Sorry for the flooding but my investigations is goin' further into the problem.

Looking at the content of /boot
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root   160270 Oct  5 11:58 config-4.2.3-300.fc23.x86_64
drwxr-xr-x. 4 root root     4096 Oct 29 17:26 efi
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root   184380 Oct 21  2014 elf-memtest86+-5.01
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root     4096 Oct 29 17:23 extlinux
drwxr-xr-x. 6 root root     4096 Dec 23 15:18 grub2
-rw-rw-r--. 1 root root 52373550 Dec 22 23:07 initramfs-0-rescue-4f585391395b40e3823bebd86a3e6c01.img
-rw-rw-r--. 1 root root 17771095 Dec 22 23:07 initramfs-4.2.3-300.fc23.x86_64.img
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root   571817 Oct 29 17:27 initrd-plymouth.img
drwx------. 2 root root    16384 Dec 22 23:01 lost+found
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root   182704 Oct 21  2014 memtest86+-5.01
-rw-------. 1 root root  3152021 Oct  5 11:58 System.map-4.2.3-300.fc23.x86_64
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root  5977368 Dec 22 23:07 vmlinuz-0-rescue-4f585391395b40e3823bebd86a3e6c01
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root  5977368 Oct  5 11:59 vmlinuz-4.2.3-300.fc23.x86_64

 it seems that initrd for tmy kernel is missing and also tryin' to manually boot from the grub menu let the system fail.

My impression is that the whole fedora installation tool failed and I' ve a partial system but I can' t find more on this. I' m quite ready to give up and try to install a different flavor of linux.

Walter

On Wed, Dec 23, 2015 at 4:05 PM, Walter Cazzola <cazzola@di.unimi.it> wrote:
Hi.
I've done some attempts and following a guide for ubunto I got some improvements.

At the moment  the normal.mod is in the boot partition and I'm not starting with the grub2 rescue terminal but with still the selection menu doesn' t appear and the system doesn' t boot.

At the moment the system get stuck on:
   grub2>
prompt.

I dug a littel in the system and
   - the boot flag still points to the sda2 (the dell recopvery partition) instead of the one with /boot partition (sda5)
   - in /etc there is a grub2.cfg file that it is a dangling link to /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
probably both of these points are part of the problem.

Looking around I found some guides about ubunto (e.g., https://www.linux.com/learn/tutorials/776643-how-to-rescue-a-non-booting-grub-2-on-linux/) that uses an update-grub command to create the boot loader but I can' t find anything like that for fedora. What I'm I doing wrong now?

Walter

On Wed, Dec 23, 2015 at 1:08 PM, Doug H. <fedoraproject.org@wombatz.com> wrote:
On Wed, 2015-12-23 at 11:48 -0500, Walter Cazzola wrote:
> Hi 
> few more questions inline with your reply.

>  chroot /mnt/sysimage
> what should sysimage be? is this a file in the /boot partition? I
> don't have any file with this name in /boot

Historically (and currently I think), the rescue/repair option for the
Fedora CD & DVD is to look for a Fedora install and then mount it in
/mnt/sysimage.  So there would be a /mnt/sysimage/boot for example.
Thus you can do `chroot /mnt/sysimage` and the shell will act like you
are simply logged into the Fedora system.  Things would work as if you
had booted normally into the Fedora system.  That allows you to do
maintenance using the same full paths as "normal".


> >  fdisk /dev/sda
> >  Command (m for help): a
> >  Partition number ([snip] default x): 5
> >  Command (m for help): w
> >  The partition table has been altered.
> >  Calling ioctl() to re-read partition table.
> do the numbers already refer to my partitions or I've to change
> something? what should this do?

I ran an fdisk on a temp loopfile and then altered the output to show
"5" since I think that is the partition that I think might need to be
bootable.  What that does is to make partition 5 the boot/bootable
partition.  I don't really know how that works at a deeper level and I
have little experience with efi so far.  My suggestions are based on
the idea that your bios setup is presenting a traditional/older system
type.


> >  grub2-install /dev/sda
> if this doesn't work can I go back to the previous situation? if yes
> how?

The above assumes that your Windows boot utility has already been
messed with and is not usable at the moment.  If that is true then I am
not even sure you need to do the grub2-install but it seems like it
would not make it worse.

But again I don't feel comfortable suggesting these actions unless we
get some community support for it.

--
Doug H.



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