Got grub> after new installation. What next?

[Garth]

I'm extremely new to Kubuntu but decided to install 10.10 onto my old IBM Thinkpad, taking up the whole disc. The installation from the live CD seemed to go well, but on reboot I just get the grub> prompt. What do I do next?

Remember - I'm a total newbie so no very long words please!!!

Regards,

Garth

[Jonas]

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

I'm extremely new to Kubuntu but decided to install 10.10 onto my old IBM Thinkpad, taking up the whole disc. The installation from the live CD seemed to go well, but on reboot I just get the grub> prompt. What do I do next?

Remember - I'm a total newbie so no very long words please!!!

Regards,

Garth

Hello and welcome to KFN!

I'm not sure I'll be able to help you but I'm quite certain that someone here will be. You'll need to give as much information about your hardware according to this post (and beow).

You shouldn't be promted into GRUB>, it seems to me that there was some error(s) when installing. Did the liveCD/USB/wubi-installer work as intended? The hardware information is vital to resolve your problem.

B.R
Jonas

Welcome to KFN. You're about to post in the Help the New Guy board.

Please include the following information in your posts:

What release of Kubuntu you are using.
Don't know? Press Alt+F2 then type konsole and at the prompt type cat /etc/lsb-release | grep DISTRIB_RELEASE=
If Kubuntu is installed, is it installed 'inside' of Windows (Wubi installation).
What version of KDE you are using.
Don't know? Press Alt+F2 then type dolphin then click on Help > About KDE
What version of Grub you are using.
Don't know? Press Alt+F2 then type konsole and at the prompt type apt-cache show grub | grep ersion
What other Operating Systems are installed.

Information about your PC:

Type (Desktop or laptop)
CPU (Central Processor Unit) make (Intel, AMD, ?) and whether 32-bit, 64-bit, or ?
Don't know? Press Alt+F2 and type konsole and at the prompt type lscpu
GPU (Graphics Processor Unit) manufacturer and model
Don't know? Press Alt+F2 and type konsole and at the prompt type lspci | grep aphic
RAM (how much installed)
HDs (number of and type internal - number of and type external)
Optical Drives (number of and type internal - number of and type external)

This information, when provided, saves everyone a lot of time, and possibly wasted effort, when attempting to assist you with your question/inquiry/problem.

[Garth]

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

Hardware details:
IBM Thinkpad laptop T22 with 512 Kb Memory, Hitachi 7,200 rpm 160 Gb hard disc, 900 Mhz Pentium processor, built in 2000 and runs Windows XP happily but relatively slowly. I also have a 320 Gb hard disc which has Windows XP installed so swopped this out and replaced with the 160 Gb hard disc. IBM Thinkpads were originally designed to run Linux as well as Windows and according to the info I have, should be able to run Kubuntu.

From the live CD (downloaded from the Kubuntu website) I booted into the live CD and chose to install on the whole of the hard disc (which has previously been used for Windows XP). As part of the installation Xubuntu scanned the disc but found no errors. It will run the live CD.

I've now temporarily taken out the Xubuntu hard disc and installed it in a USB enclosure so can now look at file structures etc. = if I knew what I was looking at!

I've also built myself a desktop PC dual-booted with XP/Ubuntu but I really want to try to get the Thinkpad working with Kubuntu. Again I have very little knowledge of Ubuntu (but willing to learn) but it means at least that I can look at files and directories on the Thinkpad using my desktop PC, as I guess that grub should be running a script which should boot Kubuntu.

Regards,

Garth

[ardvark71]

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

Hi...

What is your graphics chipset? In the past when I would get a prompt from GRUB, there was a problem with X being able to work with the chipset and/or monitor.

Regards...

[Garth]

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

Graphics Chipset = Savage S3.
If it runs the live CD, then surely Kubuntu can use the display?

[dibl]

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

Graphics Chipset = Savage S3.
If it runs the live CD, then surely Kubuntu can use the display?

