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I am using the Slitaz Installer from the latest rolling-iso to install Slitaz to a SSD Hard disk. The hard disk has two partitions 1GB for swap and the rest for /
Installation happens successfully.
On reboot it fails to boot giving this message
/grub/i386-pc/normal.mod’ not found
and drops to grub rescue> prompt.
Is this a bug in Slitaz Installer?
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Hi
Is the partition / in ext4?
That's maybe the problem, try ext3.
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Yes partition is ext4
But i think the docs say partition can be any format.
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My personal experience is that the trio SliTaz + GRUB + ext4 does not work.
Why? I don't know...
But on my PC everything works with ext3, nothing with ext4.
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Will check out and let you know ... But if it works then this will have to looked at by slitaz developers.
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Yes it worked with ext3.
Bug alert. How do we get the developers to know this and fix it?
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Hello, I can confirm this.
Tried to install slitaz-rolling-core64 on a laptop with SSD & btrfs... On reboot got the "error: /grub/i386-pc/normal.mod not found". I tried again with ext4 ext3 etc... no dice. As a sidenote, with btrfs I can see the contents of (hd0,msdos1)/ from the grub-rescue prompt just fine, with ext4 it says unknown fs.
Looks like /boot/grub/i386-pc/ doesn't get created at install-time. So I rebooted from the ISO, chrooted to the freshly installed Slitaz, looked in /usr/lib/grub and there is indeed a folder named i386-slitaz... I could just cp the contents of this folder to /boot/grub/i386-pc, but there is no normal.mod (nor any .mod file) there so it would do nothing.
/var/log/tazinst.log says the install just went fine, but I'm attaching it anyway.
I was ready to try the 32bit ISO, but I see it has the same glitch...
Greetings,
Victor.
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Hi sagar,
I often had troubles too trying to install a bootloader on an ext4 partition.
Your case seems different. GRUB 2 is installed but does not find its module normal.mod. It seems the /boot/grub/i386-pc is missing.
If you really want to use ext4, maybe you can try this.
After you installed GRUB 2 on your ext4 partition check if /i386-pc is present in /boot/grub. If not, copy it (from /usr/lib/grub in a SliTaz session after you installed the grub2 package) and paste it in /boot/grub in your ext4 partition.
Load modules before to load the kernel, addind
[c]insmod ext2
insmod normal[/c]
just after the title of the entry in grub.cfg.
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Ok will try this also and report back ... What is the command to install/update grub from live to thay hdd partition? The one given in the slitaz manual does not work
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insmod ext2 .... Or ext4
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Hi Ceel,
Please read my previous post again. There is no normal.mod file in /usr/lib/grub (or its subfolders), neither in the installed partition nor in the live ISO. Formatting the target partition with different fs doesn't make a difference.
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@ SnD,
[c]ceel@slitaz:~$ tazpkg search-pkgname normal.mod
Search result for package "normal.mod"
================================================================================
grub2-efi-modules
grub2
================================================================================
2 packages
ceel@slitaz:~$ tazpkg -lf grub2
Installed files by "grub2"
================================================================================
...
/usr/lib/grub/i386-pc/normal.mod
...
================================================================================
623 files[/c]
Maybe you don't find it in your system because you didn't install the grub2 package:
[c]tazpkg -r grub4dos-linux[/c]
then
[c]tazpkg -gi grub2[/c]
and look again.
@sagar
insmod ext2
to access to ext3/ext4 partitions. Not sure it is absolutly necessary; it depends how grub2 has been compiled. I just needed once with another distro... But it isn't more expensive ;-)
What is the command to install/update grub from live to thay hdd partition?
Remove grub4dos
[c]# tazpkg -r grub4dos-linux[/c]
and install grub2
[c]# tazpkg -gi grub2[/c]
(the two packages use some files with identical names)
Then (say your HD is sda) ¹
[c]# grub-install /dev/sda[/c]
Install grub2 after you installed SliTaz so the [c]/boot[/c] directory will be already created.
The one given in the slitaz manual does not work
Does the command return an error message?
¹ EDIT: Read this post before to install GRUB 2.
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Will try and post back ..
But will Slitaz fix this issue in comming rolling or this will not be fixed?
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Umm, I think i'm not being clear enough?
Expected behaviour: install Slitaz, reboot from HDD, get a working system.
Current behaviour: install Slitaz, reboot from HDD, got the GRUB error described by sagar.
If having to "remove" grub4dos-linux & "install" grub2 on the live ISO session _before_ invoking Tazinst is now needed, that's not okay. Because previous Slitaz releases installed just fine.
Bug alert, indeed...
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@ SnD,
Umm, I think i'm not being clear enough?
Yes. 
Expected behaviour: install Slitaz, reboot from HDD, get a working system.
And that's what happens. No issue here.
Current behaviour: install Slitaz, reboot from HDD, got the GRUB error described by sagar.
SliTaz ISOs are build with the grub4dos-linux package installed. When you hook [c]Install a bootloader[/c] in TazPanel, the SliTaz installer will install grub4dos in the MBR of your target and will copy the /usr/lib/grub folder of the running distro in /boot of your target.
The SliTaz installer allows you to install SliTaz on an ext4 partition but I think grub4dos and grub legacy (maybe I'm wrong?) do not support ext4. So, in this case you musn't hook [c]Install a bootloader[/c].
I haven't been clear myself: when I write "if you really want to use ext4, remove grub4dos and install grub2", understand you have to use grub2 with ext4 (or another bootloader that supports it) ; and when I write "run grub-install /dev/sda", understand you have to install grub2 by yourself. The SliTaz installer is not able to install GRUB 2 correctly (will create a menu.lst config file instead grub.cfg with syntaxes for GRUB4DOS)
Maybe (certainly) we have to improve the documentation about this. I'll do it, later... I'd like to finish first the third part of the UEFI doc and I have really few time.
Have a nice week end!
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@ Sagar
When you install the grub2 package you can see at the end of the installation this message:
[c]# To install grub to your sda MBR
grub-install /dev/sda
# To generate a configuration file
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg[/c]
[c]grub-install /dev/sda[/c] will install grub2 on the MBR of sda but will install /usr/lib/grub folder and its subfolders in the /boot directory of the running distribution.
To install GRUB 2 correctly on your hard disk (say sda) after you formated it and installed SliTaz, follow these steps:
[*]# mount the target
[c]mount /dev/sda /mnt[/c]
[*]and then install GRUB 2
[c]# grub-install --root=/mnt /dev/sda[/c]
[*]create a configuration file [c]grub.cfg[/c] for GRUB 2
(I always create the configuration file with a text editor and never with the command [c]# grub-mkconfig -o /mnt/boot/grub/grub.cfg[/c] so I can't say what will be the result)
No need to [c]insmod[/c] normal and ext2, all will work fine without it.
The good news: it's now possible to install GRUB 2 on an ext4 partition without having error messages such
[c]Installing for i386-pc platform.
/proc/devices: No entry for device-mapper found
/proc/devices: No entry for device-mapper found
/proc/devices: No entry for device-mapper found
grub-install: warning: your embedding area is unusually small. core.img won't fit in it..
grub-install: error: embedding is not possible, but this is required for cross-disk install.[/c]
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