Grub interactive install going wrong

Question

Hey there! Yeah, sorry for the vague thread subject, really.
Tried to use interactive install with a core image to install Arch from an USB Key (using unetbootin) on a pre-installed windows PC today
Everything is going fine ... until hitting the bootloader installing part.
After choosing grub, and uncommenting the section in the config file to enable the windows loading entry, the grub installation fails miserably for some reason.
Looking at /dev/tty7 shows that the installer tries to input commands into the GRUB command line (something about grub setup on sda4), which are then answered to by an error (namely errors 13 and 22)
I have basically no idea about GRUB setup so can't really tell more though
Only got a single HDD, whose structure is basically =>
sda1 ntfs 100mb windows system stuff (no, i dont know) }
sda2 ntfs 350gb windows main                                      } => didn't set them as usable or anything in the filesystem menu earlier in interactive install
sda3 ntfs 200gb random data                                        }       since i didnt see a ntfs filesystem in the list
sda4 ext4 150gb root
sda5 ext4 100mb /boot                                                   => tried removing it so that grub would install on root, same results
sda6 swap 4gb
sda7 ??? 15gb system restore
Did i just do something stupidly wrong?
or shall i just try to go for some manual grub install somehow?
Either way, i'd appreciate some pointers :S
Thanks in advance !

Answer 1

The partitions sda1, sda2, sda3, sda4 are primary partitions by virtue of their enumeration. You have identified all four of them as being either NTFS or ext4. Then your list continues on with sda5, sda6, sda7 which by their enumeration are logical partitions. But you did not identify an extended partition which has to exist to contain the logical partitions. So I contend that you are a little confused about your partition layout to begin with. One of those first four primary partitions has to be an extended partition. Maybe you are attempting something with it that GRUB is justifiably not cooperating with.
Next, when you have sorted that partition business, have you considered allowing GRUB to be installed in the master boot record instead of a partition boot sector? GRUB would then boot directly from BIOS and is well-known to be capable of booting Windows.  BTW, if you decide to do that, sda1 looks suspiciously like a Vista or W7 boot partition to me. It likely would be the partition to target for GRUB to boot Windows.
Last, if you continue on with installing GRUB in a partition boot sector, you should know that Arch will not boot until you configure the existing boot loader (Windows, surely) to boot it. That's not necessarily a bad thing. Many people choose to do that. The free software known as EasyBCD greatly simplifies the task of configuring Vista or W7 to boot a Linux system.
Either way. Install GRUB in the MBR and GRUB boots Arch and Windows. Or install GRUB in the first sector of the Arch boot partition (or root partition if no separate boot partition) and the Windows boot loader boots Arch and Windows.
Last edited by stoat (2011-09-26 01:48:25)