Boot Failure. Wifi key lost

[paradox]

I just upgraded to 12.04 and upon rebooting I ended up at the Grub Boot Menu. Selecting any of the options resulted in a message along the lines of No Such Partition. I did see in the terminal when upgrading a warning message to do with grub concerning BLOCKS and BEING A BAD IDEA but unfortunatley cannot remember the exact message. In /boot/grub there were only 2 files gfxblacklist.txt and grubenv. With help from a friend i managed to reinstall grub and it now boots. During installation of grub i again got a similar message about BLOCKS and BEING A BAD IDEA. I also had to redo the wireless connection since the key was 'lost' during upgrade. Can anyone shed any light as to the problems as this also jhappened last time i tried to upgrade?

The computer is partioned as follows
Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders, total 234441648 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x41ab2316

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 2048 39063551 19530752 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 39065598 234440703 97687553 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 39065600 230469631 95702016 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 230471680 234440703 1984512 82 Linux swap / Solaris

[perspectoff]

I'll wager the partition UUIDs and or numbering scheme got changed.

I think the easiest solution will come from re-installing Grub2 from the LiveCD.

sudo grub-install /dev/sda
sudo grub-install /dev/sda5
sudo grub-install /dev/sda1

or some combination of those. Someone else can be more precise (since I use Grub Legacy, mostly, not Grub2, to avoid exactly this kind of problem).

The wireless key always gets overwritten during upgrades, IME. Plus, the key is stored in KWallet, and that can be quirky. I don't use a KWallet password when storing the wireless key, on my laptop, for example, otherwise I end up being prompted for the key constantly.

If I've accidentally set a password for KWallet keys, I erase the KWallet contents and start over.

[doctordruidphd]

As far as GRUB is concerned:

Assuming your system is installed on /dev/sda1, to reinstall grub, you would boot with the LiveCD, get to a konsole terminal, and type:

sudo grub-install /dev/sda --boot-directory=/dev/sda1/boot

[paradox]

Thanks for the advice. I did get it working again with a friends help but was interested to know why the problem occurs. Is it to do with my computer setup or is Kubuntu sometimes flaky when upgrading?

[vw72]

Were you installing from a CD or usb key? I have had, on occasion, the installer pick up the usb key as the boot device (which it was for the installation) and want to install grub there. Of course, then your existing grub is left untouched on the sda but now points to the wrong places.

I usually have only found this to be a problem on certain machines, which makes me think it is bios related and usually only when manually partitioning the drive during the install. The installer does tell you where it is going to install grub, but if you aren't paying attention, it is easy to miss and not change.

I don't know if that is what happened with your install or not, but I'm glad you got it fixed.

[paradox]

Neither it was an upgrade from 11.10 which also suffered the same problem when i upgraded from 11.04

[Snowhog]

Thanks for the advice. I did get it working again with a friends help but was interested to know why the problem occurs. Is it to do with my computer setup or is Kubuntu sometimes flaky when upgrading?

And that help consisted of doing what?

[paradox]

I did the following from a live cd

sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
this assumes your hard drive is sda1

then
sudo mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
sudo mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc
sudo mount --bind /sys /mnt/sys

sudo chroot /mnt

update-grub

sudo grub-install /dev/sda

then do umount in the reverse order

the link my friend found was http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1692144