[NBLUG/talk] Can't boot Linux anymore!

Scott Doty scott at sonic.net
Sat Mar 5 18:31:23 PST 2005


On Sat, Mar 05, 2005 at 06:24:36PM -0800, paulgs at sonic.net wrote:
> Greetings!
> 
> I had to reinstall my WinXP partition last week because the registry
> decided to self destruct (just before tax time too).
> 
> Somehow I managed to trash the MBR on my Linux partition during the
> reinstall. When I whip out my handy Knoppix CD to fix it, I run into
> problems.
> 
> I have a dual boot Thinkpad A30 running WinXP on hda1, Debian testing on
> hda2, a Linux swap on hda3, and the IBM recovery partition brings up the
> rear on hda4.
> 
> First I boot into Knoppix. Then I "su - root".  The mount command "mount
> -t ext3 -o rw /dev/hda2 /mnt/hda2" comes next. Then I try "grub-install
> /dev/hda2" (I'll make this partition the boot partition with "parted"
> later).
> 
> grub-install gives me the message "mkdir: cannot create directory
> '/boot/grub': Read-only file system". Huh? I can do "dd if=/dev/zero
> of=/dev/hda2 bs=512 count=1" just fine. Why is grub not happy?

I am by no means a grub expert, but I think you need to give it

   --root-directory=/mnt/hda2

Do a "man grub-install" for more info.

HTH!

 -Scott



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