Yes, it can. I think the problem is not the display. It has to do with your installed disk drive(s), and BIOS settings. I read your second post about drive-swapping, but got a bit lost. At the conclusion of installation, grub must be installed to the MBR of a hard drive. That obviously did happen. So there is some problem with the configuration of grub -- it doesn't know where the OS is.

Can you give more details on the hard drives:

- how many, and whether SATA or IDE?
- which one is set in BIOS to be the first one booted?
- how many partitions on each?
- where you think you installed Kubuntu?

[Garth]

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

Thanks all for the very quick replies!

Don't forget that I have a 10-year-old Thinkpad laptop which normally runs one hard drive. I physically swopped out it's (normal) 320 Gb Windows XP-loaded hard drive and replaced it with a 160 Gb hard disc to try to get it to run Kubuntu, but this means that it only has one hard drive fitted at any one time. I don't think there is any problem with the BIOS not recognising and addressing the hard disc as Windows XP can address the whole of either the 160 or 320 Gb hard discs. The drives are IDE and the BIOS is set to boot from the hard drive first (but as normal, this order can be changed, as I did in installing from the live CD, but I have changed it back to boot the HD first!)

I took the Kubuntu defaults for the partitions so I believe that there are 2 - one for normal use and one for a swap file. As I took the defaults I assume that Kubuntu installed in the first partition. As explained earlier, I've now got the Kubuntu notebook hard disc plugged into my desktop PC running Ubuntu so that I can look at the files, which reports under "places" that there is one 158 Gb filesystem containing folders such as bin, boot etc, some 22 in all. There is 135.6 Gb free. I could swop drives again and re-install the Kubuntu hard disc, but that would mean that I can only work really from the root> command line. I will do this if this is the best way to go.

[jeremy1701]

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

The grub> prompt indicates the the computer has found grub and the hard disk but can't proceed.

Let's try running this command to see if you have anything:

ls

And let's check our variables:

set

[dibl]

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

Yes, let's do see the output (from the grub prompt after a failed boot attempt) as recommended by jeremy1701.

Also, since you are able to access that hard drive from a Ubuntu system, a useful output might be:

sudo blkid -c /dev/null -o list

so we can see the partitioning for sure.

Finally, it occurs to me that there are a few BIOS's in the world that require the "boot" flag be set on the partition where the OS is to be booted from. I doubt that happened automatically, but from your Ubuntu system, with the Kubuntu drive connected, you can run

sudo fdisk -lu

and we'll know for sure. If the boot flag is not set on the partition where the OS is, you can do that from Ubuntu with GParted.

[Garth]

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

ls returns:
(hd0) (hd0,msdos1) (fd0)

set returns:
?=0
color_highlight=
color_normal=
pager=
prefix=(hd0,msdos1)/boot/grub
root=hd0,msdos1

[Garth]

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

Note that to get the output in my previous email, I've physically re-installed the hard disc into my notebook, which is a 5 min job. However, it also means I can't now easily do the sudo commands as I'm now working from the root> prompt again

[jeremy1701]

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

Try using this command:

boot

[Garth]

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

boot responds with:
error: no loaded kernel

[jeremy1701]

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

Try these commands, in this order:

Edit: Sorry, made a typo. sdo should be something like sda1.

linux (hd0,msdos1)/vmlinuz root=/dev/sda1 ro
initrd (hd0,msdos1)/initrd.img
boot

[Garth]

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

After some activity I've now got to a (initramfs) prompt.

There are lots of lines above, the most recent being:
Gave up waiting for root device. Common problems:
- Boot args (cat /proc/cmdline)
- Check rootdelay= (did the system wait long enough?)
- Check root= (did the system wait for the right device?)
- Missing modules (cat /proc/modules; ls /dev)
ALERT! /dev/sd0 does not exist. Dropping to a shell!

BusyBox v1.15.3 (Ubuntu 1:1.15.3-lubuntu5) built-in shell (ash)
Enter help for a list of built-in commands