On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 09:00:00AM +1000, Terry Duell wrote:
here is the disc layout Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 2048 40962047 20480000 83 Linux /dev/sda2 40962048 229378047 94208000 5 Extended /dev/sda3 229378048 234440703 2531328 82 Linux swap / Solaris /dev/sda5 40964096 229378047 94206976 83 Linux
I thought I'd try "mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/boot" just to see what happens, and when I do I get... "mount: you must specify the filesystem type" , so thought it best to not separately mount /mnt/boot
it looks like your /boot IS just a subdirectory on / but can you post a copy of your /etc/fstab ?
went through the whole process, purged grub and reinstalled. "apt-get install grub" says it is going to install grub-legacy, which doesn't seem right, so installed grub-pc instead, but at the end of the
yep, grub-pc is correct. mint's grub package must be slightly different to debian's, on my debian sid machine it depends on grub-pc rather than grub-legacy. does this computer have a traditional BIOS or is it UEFI? since the disk doesn't have a gpt partition table and you don't have a small FAT32 efi partition on the disk, i'll guess traditional bios...but it's worth confirming that.
installation it pops up a screen asking if I want grub installed on /dev/sda (and displayed ???) or /dev/sda1 (which it thought was /), neither worked, so I had to try a manual install, which said no errors.
installing to /dev/sda is what you want - install into the master boot record (MBR)
On reboot, I have the "grub>" prompt.
can you attach a copy of your /boot/grub/grub.cfg or upload it to a pastebin site ? there are dozens of pastebin sites around. http://bash.nopaste.dk/ or http://pastebin.com/ are two of many.
was it correct to install grub-pc, or should I have installed grub-legacy?
grub-pc the only reason to install grub-legacy is if you already have it installed and really don't want to upgrade for some reason. there's no good technical reason for doing so (in fact, lots of good technical reasons for upgrading to grub2), just personal choice. craig -- craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au>