[nflug] GRUB error 18

Cyber Source peter at thecybersource.com
Thu Mar 6 21:40:07 EST 2008


Whatever the bios is told as a boot device, if it's a hard drive, it 
will go to "first" partition on that drive that has a "boot" flag (fdisk 
-l), it will be the partition with a "*" declared.
First off, I would suspect a problem with the CHS (cylinder,head,sector) 
geometry that the drive has or is being interpreted by the bios as, to 
the kernel.
Second off, I would think it's how the stanzas are written and the 
UUID's (always a problem I've seen) are being used. Try changing to the 
actual drive /dev use.
Tell me those things and I'll tell you my reasoning later, if 
applicable, sorry lazy typer.....
Steve Petersen wrote:
> Hi NFLUGgers,
>
> I've been using some form of linux for about 10 years, but I'm still a 
> newbie in many ways, and I wonder if you can help me.  For some time 
> now my home desktop computer - which has Ubuntu 7.10 on it and nothing 
> else - won't boot any of the more recent kernels the update-manager 
> downloads.  It gives me
>
>     Error 18:  selected cylinder exceeds maximum supported by BIOS
>
>
> until I choose in GRUB an old enough kernel that BIOS can reach, 
> apparently.  I don't know if I have a separate boot partition; it's 
> however Ubuntu set it up default.  (No separate boot partition shows 
> up on the 'mount' command - but would it?)  I also don't know what my 
> motherboard is - that's where the BIOS lives, right?  As you see I'm 
> still pretty ignorant of some basic computing concepts.
>
> Anyway this has been going on for over a year, probably, but the 
> kernel's old enough now that (without good evidence either way) I'm 
> starting to worry it'll be sub-optimal in noticeable ways.  It's 
> 2.6.17-10-generic, though /boot lists versions as recent as 
> 2.6.22-14-generic.
>
> Thanks in advance for any help or thoughts.
>
> Steve
>
> -- 
>
> http://stevepetersen.net
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