Feisty install on Intel DG965SS does not boot from hard disk

[Ulisses Montenegro]

I have a Intel DG965SS (which uses the Intel 965 chipset, which was not fully supported before kernel 2.6.18) and a WDC WD2500JS-60N SATA-2 hard disk. The BIOS is configured for AHCI mode, and the drive shows up without any problems during the partioning and grub setup in the install process. However, after removing the CD and rebooting the machine, grub does not show up. If I boot once again from the Live CD, I can run grub, type

grub> root (hd,[tab]

and I see the correct list of partitions, which should mean grub is detecting my hard disk properly. I then run "setup (hd0)", grub does not report any errors at all, but another reboot and once again the machine complains about no OS installed.

I am able to boot into the system using the Live CD "Boot from Hard Disk" option, and it even shows up the grub screen while loading the kernel from the hard disk. However, I cannot boot at all without using the Live CD.

ProblemType: Bug
Date: Fri Mar 2 14:57:21 2007
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 7.04
Uname: Linux gimli 2.6.20-9-generic #2 SMP Mon Feb 26 03:01:44 UTC 2007 i686 GNU/Linux

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Could you please add the master boot record from your hard drive to your bug report? One way to do this is via the command 'dd if=/dev/hda bs=512 count=1 of=mbr' and then attach mbr to your bug report. Please be mindful of this command as you could overwrite your mbr. Thanks in advance.

[Ulisses Montenegro (urma)]

Sorry it took so long to reply, I don't even know if this bug has been addressed through other reporters or not, but here follows the MBR dump.

[Brian Murray (brian-murray)]

Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Now that the final version of Feisty Fawn is available we were wondering if this issue still exists. Thanks in advance.

[Ulisses Montenegro (urma)]

I have installed both Ubuntu 7.04 and Kubunutu 7.04 (which I believe
makes no difference since both use the same grub package), and can
confirm that neither of them is able to boot directly from the hard
disk -- I still need to keep the install CD on the drive and select
"Boot from first hard disk" whenever I need to reboot my machine.

An updated copy of the MBR is attached.

Thanks a lot for your time,
Ulisses

On 5/16/07, Brian Murray <email address hidden> wrote:
> Thanks for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu
> better. Now that the final version of Feisty Fawn is available we were
> wondering if this issue still exists. Thanks in advance.
>
> --
> Feisty install does not boot from hard disk
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/89279
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>

--
"Saying that Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying
that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders"
http://bash.org/?338364

[Visa Jokelainen (visaj)]

I have exactly the same problem - although not in Feisty.
My old hard drive broke and I got a new one, a Western Digital Scorpio (WD1200BEVE).

I first installed Win XP on it and everything worked fine. Then I installed Arch Linux from 2008.3 image and wrote Grub to the mbr. Next all I got was "invalid system hard disk" when I tried to boot on the drive. I figured I did something wrong in the installation and installed Ubuntu 8.10 Beta. The installation went fine again, and I wrote grub to mbr again, but it didn't help - the system wouldn't boot on the hd.

However, using the "Boot From First Hard Disk" option on the Live CD boot menu works for me too - I get the Grub menu and can boot to Ubuntu and XP from there.

[Jelloir (j-mesrobertson)]

I found this bug report after googling and not finding a solution, so I thought i would post it here.

I also have an Intel DG965SS and had the exact same issues as you mentioned when trying to install Debian. The solution turned out ot be very simple.

You need to mark the partitions on your disk/s as bootable. On Debian you can do this during install (I haven't installed Ubuntu for a while so don't know if you can in Ubuntu).

Alternatively once your booted into your system using the livecd method you mentioned just use fdisk, e.g.

fdisk /dev/sda
Press "a"
Press "1"
Press "w"

This sets partition 1 as bootable (assuming thats the partition you want to boot) and then the bios on the motherboard picks this up and boots the system.

This is the first time I have ever needed to mark a partition as bootable so not sure why this mobo is so different.

Cheers

[Thomas Hotz (thotz-deactivatedaccount)]

Is this also true in Ubuntu 12.04 LTS. Thank you for helping us!