[Solved] Urgent help needed with boot loader

[DrunknMunky]

I really need some urgent help here.

I was attempting to install Ubuntu 10.10 onto my HDD which already has SL & Win7 installed. I installed SL first and then Win7 later using EasyBCD.

Tonight I wanted to install Ubuntu 10.10 onto another partition, however I decided against it as it would mess with EFI & Gpart.

This is how far I got with the process before deciding against it:
I used OS X Disk Utility to create a free partition.
Booted into Ubuntu & ran the installation choosing Advanced so I can pick the correct partition.
I choose EXT4 format and picked the root for it as SDA05 as the partition.

However Ubuntu wouldn't let me, I'm guessing because it wanted to install the boot loader to root.

So I backed out of the Live CD & restarted my pc. Now I'm stuck at "Loading Operating System...".

It never moves past this screen & when I use Tony's iBoot disc, I can use EFI to select my Win7 & OS X installs, but neither boot.

Please help!!

 

[humph]

Re: Urgent help needed with boot loader

So what happens when you do select OSX in iBoot?

 

[DrunknMunky]

Re: Urgent help needed with boot loader

It boots into verbose mode but eventually gets stuck.

I wish I could tell you all the messages it outputs but they go by too quickly and there is more than 1 error.

 

[DrunknMunky]

Re: Urgent help needed with boot loader

I've tried using the OS X install disc to repair the partition, which it said was successful, but it still won't let me boot from the HDD.

I've also tried to use Terminal from the OS X install disc so I could install Chamelon from a USB stick, but it won't let me run the sudo command or let me change to the directory on the USB.

When I try to change the startup disk from OS X install disc I get:

"you can't change the startup disk to the selected disk, the bless tool was unable to set the current boot disk"

One of the errors I haven't seen before in verbose is...

"mount: realpath /none: no such file or directory"

 

[humph]

Re: Urgent help needed with boot loader

So, sounds like 2 problems:
1-Bootloader on HD is missing/corrupt. But even worse:
2-Something in the install is messed up, else you'd be able to boot it via iBoot.

Whilst there may be convoluted ways to fix, may be easier to reinstall.

Not being able to "startup" via the OSX DVD is normal. only works on real macs.

 

[DrunknMunky]

Re: Urgent help needed with boot loader

Luckily I have a spare HDD, so it was easy to just copy everything over. I really shouldn't have been messing with it. Came at a really bad time when I needed the computer to complete my dissertation for uni this week.

Good ol' MacBook to the rescue though

Everything is back up & running how it was on my OS X install. Gotta install Win7 again and then download all my Steam games Around 250GB worth iirc :

I'd still be interested in finding a way to solve it, if it's possible. I've kept the drive in the same state for now, until I can work on it when I have more time. I'll maybe resurrect this topic one day with a solution.

 

[DrunknMunky]

Re: Urgent help needed with boot loader

Well I got it working. I had some free time this afternoon and was contemplating the triple boot with OS X, Windows and Linux. I'm unsure of trying again though until I do some more reading on changes between 10.4 and 10.10.

Anyway, on to how I got it working...

When I attempted to install Linux, I must not have checked the location of the boot loader under the advanced menu. By default Linux will try to install to /dev/sda (which of course is the location of EFI, where Chameleon is stored).

Why iBoot doesn't work, I don't know. What I do know is that the differences between chameleon on iBoot and a proper install to the HDD are the key to getting back into the OS X install.

When I tried to use iBoot a few weeks ago on the disk, it would scroll through the verbose mode and eventually get stuck. When I tried to boot into the Windows partition it would only blink the cursor.

I gave up because I didn't have the time to play with it back then. Fast forward to today and I have a new hard drive in my PC with OS X 10.6.6 and Windows 7 installed and working perfectly. Because Chameleon is installed on the EFI of this second disk, it allows me to boot into the original OS X install. Before I wasn't able to do this at all, not with iBoot, or with Terminal from Snow Leopard's disc, nothing.

Knowing that the install is fine I downloaded MultiBeast, unmounted the new hard drive (just in case ), installed Chameleon. Voila, it works.

I only wish I did this at the beginning because I deleted the Windows partition with all my games and I then had to re-download them.

Hope this helps someone in the future and always double check the boot loader location for Linux