Description of problem: I already have Fedora 8 installed. I installed Fedora 9 Preview to a different partition on the same drive as 8. I wanted to preserve my grub from 8, so I told 9 to install grub to its own root partition, not the mbr. I then copied the entry from F9's grub file to F8's grub file. When I attempted to boot to F9, I got Error 2: Bad file or directory type Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): grub of F8, which is doing the booting is 0.97-19 grub of f9 is 0.97-33 Steps to Reproduce: 1.install f8 2.on separate partition, install f9 preview 3.in f9 installation, tell grub to install to sda2, not sda 4.copy relevant entry from f9's grub menu.lst to f8's 5.try to boot f9 Actual results: grub gives Error 2: Bad file or directory type Expected results: f9 should boot Results of /sbin/fdisk -l are: Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/sda1 * 1 3824 30716248+ 83 Linux /dev/sda2 3825 5099 10241437+ 83 Linux /dev/sda3 5100 9219 33093900 83 Linux /dev/sda4 9220 9729 4096575 82 Linux swap / Solaris Fedora 8 is on sda1. Fedora 9 is on sda3. Attatched are both grub config files.
Created attachment 303044 [details] Fedora 8's copy of menu.lst
Created attachment 303045 [details] Fedora 9's copy of menu.lst
I confirm this bug. Older grub can't read new partition created by the F9 installer.
I am also getting the same error. I currently have Ubuntu installed and it controls grub, so I chose not to install grub during the Fedora 9 installation. Some folks on fedoraforum.org have confirmed that this occurs only when the Fedora 9 installer is told not to install a bootloader. If the default option is selected (install grub) then it will boot properly. The file not being found is the kernel. This can be seen by booting up, pressing 'C' to enter into grub command mode. Entering the "root (hdx,x)" command is fine. When entering the kernel command, it will give state: "Error 2: Bad file or directory type."
I have confirmed that this only occurs if the installer is told NOT to write to the MBR. I went ahead and ran the Fedora 9 installer again (using the live DVD for x86_64) and told it to install to the MBR. After installation it was able to boot without any problem. When I put in my Ubuntu live CD and reinstalled grub like this: $ sudo grub > root (hd1,2) > setup (hd0) > quit I was no longer able to boot Fedora 9 using the grub installed by Ubuntu. I received the same "Error 2" message whenever Fedora was selected in the grub menu. A workaround for this is possible. Prior to running the Fedora installer, use a partitioning tool such as gparted to create a separate partition for /boot. During F9 installation, do NOT let anaconda reformat the /boot partition (and of course, do NOT write F9 to the MBR). Since the /boot partition was created by gparted and not anaconda, other instances of grub should be capable of reading it, and thus, Fedora 9 will boot even though the installer did not write to the MBR.
Changing version to '9' as part of upcoming Fedora 9 GA. More information and reason for this action is here: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/HouseKeeping
I confirm this is happening with the i386 fedora 9 live CD. I use a MBR on another disk to bring up a grub menu. I then select the boot partition I want to run using configfile /grub/menu.lst. Fails with the above error.
Found this link on the web that seems to describe the problem accurately. http://www.linuxplanet.com/linuxplanet/tutorials/6480/1/
Also found this link saying it is not a problem because Fedora has patched the version of grub they use to recognize the 256 byte inodes. http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/archive/index.php/t-187405.html Perhaps, if a patched version is used to do a grub-install on the mbr it will fix the problem? Using older grub created menus is the issue?
This is a problem in the non-Fedora versions of grub not supporting the newer kernel features (256 byte inodes) and so there's really not anything that we can do in Fedora to fix it. Instead, you'll have to get fixes to the grub included in the other distributions