GRUB INSTALLATION PROBLEM

[vadi01]

I just installed Rosa ee edition.
Installation to live usb was okay.
However when it came to selecting which partition i need to install grub too, i just selected the default /dev/sda5
(options were (dev/sda, dev/sda1, dev/sda2, dev/sda3, dev/sda4, dev/sda5).
Rebooting gives a blank sreen with GRUB error.
I had to reinstall ROSA and manually select /dev/sda and everything was okay after this.
I think you should solve this issue or inform users on GRUB selection process especially now that many users prefer dual boot OS.
This issue does not occur in Fedora or Ubuntu.

[PastorDi]

No. The user must know the device hard drive. Check out these links Hard disk, Disk partition, Master boot record, Multi-boot, Multi-boot specification and etc.
In the Fedora and Ubuntu is all hidden from the user - and this is very bad. Because if in automatic mode fails, then your hard drive can go bad.

[aram]

If you want grub to be the main bootloader in your PC, you should load to /dev/sda, rather than /dev/sda5. For grub2, a small mini partition is also required to be created, i think.

[netean]

Sorry to make this my first post, because I absolutley LOVE this distribution. But he's right the grub installer is shockingly poor.
It's been a long time since I'd use a Madriva Dirsto (last time they were still Mandrake!) and I'd forgotten just how very very user friendly and un-geeky it is. Rosa builds on this fantastically and it's a joy to use. .... But the boot loader just does NOT work.

For a start. I have 2 machines that I'm TRYING to install it on. 64bit and 32bit. the 64bit already has a linux distro on it, so I already have 3 partitions at then end. Rosa decided to use other portion. It formatted and did it thing. I took no part. yet it finished installing I reboot and nothing... no bootable system. Hours and hours later, i reinstall, manually formatting and creating partitions I manually install grub to HDA and reboot... and still nothing. However, my point is that, if the installer does it for me, it should either be clear about how and where to install to grub.. giving me a very clear and human friendly decision (linux hard drive assignments are NOT user friendly). Or else it should just do what it thinks will work. I'd rather it installed grub and allowed me to boot SOMETHING, even if that meant losing the installer for something else, at least I'd have some Operating system to use..

Secondly, I've installed 100s of Linux distros and it's only today that I learn that GRub2, requires a small partition on the hard drive for itself. First of all, I''m not aware of instaling grub3 before, I'm sure I have, but I don't care what the boot loader is as long as it works (and 99.9% of the time up until now, it does).
But it shouldn't need me to know how it installs itself. I am potentially installing a brand new operating system, how am I supposed to know how it works? (in truth, you might think you know, but every distro is different).

Again, sorry for this being my first post, it was a frustrating night !!!

I've since managed to boot into my install using the rescue disk, and spent hours trying to get grub to install, it just doesn't.
On my 32bit machine, it's the only OS, yet I still can't get grub to install so that I can boot it.. i've been trying for 2 days..

That's got to say something about how much I like this OS.. But in *cough* nearly 20 years of installing every operating system I can find. this is without a doubt the worst installer I've ever used.

The rest of the OS is so so lovely, please go look at any and every other mainstream distro out there. They just work, with little or user intereaction (nor demand any expert geek knowledge) Ubuntu might doing that hideous and awful Unity desktiop, but their installer and their boot loader are just superb. As is Fedora, Mint, PearPC, Chakra, Backtrack, Pinguy NST, Puppy etc etc.