Got grub> after new installation. What next?

[jeremy1701]

Re: Got grub> after new installation. What next?

That's odd that the problem returned, but understandable after an update. You did

sudo update-grub

followed by

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

??

I would go for the bigger harddrive and partition part of it for Kubuntu, but that's my personal preference and what I do on my laptop. I've never had any issues with Grub until recently, when I decided to do some repartitioning on my own (and which is where I've subsequently learned all about grub> commands).

btw... You can d/l a LiveCD of gPartD here:
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/livecd.php

[Garth]

Re: Got grub> after new installation. What next?

It's an IDE drive inside a notebook, so there is only one drive fitted. On 2.5" drives you don't get the choice of making them master or slave as there is always only one drive fitted at a time, and there is only one connecting lead. The hard disc now with Kubuntu installed used to have XP and this booted flawlessly.

In theory you can place a second drive inside an external caddy such as a USB enclosure (such as I have). Also the IBM Thinkpad T range has an Ultrabay which can take a variety of devices if you have the correct caddy, such as a floppy drive, DVD/CD drive, second battery, or a second hard disc which makes this particular design very versatile. When trying out Kubuntu on my Thinkpad, I only have the one hard drive installed.

In the IBM Thinkpad BIOS, you have the choice (as on a desktop PC) of booting from a hard disc or a CDROM (when fitted), so to install Kubuntu from the live CD I set the Thinkpad to boot from the CD, then changed this to boot from the hard disc later, as you would on a desktop.

A few days ago I also installed Ubuntu to dualboot with XP on a desktop PC and this was very straightforward.

And yes Jeremy - I did the sudo update-grub followed by sudo grub-install etc. in that order. I assume that if I do go for the dual-boot option, Kubuntu install will then give me a boot option to Kubuntu or XP.

[Garth]

Re: Got grub> after new installation. What next?

An update. I've now re-formatted the hard disc, installed Windows XP from scratch on 2 partitions (as is my practice), then installed Kubuntu from the live CD, and still get the grub> prompt straight away when I boot. And yes, it did boot directly to XP when this was the only op system present. I should of course get a choice of Windows and Kubuntu.

[Snowhog]

Re: Got grub> after new installation. What next?

You should not be having this amount of trouble setting up a dual-boot system with Windowx XP and Linux.

Do you know about The definitive dual-booting guide: Windows 7, Linux, Vista and XP step-by-step?

[Garth]

Re: Got grub> after new installation. What next?

Yes, I've done exactly as the instructions said.

I should also add that I've installed XP and Ubuntu 10.10 on a desktop PC several weeks ago and this has worked perfectly and will also dual-boot with no problem. It's only the Thinkpad notebook I've had a problem with.

[Snowhog]

Re: Got grub> after new installation. What next?

On the drive that 'only has' Kubuntu - the 160Gb - was that HDD completely formatted before you began this adventure? What OS was on it prior to installing Kubuntu?

Do you have a GParted LiveCD? Booting into it and reviewing exactly what partitions exist and which is set as bootable would be informative.

From what you are describing, it almost sounds like something is overwriting the mbr after Grub has been installed there, but not right away. Interesting.

[dibl]

Re: Got grub> after new installation. What next?

Some BIOSs require the "boot" flag be set on a partition, for it to be "seen" as bootable. I have an Intel motherboard that is that way. AMI BIOS doesn't seem to care. Linux doesn't care, but if the BIOS needs it, you'll have to set the flag.

When you install Windows, it sets the "boot" flag on its partition. When you later install Linux, it does not change the boot flag. So maybe if you use GParted and un-set the flag on the Windows partition, and set it on the Kubuntu partition, you could possibly get a different result.

[Garth]

Re: Got grub> after new installation. What next?

To summarise: on the IBM Thinkpad in question, I now have one 160 Gb hard disc. This originally ran Windows XP SP3 formatted as NTFS. I then re-formatted the whole disc, installed Ubuntu briefly but clearly the old Thinkpad struggled to run this. I then installed Kubuntu which just came to a grub> prompt - see above for the whole story, then got some help from this forum.

I then re-formatted the whole disc (again), installed Windows XP SP3 in 2 partitions (one for programs, one for data) and this worked OK. I've since installed Kubuntu 10.10 (again) from the live CD, and again it now boots to the grub> prompt with no boot menu. It will run Kubuntu slowly from the live CD.

I've now run Gparted from a CD. This shows:
Partition /dev/sda1 ntfs Windows programs 19.53 Gb Flag = "boot"
Partition /dev/sda2 ntfs Windows data 65.01 Gb
Partition /dev/sda3 extended 64.51 Gb
Partition /dev/sda5 ext4 63.04 Gb
Partition /dev/sda6 linux-swap 1.46 Gb

I assume therefore that Kubuntu has been installed in sda5 but as the flag is set to "boot" from Windows then this should boot anyway - but isn't doing so.

