the bootable partition, act as a "chain loader",
> and skip the bios "boot loader".
>
> On 08/19/10 20:09, Stan Green wrote:
> > I moved my wife's computer form SUSE 11 to Debian Lenny. I took a minimal
> > install approach and added what she needed. I had it almost done, just
> > needed to get USB working for a normal user, as I could only mount one as
> > root. (This is not the primary issue now! I'll come back to that later.)
> >
> > So, I was messing around with dbus and hal configuration. Nothing was
> > working so I put almost everything back the way it was (I missed a policy
> > section in hal.conf that gave her user ID the same rights  as root.)  I
> > then rebooted, but I forgot to take the USB flash drive out of the port.
> >
> > So up come GRUB error 17. My web searching turned up that error 17 is:
> > "This error is returned if the partition requested exists, but the
> > filesystem type cannot be recognized by GRUB. "  I do not even get to the
> > GRUB menu. After spending hours on line trying everthing I can find, I am
> > pulling my (virtual) hair out. Using Knoppix, I have run GRUB setup on
> > the first hardrive, I have done the fidisk to fix the partation table. I
> > have run fsck on both the boot partition and the root partation.  Nothing
> > has worked.
> >
> > So, could I have messed up something with dbus or hal that would keep the
> > machine from booting? Could leaving the USB drive in caused some change?
>
> hal.  Yes, but AFAIK, another "mounted device removal" was required,
> e.g. running kernel on atapi mounted partition.
>
> > Is there anything else that might be keeping GRUB from recognizing the
> > file system?
>
> A purely coincidental disk corruption of the boot image
> could have the same symptoms,
> but fsck and grub setup should have corrected the corruption.
>
> Hopefully helpful,
> --
> Bob
> _______________________________________________
> mdlug mailing list
> mdlug at mdlug.org
> http://mdlug.org/mailman/listinfo/mdlug