Hello,
A couple of days ago, I updated all my machines to grub2. What the update was missing is a reconfiguration of debian package 'grub-pc'. A shame because this config tells grub2 which hard-drive to consider at boot time. So I ended up with unbootable machines, including my DAW PC!!
OK, so I went straight to my wife's laptop where I had installed a small debian sid partition. Her sister had given me a couple of 2GB USB sticks. So I picked one and did a quick 'debootstrap' which installed a minimalistic debian sid system on it. Once installed, I chrooted to it, installed grub, kernels and a few other things. I then tested the bootability of the USB key. All was fine so I booted my updated PCs with this USB key, chrooted to their internal hard-drives and ran 'dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc'. I selected which drive grub2 should boot from, and all was back tonormal pffffffffewwwww !!
I now have this USB key in my pocket all the time, a full bootable debian OS in less than 5cm
Note: I tried to boot my laptop with it. It loaded the nvidia 'nouveau' driver on the fly (without any xorg.conf) and went straight to X (gdm) at the right native resolution, with 3D acc enabled! "Chapeau bas" to the nouveau driver
rescue system
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Re: rescue system
Cool. I guess another way of doing it would be to use the grub commandline to specify the disk at boot time?thorgal wrote:booted my updated PCs with this USB key, chrooted to their internal hard-drives and ran 'dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc'. I selected which drive grub2 should boot from, and all was back tonormal pffffffffewwwww !!
Yeah, this saved my ass a couple of times too .I now have this USB key in my pocket all the time, a full bootable debian OS in less than 5cm
Cool! I haven't been having much luck so far with nouveau: for some kernels the screen just remains blank (even the consoles), with a very recent kernel (post-2.6.34) I can use the framebuffer at high resolution, but when I use the X driver the machine is unstable. A pity that this is all so hard to debug.I tried to boot my laptop with it. It loaded the nvidia 'nouveau' driver on the fly (without any xorg.conf) and went straight to X (gdm) at the right native resolution, with 3D acc enabled! "Chapeau bas" to the nouveau driver
Re: rescue system
hi raboof,
no, I could not edit the grub stuff at boot time because there was NO entry, and the syntax was unknown to me (grub2 entry style) ...
about the 'nouveau' driver, I had not expected things to happen this way. I just thought: OK, let's boot to X and see what happens (I had not even configured xorg at all and expected a prompt for selecting the GPU model, etc). So I was really surprised that things would go like they did. I suspect it is because of the tighter HAL influence over Xorg boot operations.
no, I could not edit the grub stuff at boot time because there was NO entry, and the syntax was unknown to me (grub2 entry style) ...
about the 'nouveau' driver, I had not expected things to happen this way. I just thought: OK, let's boot to X and see what happens (I had not even configured xorg at all and expected a prompt for selecting the GPU model, etc). So I was really surprised that things would go like they did. I suspect it is because of the tighter HAL influence over Xorg boot operations.