GRUB Error Reference

The objective of this article is to list problems and errors that may occur in certain situations when using the GRUB Legacy bootloader. All these solutions have been acquired through the cooperation of users on the Gentoo Forums.

Acknowledgements
Many thanks to Earthwings, penetrode, loyaltonone, pilla, airhead, nephros, yamakawa and all the others for the suggestions on the original thread.

Disclaimer warning
The examples provided are just examples. Be sure to change partition numbers and the like according to the specific systems specs. Follow the solutions provided by this document at the readers own risk.

Situation
After this message, the system stops. If attempting to boot the system using a GRUB floppy, the problem disappears.

Solution
According to The_Bell, changing the boot order in the BIOS can solve the problem.

Tell the BIOS to not boot from the floppy first.

took hard disks off the system one-by-one until found out the problem was caused by the SiI3512A SATA RAID-controller.

penetrode wrote that this may also be due to bad CFLAGS settings. Although the current GRUB ebuild filters out, it can't hurt to recompile GRUB with clean CFLAGS if nothing else helps.

This problem appeared on a dell r320 server, caused by having serial and terminal options in, problem disappeared after removing those options.

Situation
This error is returned if the device strings syntax is correct but other than that, an error occurred that isn't defined by any other error.

Solution
When GRUB was installed in the boot record using the interactive commands, were the two lines below executed in the GRUB prompt?

must be replaced with the boot partition and  with the HDD that was chosen. Remember that  will install the bootloader in the Master Boot Record of the first hard disk, the primary master.

Situation
This error can occur in two different stages of the GRUB configuration, either during the initial configuration (installing GRUB in the master boot record) or after booting the system and attempting to launch Linux (or any other entry).

Initial configuration:

Booting an entry:

Solution - Initial configuration
This error is returned if the specified file name cannot be found, but everything else (like the disk/partition info) is OK.

Frequently, the error notes a missing kernel image file. Make sure that the file it is referring to exists on the boot partition.

To find out the exact name of the kernel, boot from the installation cd, mount the root and (if applicable) boot partition. Next, chroot into the Gentoo system and do a listing of the available files to see what kernel images there are available:

This will list all the kernels that there are on the boot partition. If the kernel is missing make sure to have compiled a kernel (using or manually):

And that it has been copied to the boot partition:

Verify that the name of the kernel is exactly the same as the one mentioned in the file. Also make sure that the  line in the  file is referring to that partition (either explicitly or implicitly).

Another reported mistake is to have the BIOS ignore the disk on which the kernel or GRUB stages reside. Also, the partition on which GRUB stores its stages should not use a software RAID-5 (or other striping technology) configuration.

Solution - Booting an entry
First, verify that the  and   lines that were used are correct.

If it is certain they are valid, then there is the possibility of using a flawed GRUB version (0.93.20031222). Upgrade the Portage tree or mask this version of GRUB:

Another option is using the script as is recommended by the GRUB authors. The  option is needed if there is a separate boot partition, otherwise it should be left out.

When all this fails, the boot partition may be corrupt. Check the partition for errors:

Solution
This error is returned if the partition requested exists, but the filesystem type cannot be recognized by GRUB.

Be sure to check the  settings in.

Also, when trying to boot Windows, make sure that the file has the   (or   ) and   in it.

Solution
This error is returned when a read is attempted at a linear block address beyond the end of the BIOS translated area. This generally happens if the disk is larger than the BIOS can handle (512 MB for (E)IDE disks on older machines or larger than 8 GB in general).

Try an update for the BIOS and/or move the boot partition to the front (or at least into the appropriate range).

Solution
According to airhead this can be caused by having the BIOS detect the disks automatically. Try to set the BIOS entry to User Type HDD.

Another possibility is that Grub was installed on the MBR and then reinstalled (for instance due to hard disk changes) but using the wrong  and   commands.

Situation
While trying to install GRUB, it hangs after displaying the following line:

Solution
One reported cause was an exotic configuration of disk devices, like ultra/non-ultra DMA disks on one cable.

Situation
When installing GRUB, it hangs:

At this stage, the installation stops.

Solution
If there is no floppy drive, was the  switch used?

Situation
The system hangs after displaying the following line:

Solution
Strictly speaking, this is no GRUB error. One possible cause is that ACPI is not working correctly but is enabled in the kernel. Try to disable it in the BIOS or in the kernel. Another possible cause is that the kernel has been compressed to a format it does not support for decompression, such as LZO requiring LZO_DECOMPRESS.

Situation
When booting the system, a GRUB prompt appears instead of a list of entries that were defined in the file.

Solution
Mount the boot partition and verify if the file exists.

Also make sure that the symbolic link exists:

If not, recreate the symbolic link:

If this is the case, reinstall GRUB:

Situation
When running during the GRUB installation, the following error appears:

Solution
Check that the following wasn't forgotten:

Situation
After hitting the  key at the GRUB menu during the system boot, the system reboots.

Solution
Try disabling framebuffer support in the kernel. If this does not help, disable APM and ACPI.

Situation
After hitting  at the GRUB menu during system boot, the screen blanks out, but the system is responsive (for instance, the numlock LED is switchable).

Solution
Turn off framebuffer (typically remove  from ) and check the processor architecture in the kernel config.

Situation
When booting the system, the spiffy Gentoo splash screen is not seen.

Solution
First of all check if the splash screen file that is being are referred to in really exists. If that is the case, go and check the GRUB ebuild. Maybe the patch for the splash image is commented out in the version that is being used.

Situation
After selecting the Windows entry, the system refuses to boot without any clear reason as to why.

Solution
cyrillic provides information that it is possible to "map" the disks in a different order by changing 's Windows entry like so:

Situation
The situation described below is only relevant for grub-0.95.x at the moment of installing GRUB at the boot sector.

Solution
This is a known bug related to this problem and has been fixed in grub-0.96. It is also known that grub-0.94-r1 and grub-0.94-r2 should work correctly. If that fails too, try to emerge grub-static which is currently stable on and unstable on  and. Check out for additional information.