I then changed boot from sda1 to sda5 using Gparted but the thinkpad still booted to grub>

I've now followed the Gparted help to locate the grub stage1 file by entering "grub" at the commend line, followed by the commands "find /boot/grub/stage1" and also "find /grub/stage1". Both returned error 15: File not found.

[dibl]

Re: Got grub> after new installation. What next?

as the flag is set to "boot" from Windows then this should boot anyway - but isn't doing so.

No. Grub reads the /boot/grub/grub.cfg file (if it can find it). But, with a boot flag set on /dev/sda1, there's no grub.cfg file there, so Grub comes up empty. I think you have to change the boot flag to /dev/sda5.

[oshunluvr]

Re: Got grub> after new installation. What next?

You've got the older version of Gparted iso there. It's using grub-legacy and Kubuntu 9 and above use grub 2 (aka grub-pc). Point being, don't try to update grub from the Gparted disk.

I see several possible areas of issue: old laptop + new OS + new grub + old drive interface (IDE) + new disk format (ext4) = trouble.

Without actually seeing your grub.cfg file, we have to assume it's properly configured. Just to be sure, since you've re-installed and moved things around, you're still trying to run kubuntu from /dev/sda5 ?

If you can boot manually to your kubuntu partition, do

sudo grub-install --root-directory=/ /dev/sda5

Note that this is different from the earlier command slightly. If you cannot boot to your installed kubuntu, boot to the liveCD and create a mount point for /dev/sda5 and mount it. Then substitute your target mount directory for / in the above command.

After this your /boot/grub/grub.cfg file should have something like this as it's first stanza:

#

## BEGIN /etc/grub.d/10_linux ###
menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 2.6.32-26-generic' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os {
    recordfail
    insmod ext4
    insmod part_msdos
    set root='(hd1,msdos2)'
    search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set f059f450-bcaf-4eaf-9241-8090b6b65d17
    linux  /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-26-generic root=UUID=f059f450-bcaf-4eaf-9241-8090b6b65d17 ro  quiet
    initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-26-generic
}

Assuming this is correct and you're still getting grub>, try adding rootdelay=90 to your linux /boot/vmlinuz line.

You could also try apm=off and/or acpi=off to eliminate some possible bios issues.

Have you looked into a bios update?

If you get to the point of reinstalling yet again, you might try using ext3 or reiserfs instead of ext4 (it still has bugs) just to eliminate that as the problem. I'd also be interested to know if any eariler version of kubuntu would boot without problems.

[Garth]

Re: Got grub> after new installation. What next?

Latest is that I booted into Kubuntu once from the grub> prompt by inputting:
linux (hd0,msdos5)/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda5
initrd (hd0,msdos5)/initrd.img
boot

Then at a terminal prompt I did:
sudo update-grub
sudo grub-install --root-directory=dev/sda5 /dev/sda
Both commands executed without error.

A reboot has now given me "error: out of disc"(??) and a grub rescue> prompt.

At this stage, unless anyone has any more bright ideas, I will refit my Windows XP 320 Gb hard disc and live with it. I've spent ages just trying to get Kubuntu to boot properly, leaving me with little time to actually try it out. And people complain about running Windows!!!

[Snowhog]

Re: Got grub> after new installation. What next?

sudo grub-install --root-directory=dev/sda5 /dev/sda

I believe that your syntax above is incorrect. It should reflect:

sudo grub-install --root-directory=/dev/sda5 /dev/sda

[Garth]

Re: Got grub> after new installation. What next?

You've got the older version of Gparted iso there. It's using grub-legacy and Kubuntu 9 and above use grub 2 (aka grub-pc). Point being, don't try to update grub from the Gparted disk.

I can only find one Gparted listed on the Gnome website. How can I tell if I have downloaded the wrong one - and if so, have you a link to the grub-2 compatible version?

[dibl]

Re: Got grub> after new installation. What next?

@Garth, do yourself a big favor, and make a Live CD (or USB stick) with this: http://sourceforge.net/projects/part...s/partedmagic/

Latest GParted, plus other helpful utilities.

[jeremy1701]

Re: Got grub> after new installation. What next?

A reboot has now given me "error: out of disc"(??) and a grub rescue> prompt.

Garth, I think you received this error for reason Snowhog posted. Try your steps again using /dev and see if that doesn't fix the problem.

Also, rather then install from the liveCD, why not just install? (I'm assuming you started the liveCD then choose install to disk? There is an option to just install).