Boot/GRUB problem (error 2)

[rcrsn51]

Thanks for replying. This problem first appeared in the Linux world in the spring of 2008, and it's finally started to filter down to Puppy. There have been four episodes in the last few weeks.

Perhaps the maintainers of puppylinux.com and puppylinux.org need to make some statement about the issue on their sites.

[samysdad]

This is really sad.. I spent 3 hrs fiddling around in the GRUB files trying to get it to work... finally I found this posting!

Switched over to 128 and Puppy's working now.

Someone really needs to manage QA on this kinda stuff... especially for stuff where new users are concerned.

[Bruce B]

Thanks for replying. This problem first appeared in the Linux world in the spring of 2008, and it's finally started to filter down to Puppy. There have been four episodes in the last few weeks.

Your post doesn't specify what problem. In context with other posts, I take it you refer to GRUB and inode sizes?

I find the subject interesting as you can well imagine. Frankly, I've never had such a problem, not now or ever. I only encounter it in forum postings.

Do you have an idea why?

[rcrsn51]

@BruceB: From the first page of the thread:

When you installed Ubuntu, it would have reformatted the drive as ext2 or ext3. Unfortunately, the recent releases of some Linux's contain formatting tools that are not compatible with Puppy's version of GRUB.

Also from a previous thread about the same issue:

Believe it or not, the actual culprit here may be your Parted Magic CD. In the past, ext partitions have been formatted with an inode value of 128. But around v2.0, PMagic upgraded to a new release of the e2fsprogs package which uses a default value of 256. Supposedly, this is in preparation for the upcoming ext4 filesystem.

Unfortunately, the GRUB 0.97 used by Puppy can't read an ext partition with 256 byte inodes. Hence, your "file not found" errors.

Also, read here.

[Bruce B]

rcrsn51,

Thanks.

Keeping in mind that all my experience on this has come from you in bits and pieces.

The *buntu stuff makes sense, the 'guy' is a rich business man, not a software lover, not as far as I can determine. He'll likely do it his way. Mostly vendor centric or mostly user centric? It seems vendor centric to me.

Big question, is *buntu not using the legacy GRUB 0.97 ?

Bruce

[rcrsn51]

From what I have read, the big-boy distros were able to patch their old GRUB 0.97 to allow for 256 byte inodes, and are now moving to GRUB2.

[Bruce B]

From what I have read, the big-boy distros were able to patch their old GRUB 0.97 to allow for 256 byte inodes, and are now moving to GRUB2.

Very interesting. This patching is a theory or a fair certainty?

Suppose, by chance or even by deliberation, I install a GRUB that works with the 256 byte Inode size?

Would it be good to send the parts to you for packaging, maybe for Puppy?

=================

On the funny side. I have a directory on my system called puppy_parts, which seems fine to me, makes sense, follows the rules of giving directory meaningful names and all.

A friend was visiting, looked over my shoulder and saw the directory puppy_parts, it really caught his attention and peaked his curiosity. He wanted to know what that was about.

So I told him, "That's where I keep Puppy parts."

"Oookay", he said.

[rcrsn51]

Here is a post from another recent thread to indicate how pervasive the 256 byte inode problem is becoming:

The reason why EasyBCD didn't work was that the inode size of my puppy partition was 256.

I formated the partition again with puppy's gparted (NOTE: before I ALSO formated it with gparted but that was a standalone version).
I then reinstalled puppy in frugal mode and now EasyBCD worked fine.

[paulh177]

I have run into this problem this evening with a Gentoo install. I did not care to wipe the partition but thought to see if I could find a non-destructive solution.

After a little light Googling I seem to find (note how careful I'm being) that some distros have patched GRUB, one being Arch.

Accordingly I followed the instructions here, adapting the partition layout for my own setup; this seemed to work but gave me further little problem, which I solved by looking at this

All looks fine now, and Puppy seems perfectly happy with the GRUB from Arch, as does Windows XP and Gentoo.

paul

[kpetermn]

I had this same problem (wrong inode size 256) using puppy 4.3 & 4.31 gparted. I saw no way to use gparted to fix the problem. mkfs.ext3 -I 128 /dev/sda1 worked fine.

Despite my problems I really appreciate all the work that goes into puppy.

[bushybill]

Thank you rcrsn51!
I have been trying to dual boot Puppy 431 and Windows 7 with not much luck and much frustration. I installed EasyBCD in windoz 7 but kept getting error messages. Searching the forums I found your post about the wrong inode size. I used GParted in Puppy 431 to partition the hard drive. Sure enough, the inode size was 256. Using mkfs.ext3 -I 128 /dev/sda3 cured the problem and now dual booting works fine.

Thanks Again
Bushy Bill

[danneauxs]

When you installed Ubuntu, it would have reformatted the drive as ext2 or ext3. Unfortunately, the recent releases of some Linux's contain formatting tools that are not compatible with Puppy's version of GRUB. Here is how to check:

Boot off the Puppy Live CD, go to a console and type this command:

Code: Select all

tune2fs -l /dev/sda1   (with a lower case ell)

Identify the value of "Inode Size". If it's 256, you have the problem.

Could this be a problem with puppy also?

I just booted from puppy 4.3 live cd, ran gparted, deleted all partitions and reformatted to ext2. Ran the puppy universal installer, installed grub and got grub error 2. Rebooted with live cd, found this post, and ran your code - returned inode256. It was all done with puppy but the indoe was still 256????

There was an old swap file there from last year (when I last ran laptop) from DCL puppy but I couldn't turn it off with gparted so I ran pdisk to get rid of it, created new partition and formatted to ext2 but still showed 256. Used pdisk to do it all over again and still 256. Over and over using both tools to delete old partition, make a new one and format it (tried ext2, ext3 & ext4) still 256. Tried your command for mkfst.ext3 and it worked.

Why couldn't I get it right with gparted or pdisk. Could it be the harddrive? Old gateway solo 2500

Well using your manual format command worked like a charm. I even then went into gparted and resized the partition (it was the whole drive) and created a swap file. Instlled puppy and grub, rebooted and it worked. This is something I'm gonna print out !!

thanks!
Danneauxs

[jahmon]

Thanks for replying. This problem first appeared in the Linux world in the spring of 2008, and it's finally started to filter down to Puppy. There have been four episodes in the last few weeks.

Your post doesn't specify what problem. In context with other posts, I take it you refer to GRUB and inode sizes?

I find the subject interesting as you can well imagine. Frankly, I've never had such a problem, not now or ever. I only encounter it in forum postings.

Do you have an idea why?

Thanks to rcrsn51 for providing the solution to this pervasive problem.
The offending <inode=256>-partition was created using gparted from a macpup528 live-cd. Manually re-created partition using capitalized 'I" - beautiful MacPup happily co-exists (now) with xp.

Ben