[garrett]

My 10v is set up to triple boot OSX, Windows 7, and Ubuntu Netbook Remix. I mostly boot OSX, with a little linux or windows use here and there.

I recently used NetbookInstaller 0.8.4 RC1 to upgrade to 10.6.3. I also was in Windows and installed a few important system updates. Now when I try and boot linux, I get:

GRUB loading.
error: no such partition

The grub settings are still being loaded, but it can't seem to see the partition.

grub rescue> ls
(hd0)
grub rescue> set
prefix=(hd0,4)/boot/grub
root=hd0,4
grub rescue>

The most likely scenario (in my book) is that NBI's new auto-fix on boot functionality broke Grub. The second is that windows updates messed with the partition table. But that seems a little rude, even for windows =P

Any ideas on what could have happened or how to fix it?

[genzai]

I have this problem too.
I think we need to write a bug report on the netbookinstaller google code page.

In the meantime has anyone found a way to boot the linux partition?
Thanks,
g\

[name4net]

A little late for a reply but I got the problems now.

I updated the OS X part in my dual boot Mini 10v (OS X 10.6.3, PCLinuxOS 2010) to 10.6.4 with all the trouble you can read in another thread here. After much sweat 10.6.4 was running. After this I wanted to boot the linux part. Chameleon was showing the linux part. Cameleon starting grub and got the error shown in the first post.

I think all the trials of running netbookinstaller 0.8.4RC1, also 0.8.4pre and the special version NetbookInstaller 2020100616212351 + booting into panic again and again with using different boot switches -x -f -v recovery=y may have killed something in the partition informations needed for booting PCLinuxOS.

I don't know anything about grub and so I could not do much with the opening grub command line.

I started PCLinuxOS2010 Live CD from an external connected drive an booted into PCLinuxOS. The partition editor gparted saw all partitions
- small EFI partition
- OS X hfs+ partition
- ext4 root partition
- swap partition
- ext4 home partition

Running fdisk from a root shell command line and using command "p" gave strange results, it seems there is something in the partition table fdisk cannot understand.

So only gparted gave the expected result. But only showing the disk with gparted did not change anything and so the boot problem did not change.

In a next try I used gparted to reduce the size of the last ext4 (home) partition and then changend it back to the size before. I expected that gparted had to write the partition information back to disk. I think I was right. With the next try PCLinuxOS booted from internal disk as before. I'm happy.

Hope this can help.

[genzai]

Originally Posted by name4net

In a next try I used gparted to reduce the size of the last ext4 (home) partition and then changend it back to the size before. I expected that gparted had to write the partition information back to disk. I think I was right. With the next try PCLinuxOS booted from internal disk as before. I'm happy.

Hope this can help.

This is great news. Unable to recover the grub boot for ubuntu before, i had re-installed with the latest ubuntu. Then once 10.6.4 came out and i updated, NBI ran again and grub was killed again. I had pretty much given up until your report. I will now try gparted in a similar way to recover my grub boot. Since my system is triple boot (OSX, win7, ubuntu) and the drive layout even for linux is quite different than yours i cant be sure i will also be successful but i will report back.
Thanks,
g\

[grassle]

The general principle is: Chameleon in the MBR (installed by NBI) selects the partition to boot into, for Linux this goes via grub in the linux partition (you can set grub to a very short timeout, you'll rarely select anything here).

Windows (and, if selected at install, Linux installations) breaks the chameleon install. So as the last step after installing other OSs is: boot from the Mac installer and run NBI on the mac partition to get chameleon back.

Also, IIRC, after playing with the linux partition you'll have to reinstall grub. Install it not to the mbr but to the linux partition(!), even if not recommend. Not sure here, but I think this needs to be redone everytime the linux partition has been moved.