Bug 193075 – gui installer fails at grub stage

• Product: Gentoo Release Media
• Status: RESOLVED NEEDINFO

[Description Jeremy Johnson 2007-09-19 15:54:25 UTC]

Trying to install 2007.0 LiveCD networkless install on Dell PIII 500MHz 686meg ram. When the gui installer reaches the stage for grub-install, it says FATAL ERROR and quits, referencing /tmp/install.log (should be /var/tmp/install.log)

Anyhow, when I look at /boot/grub I see that there is only grub.conf.sample
So I manually edited a grub.conf for a dual boot Windows98/Gentoo system with:
/dev/hda1 /Win98
/dev/hda2 /boot
/dev/hda3 swap
/dev/hda4 ext partition
/dev/hda5 /home
/dev/hda6 /

grub couldn't seem to recognize my device partitions
grub> root (hd0,1)
grub> no such device

So I then tried the following which worked:
grub> find /grub/stage1
grub> root (hd0,1)
grub> setup (hd0)
grub> quit

After sucessfully installing grub into mbr I was then able to boot to Windows and Gentoo. Unfortunately, Gentoo gui installer never got to the package selection section, so that I had no X, Gnome, KDE, etc. I couldn't figure out how to manually install the GRP packages from the LiveCD (where are they?). Nor could I run the package selection/installation module manually as the python programs in /mnt/cdrom/opt/installer do not seem designed to run independently;
i.e. I have to run the gui installer from scratch to get the package selection module to run (but the gui installer always fails at the grub stage, even if I've successfully installed/configured grub and booted to a working linux kernel). The online GRP was closed for a security review, so I've ordered a NIC from Hong Kong. When it arrives, I'll try a traditional manual install which I've done successfully before. I would have tried out the 2006 LiveCD but it doesn't have the Santa Cruz Audigy sound card driver which the 2007.0 CD has.

The 2007.0 LiveCD correctly recognized all the devices for my computer and loaded the appropriate modules without error, and booted up to a nice Gnome session (which contrasted sharply with the old Windows98 software). Unfortunately both the gui and gtk+ installers are broken, and I could not figure out how to fix these installer problems.

[Comment 1 Andrew Gaffney (RETIRED) 2007-11-16 21:41:42 UTC]

Can't do anything without the install.log