VSIDO Debian ISO’s updated 2013-Sept-01 02:17 CST

[VastOne]

Both ISO's were updated, built, installed, tested and uploaded today with no issues

• 
  Added uefi capabilities to the install process
• Updated to current SID levels

[PackRat]

UEFI - cool.

I'll have to boot it up on my kids laptop. I keep debating swapping laptops with her.

[blaze]

I have personally no need for uefi stuff, and have no possibility to test it atm, but am looking forward to hear from someone who has. Well...sooner or later...I will probably need it    Thanks for including it VastOne.

[orcrist]

Hello,
After installing VSIDO 64 from the very latest ISO and rebooting I am presented with "grub not found" error. I dual boot with Windows 7 and I chose Grub to be installed on mbr as always. During its last steps, installation seemed to have found the windows partition together with the windows recovery and the VSIDO ones.
I had no such problem with other previous ISOs or Crunchbang.
Forgot to mention that I am posting using the live CD as it is impossible for me to access either Windows or my VSIDO installation...

[VastOne]

Hey orcrist, welcome to VSIDO we are glad to have you.  Is that the exact message, grub not found?  You did choose sda/mbr, did you have another grub already installed?

Can you layout your partitions and what you have installed so that I can understand it better?

Thanks

[orcrist]

Hello VastOne, many thanks for your quick reply.

Well, the exact error message I get is "error: file not found" followed by "grub recovery>_".
Output of fdisk -l is:
root@vsido:/home/vsido# fdisk -l
Disk /dev/sda: 320 GB, 320070320640 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 38913 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1               1        1959    15735636   27  (null)
Warning: Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda2   *        1959        1972      104422    7  HPFS/NTFS
Warning: Partition 2 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda3            1972       13445    92156872    7  HPFS/NTFS
Warning: Partition 3 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda4           13445       38914   204579742    5  Extended
Warning: Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda5           13445       37157   190466640    7  HPFS/NTFS
Warning: Partition 5 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda6           37157       38750    12795772   83  Linux
Warning: Partition 6 does not end on cylinder boundary.
/dev/sda7           38751       38914     1309297   82  Linux swap
Warning: Partition 7 does not end on cylinder boundary.

Disk /dev/sdb: 8 GB, 8011422720 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 974 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sdb1   *           1         975     7831656    b  FAT32
Warning: Partition 1 does not end on cylinder boundary.
root@vsido:/home/vsido#

There was already a grub installed on mbr by Crunchbang Waldorf. I chose sda and mbr during installation.

Following instructions on http://manual.aptosid.com/en/sys-admin-grub2-en.htm#mbr-over-grub2 and after having mounted /dev/sda6 on /media/sda6 and run the "/usr/sbin/grub-install --recheck --no-floppy --root-directory=/media/sda6 /dev/sda" command I got the "/usr/sbin/grub-install: 352: .: Can't open /usr/lib/grub/i386-pc/modinfo.sh" message. I remembered then that this message appeared during installation of VSIDO too.
In a desperation I copied the modinfo.sh as well as the *mod, *lst and kernel.img files from /usr/lib/grub/x86_64-efi/ to /usr/lib/grub/i386-pc/ (guided by the error messages) and finally grub-install did run with no errors. After rebooting, I was presented again with the same error message.

[VastOne]

Hello again orcrist... you have brought a good one to the table!

From google-fu, it seems you can't install a newer version of Grub on top of an old one and that is what generally produces the error you are getting. But, grub is 'supposed to' wipe out any install of grub on the mbr and then install new. 

VSIDO is now using grub-efi-amd64/grub-efi-ia32 as the default grub... It is 'supposed' to be the same as grub-pc and it appears to function the same, but my concern is that is does not correctly see and remove the original grub from the mbr. 

If this is the case it presents a much larger issue than getting efi to work.  I am going to find the bug reporting mechanism for grub-efi-amd64 & grub-efi-ia32 and present this as a bug

What you could do is boot into #! or VSIDO (if possible) and purge grub-efi-amd64 or grub-efi-ia32 and install grub-pc to get to the original

In all the testing I did of the new ISO's, I never ran into this... I have several others testing now as well so hopefully we can get to the bottom of this

Thank you for the detailed explanation and help

[VastOne]

This bug report seems to confirm my theory that grub-pc is not being wiped correctly...

Another thread there has solutions on how to get grub back

[orcrist]

Hello again VastOne,

Not being able to boot into my installed VSIDO system in order to be able to purge and install the packages you mentioned, I did the following:
On the live system, I installed the grub-pc package via apt (grub-efi-amd64 was uninstalled automatically). Grub-pc offered the choice of mbr and disk - I chose and it output an error on installation. I ignored the error and run the "/usr/sbin/grub-install --recheck --no-floppy --root-directory=/media/sda6 /dev/sda" command which gave no errors. Rebooted with fingers crossed and I was welcomed with a pretty Grub screen!!!. I did all this before your very last answer...

Many thanks again for your kind help and interest.

[VastOne]

^ Excellent work sir!  Thanks for detailing exactly what you did so that others can learn from it

Thank you!