On Sun, Sep 29, 2013 at 09:00:00AM +1000, Terry Duell wrote:
> here is the disc layout
> Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
> /dev/sda1            2048    40962047    20480000   83  Linux
> /dev/sda2        40962048   229378047    94208000    5  Extended
> /dev/sda3       229378048   234440703     2531328   82  Linux swap /  
> Solaris
> /dev/sda5        40964096   229378047    94206976   83  Linux
> 
> I thought I'd try "mount /dev/sda2 /mnt/boot" just to see what happens,  
> and when I do I get...
> "mount: you must specify the filesystem type" , so thought it best to not  
> separately mount /mnt/boot

it looks like your /boot IS just a subdirectory on / but can you post a
copy of your /etc/fstab ?


> went through the whole process, purged grub and reinstalled.
> "apt-get install grub" says it is going to install grub-legacy, which  
> doesn't seem right, so installed grub-pc instead, but at the end of the  

yep, grub-pc is correct. mint's grub package must be slightly different
to debian's, on my debian sid machine it depends on grub-pc rather than
grub-legacy.

does this computer have a traditional BIOS or is it UEFI? since the disk
doesn't have a gpt partition table and you don't have a small FAT32 efi
partition on the disk, i'll guess traditional bios...but it's worth
confirming that.

> installation it pops up a screen asking if I want grub installed on  
> /dev/sda (and displayed ???) or /dev/sda1 (which it thought was /),  
> neither worked, so I had to try a manual install, which said no errors.

installing to /dev/sda is what you want - install into the master boot
record (MBR)

> On reboot, I have the "grub>" prompt.

can you attach a copy of your /boot/grub/grub.cfg or upload it to a
pastebin site ?

there are dozens of pastebin sites around. http://bash.nopaste.dk/ or
http://pastebin.com/ are two of many.


> was it correct to install grub-pc, or should I have installed grub-legacy?

grub-pc 

the only reason to install grub-legacy is if you already have it installed
and really don't want to upgrade for some reason.

there's no good technical reason for doing so (in fact, lots of good
technical reasons for upgrading to grub2), just personal
choice.

craig

-- 
craig sanders <[email protected]>
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