Hard Drives changed names, Random restarts, GRUB issues, and more

[tuatha1337]

I've been using Kubuntu now for about 2 years and I can say I'm very happy with it. However, in the process, My system has been progressively running into more and more problems as the OS ages, and I don't think that my problem is necessarily with the hardware, as I've replaced almost everything.

My OS is Kubuntu 8.04, kernel 2.6.24-23-generic.

Here are my problems:
1: Recently, for some reason I can't seem to figure out, my hard drives have changed their names and it almost looks like my OS is trying to tell me I have 3 hard drives (one for root and two in Media; 'disk' and 'disk-1' according to Dolphin). I know for a fact I only have a 150GB SATA Raptor drive (from which my OS is running) and a 320GB IDE drive (which contains an old install of Kubuntu, that I haven't gotten around to cleaning out, and a majority of all my important data). Entering 'disk' loops me back around to my 150GB drive where it used to be the 320GB. Entering 'disk-1' takes me into my secondary drive (disk-1 simply wasn't there before this happened). How do I rename my 320GB drive to simply 'disk' and why did my primary drive take 'disk'?

2: When booting up my system, GRUB pops up on the screen and asks me to select what to boot, giving me a long list of my current version of Kubuntu with all other previous versions of Kubuntu that I have since upgraded from as well as the version of Kubuntu which still resides on my 320GB drive. Before I replaced my motherboard a few short minutes ago, it always gave me an 'error 4' when I chose kernel version 2.6.24-23-generic, but not when I chose 2.6.24-21-generic. Any idea why that happened? Also, how do I clean up my boot menu to not display every single version of Kubuntu that is on my computer?

3: Sometimes, when I view video files off of the internet with Kaffeine, it'll attempt to load up then give an error indicating that the specified codec is already installed. This message continues to pop up as I try to download the video again for viewing in Kaffeine until I completely close out Kaffeine and restart it (and even then its a very random hit and miss sort of deal). What's going on here?

4: I'm not sure if I've fixed this problem, as it's the primary reason for my replacing the motherboard, so I'll post later if I find that it happens again. However, on occasion Kubuntu will simply randomly reboot my system; no error messages, no beeps, nor any warning. One moment I'm watching a movie, browsing my library of images, listening to music, browsing the web, or whatever else I might be doing, and the screen suddenly goes blank, the sound turns off, then I hear that oh, so familiar beep indicating that my computer is booting up. I thought this would most likely be an issue with the power supply, but after I upgraded to a higher wattage and more reliable brand (Corsair) and confirmed that the new PSU actually works, I don't think this is the case. Any ideas? Would there be any logs of this in Kubuntu maybe?

5: Another boot-up issue, this one's a relatively new development though... After GRUB initiates Kubuntu, the boot process is interrupted by an error from fsck saying that a disk check could not be initiated or something and directing me to an error log, then it asks me to log in as root check the log, and manually run fsck, and to press Ctrl-D when I'm done so that the boot process can continue. If I try to run fsck manually though, it tells me that running fsck on mounted drives could cause SEVERE damage. I looked for the error log (/var/log/fsck/checkfs) and found that all that is in the contents is this...

Log of fsck -C3 -R -A -a 
Sat Jan 17 12:14:45 2009

fsck 1.40.8 (13-Mar-2008)
/dev/sdb1 is mounted. e2fsck: Cannot continue, aborting.


fsck died with exit status 8

Sat Jan 17 12:14:45 2009
----------------

I should also note that if I try to Same deal here, what happened?

6: Am I doing something wrong to incur the wrath of my OS? Are there diagnostic or system maintenance tools that I'm neglecting to use?

7: EDIT: I just found another issue regarding my hard drive. Apparently now it's write protected, too, so I can't do anything with it but look and listen to what's in it. Argh.

I really am truly sorry to post all this at once, but these all happened in a relatively quick time-frame... I don't expect anyone to respond to all of these issues, just indicate which you are replying to.

[dibl]

Re: Hard Drives changed names, Random restarts, GRUB issues, and more

Yeah, you've got maybe 5 different questions in there, some interdependent on the answers to others, and others independent. For example, spontaneous intermittent rebooting is NOT a software problem -- it's a hardware issue attributable to either a thermal shutdown of the CPU or PSU, or else an intermittent solder joint, probably in the PSU (doesn't matter how new it is, either).

The fact that you just now changed out your motherboard kind of invalidates all the things that you observed with the prior motherboard -- you've got a new BIOS and a new ball game, even though you left your hard drives the same. That would explain, for example, why they "changed their names" -- the new BIOS is not obliged to honor the logic of the one you took out.

I would run in a console session (from any booted Linux including a Live CD)

sudo fdisk -lu

and

sudo blkid

to learn the IDs of the hard drives. It will be obvious from the fdisk output which one is 150G and which one is 320G.

Then, if you need to revise the Grub boot menu, you can follow Qqmike's excellent guidance on that, #3 in the FAQs linked in my signature. There's also a FAQ on partitioning and formatting hard drives, and setting up /etc/fstab to automatically boot the partitions that you want available when you boot Linux.

A different FAQ has guidance on setting up multimedia.

My recommendation is for you to decide which problem is most important, and fix that first. Then do it again with the remaining problems. There is no "simultaneous mass solution" available. One issue per forum post is also a useful way to get some help.