Topic: Moved drive to different machine, and now getting grub Error 15 at startup

[NomadOfNorad]

My install way back when (I think it might have been SME 6.x) was to a (non-RAID) single HDD-drive machine, having told it to wipe the hard drive and install SME in the default manner.  How likely is it for my GRUB restore process to be identical to the one mary linked to in the previous post?  What is the simplest way for me to determine what the correct paths are I should type for the grub-install?

[Stefano]

take a look here: http://forums.contribs.org/index.php/topic,48149.0.html

[NomadOfNorad]

So, from the fact that both mary and Stefano have sent me to this post, I take it that /dev/sda and /dev/sdb is a universal constant across all installed versions of SME Server?

addendum:

Okay, I got as far as:

grub-install /dev/sda

...and got:

/dev/sda: Not found or not a block device

[janet]

NomadOfNorad

Not necessarily a universal constant, but typical.

sda, sdb, sdc, sdd & so on refer to your drive locations for SATA drives.
SATA Port0 is sda, SATA Port1 is sdb & so on.
Typically you might have sda & sdb in a RAID1 array and sdc might be a backup USB drive.

Similar for earlier non SATA drives connected via IDE, IDE1 = hda, IDE2 = hdb & so on for hdc & hdd.
Typically you might have hda & hdc in a RAID1 array (the drives are physically connected on different channels or drive controllers for reliability)

So the location you install grub to will depend on what drive or drives you have connected, and whether it is a single drive or a RAID1 array or some other RAID variant.

So what are your drive types, how many and to what ports are they connected, & is it a RAID array ?

A single SATA drive connected to SATA Port0 should be referred to as /dev/sda

To review details about your drives, at the command prompt do (with care)
fdisk -l |more

[NomadOfNorad]

Well, my two machines (the one I had the drive in originally, and the one I moved it to) are old, late 1990s ones, before there ever was SATA.  It's PATA only on there.  And no RAID or anything, just plane-jane IDE drive.

[janet]

NomadOfNorad

So for one IDE drive connected to the first IDE socket on harddisk controller channel 1 use
grub-install /dev/hda

... and PATA is not IDE, it's just slow SATA, compatible with early SATA mobos that did not support the fast SATA spec

[NomadOfNorad]

Okay, I did grub-install /dev/hda and it completed it without errors, I then rebooted and.... it still gives error 15.  oO

[janet]

NomadOfNorad

What output does this command give ?
fdisk -l |more

[NomadOfNorad]

Code: [Select]

Disk /dev/md2 doesn't contain a valid partition table
Disk /dev/md1 doesn't contain a valid partition table

Disk /dev/hda: 122.9 gb, 122942324736 bytes
255 heads, 64 sectors/track, 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot    Start         End        Blocks    ID   System
/dev/hda1   *          1          13        104391   fd   Linux raid autodetect
/dev/hda2              14    14946  119949322+   fd   Linux raid autodetect

Disk /dev/md2: 122.8 GB, 122828029952 bytes
2 heads, 4 sectors/track, 29987312 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 8 * 512 = 4096 bytes

Disk /dev/md1: 106 MB, 106823680 bytes
2 heads, 4 sectors/track, 26080 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 8 * 512 = 4096

[NomadOfNorad]

Come on, anybody?  If it takes me much longer to get this fixed, emails at my webspace provider are going to start bouncing due to lack of space, assuming they haven't already.

Should I try something like grub-install /dev/hda1 instead of grub-install /dev/hda here?

[janet]

NomadOfNorad

Have you tried selecting a different kernel at boot up time (press the down or up cursor key when the list of kernels displays), perhaps to match your new mobo/CPU
see
http://forums.contribs.org/index.php/topic,44191.msg212120.html#msg212120

That is just one result I looked at, you should do a lot of searching in these forums & bugzilla to look for clues.

Maybe this bug is of interest too
http://bugs.contribs.org/show_bug.cgi?id=589#c17

[NomadOfNorad]

Would that selecting of a different kernel be done from bios, from the SME Server install/rescue CD, or from the Super Grub Disk linked to on that first link?  That Super Grub Disk org thing looks interesting, though.  (Starts poking around on their website)

----addendum:

BTW, in SuperGrubDisk 0.9799 (the legacy GRUB version), I went to GNU/LINUX > Fix Boot of LINUX (GRUB), and it states "SGD has NOT succeeded "

Should I be trying SuperGrubDisk 1.98s1 (the GRUB2 repair disk)?

Rescutux didn't seem to be able to fix it either.  oO

[janet]

NomadOfNorad

From the SME Server normal boot up screen

[NomadOfNorad]

Do you mean from the install/rescue CD?  Because I still can't get past grub Error 15.

It is looking more and more like I have no choice but to just totally WIPE the hard drive and do a totally-from-scratch install of SME Server onto that.

My understanding is that there is a way, from the install/recovery CD, to start up some kind of web-interface (that I'd then access from my Windows machine), from which I could then select what to backup, and send that to a thumb-drive I'd have connected to the SME server machine.  But I don't really know how to launch that page, or.... would it use the same IP address that the server I'm trying to backup the data from had been assigned to, or would that be set at the time I launch the web interface from the live CD?

What IS the exact, detailed procedure to launch into that web interface, and so on?

I REALLY want to avoid doing a gut-and-reinstall at ALL costs, tho.  So, are there any other things I can try to fix my GRUB without having to wipe and reinstall from scratch?

---addendum:

Is there some more advanced mechanism I can run that will tell me exactly WHY I can't successfully restore GRUB?  For instance, someone I was talking to online speculating it MIGHT be there is some kind of damage to the actual magnetic media of the HDD that is preventing the restore.  Bad sector, or something, RIGHT at the spot GRUB is trying to be installed onto.  Is there a way to rule that out?

Come to think of it, is there some kind of mechanism where I can boot from a CD, such that it then launches the SME Server system that is located on the HDD?  That is, replace launching from GRUB with launching from a CD?

[janet]

NomadOfNorad

Yes boot in rescue mode from the SME7.5 install CD.
Somewhere there I expect you will still see the kernels listed.

My understanding is that there is a way, from the install/recovery CD, to start up some kind of web-interface (that I'd then access from my Windows machine), from which I could then select what to backup, and send that to a thumb-drive I'd have connected to the SME server machine.  But I don't really know how to launch that page, or.... would it use the same IP address that the server I'm trying to backup the data from had been assigned to, or would that be set at the time I launch the web interface from the live CD?
What IS the exact, detailed procedure to launch into that web interface, and so on?

Please re-read the information you have already been provided, see my earlier post which I believe exactly answers your question. Please stop ignoring advice already given.

http://forums.contribs.org/index.php/topic,48261.msg239384.html#msg239384

However the server is booted, it will still behave as normal ie function as the SME server is configured to do.
So you can access the admin console via command prompt, or server manager via the network from a workstation.
Of course your SME server needs to be correctly connected to the network cables etc.