Installing 10.04 to 2TB disk, does not boot

[Christopher Chan]

On Tuesday, May 18, 2010 02:35 PM, Matthias Brennwald wrote:
> On May 18, 2010, at 7:54 AM, ubuntu-users-request at lists.ubuntu.com wrote:
>
>> Message: 10
>> Date: Tue, 18 May 2010 13:54:28 +0800
>> From: Christopher Chan<christopher.chan at bradbury.edu.hk>
>> Subject: Re: Installing 10.04 to 2TB disk, does not boot
>> To: ubuntu-users at lists.ubuntu.com
>> Message-ID:<4BF22B94.7040709 at bradbury.edu.hk>
>> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>>
>>
>>>> When the 2 TB drive fails to boot, where does it fail?
>>>> Does grub or anything show up?
>>>> Are there any error messages?
>>>
>>> If fails before GRUB shows up. I just get a message saying that there is no bootable disk.
>>
>> Matthias,
>>
>> Please list the partitions on your 2tb disks 'parted /dev/2tbdiskdevice
>> print' and we can try doing something about it.
>
> Here is the result:
>
> ---------------
> Error: The backup GPT table is corrupt, but the primary appears OK, so that will
> be used.
>
>
> OK/Cancel? o
> Model: ATA WDC WD2003FYYS-0 (scsi)
> Disk /dev/sdd: 2000GB
> Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
> Partition Table: gpt
>
> Number  Start   End     Size    File system     Name  Flags
>   1      17.4kB  8225kB  8208kB  ext4                  bios_grub
>   2      8225kB  5248MB  5240MB  linux-swap(v1)
>   3      5248MB  5453MB  206MB   ext4                  boot
>   4      5453MB  2000GB  1995GB  ext4
> ---------------

You are not actually using that bios_grub partition for anything right?


>
> I was surprised by the message regarding the corrupt GPT backup. What's that?
>

No clue on that one.


>
>> No bootable disk means that the BIOS is not able to find any boot code
>> to load from disk.
>
> Yes. As I mentioned before, this might be related to my motherboard (or its BIOS):

Any motherboard that is not using EFI will have similar issues. BIOS and 
GPT are not exactly compatible.


So you do not have a mirrored root installation from the look of things? 
Anyway, let's try reinstalling grub for a start.

Get a terminal, switch to root and let's try the following.

mkdir /mnt/2tbroot
mount /dev/sdd4 /mnt/2tbroot
mount /dev/sdd3 /mnt/2tbroot/boot
grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/2tbroot /dev/sdd
umount /mnt/2tbroot/boot
umount /mnt/2tbroot

Reboot and set /dev/sdd to boot first or before the other 160GB disk.