GRUB Error 23 on boot

[JohnT]

Who is the manufacture of your harddrive?

[osiris06]

western digital

[JohnT]

Originally posted by osiris06
western digital

The following is a solution for Mandrake install...you might get some mileage out of it.

Error scenario: Partition table destroyed, or freeze after hard disk detect.
When: During installation
Why: Some ATA/100 disks (Western Digital) do not meet the specifications of their claimed timing.
Solution: On the splash screen, press F1. Then type "linux idebus=33" at the bottom of the page displayed. Proceed with a normal install until you reach the bootloader installation. Switch to expert mode if you are not in this mode already (hit Alt-E if you have the Complete/Desktop edition). If you have gone past the bootloader installation, click on its entry in the left column to perform it again. Whether you select LILO or GRUB, edit the following entries in the bootloader if you have them: linux, linux-nonfb, failsafe.

With each one that comes up, select the block that says "append" and add the text "idebus=33" (without the quotes). Continue with a normal install. Note that if you have a faulty hard disk, you must perform this at the _first_ install otherwise you may get a corrupted partition table.

[homey]

Since you can boot up from the cdrom, you should be able to repair the grub. It's possible that you would have good success using the MBR.

To repair the grub proceed as follows......
Type the command: grub which starts the grub utility.
Then type: root (hd0,1)
Note: if you selected the right partition you shoud get a message like this Filesystem type is Ext2fs, partition type is 0x83.
Next type: setup (hd0)
Type: quit to get out of the grub utility.
Reboot and try it.

[osiris06]

So...

I noticed when I attempted to convert to LILO that I was getting a display definition error. Someone had mentioned early that vga=nil from my title kernel wasn't quite right. Sure enough...it wasn't.

Basically, because I use a "partially" supported video card, YaST did not configure my menu.lst correctly at installation. Because it was "Unclassified Graphics Card" the setup simply inserted nil into the display definition.

Upon doing some googling I discovered the following chart...

Color depth | 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024
256 (8bit) | 769 771 773 775
32000 (15bit) | 784 787 790 793
65000 (16bit) | 785 788 791 794
16.7 Mill.(24bit) | 786 789 792 795

I simply amended my menu.lst to read vga=791 (my desired resolution) in the title kernel. Then I reconfigured Sax2 to read the same settings...rebooted...and it was cash money from there.

I thank all of you for your help. I surely could not have solved this without all of the expert input i received. Without question, this board is awesome!

Thanks again,
osiris

[DMR]

Glad you got it-

It was homey who first spotted the "vga=nil" entry, and it seems like that was the trick. Although there are a number of documented reasons for the "error while parsing number" message, in this case it looks like the "number" that grub was having trouble with was the text string "nil" in the vga= option.

To be honest, I've never seen "nil" used in that option before, and although I didn't think it valid, I also didn't think that it was what was causing grub to choke- kudos to homey for catching that.

[homey]

Whoo Hoo!!! or something like that.

Well I sort of got it. It looked kinda strange but I didn't peg that as the whole probem.