I have Kubuntu 15.10 with Plasma and I very much enjoy it, but twice after installation and four or five hours of set-up and program installs, I rebooted to discover nothing but a black screen. I tried to enter Grub with keyboard commands but that did not work. I next loaded Ubuntu 15.10 and then Kubuntu in two partitions and I have been able to launch Kubuntu successfully thus far from Grub options. I have a Haswell-E machine (ASUS X99) with plenty of RAM etc. My questions are: A disk partition viewer program shows one of my instillations in an "extended partition" is this normal? I have a screen-shot but do not know how to attach it to a post. Also, in the Ubuntu partition manager, I moved "Boot" to the partition having Kubuntu in it. This allowed Kubuntu to launch successfully but is this the way things are done? Lastly, how can I make a Grub recovery disk? Many thanks for your help.
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This:
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An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way. Charles Bukowski -
Linux does not care what type your partition is, only Windows insisted on a Primary to boot.
It is possible but not recommended to install Linux in a single partition plus a swap.
Many people install Linux in two partitions, / (root), /home plus a swap.
/boot would be in the root partition and grub has to know about it for booting.
A separate /home partition makes it easier to reinstall without losing your settings and documents in /home.
Most grub recovery can be done from any Live USB or CD but you can find very nice utility distributions.
About including a picture, I believe you have to have done a certain minimum number of posts before it is allowed.
This is to prevent lazy spammers.Comment
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Yeah. People watching this thread will want to see that post. Story is strange! You have a high-end modern motherboard that appears to be booting Legacy by GRUB, and not by UEFI? ASUS is wonderful in its support for UEFI firmware.
GRUB rescue -- many options. But to keep it easy, you can go with Boot Repair.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair
Just make your CD/USB and keep it handy.
I have some how-to's about easy rescue, but we are not really sure what's going on here. If you are booting UEFI, use Boot Repair and/or a rEFInd CD/USB, for example. Keep them both handy.
And, why use a separate /boot partition? Is that necessary?
Your output would show us all this stuff, including whether you might actually have a UEFI ESP (EFI System Partition).An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way. Charles BukowskiComment
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This is almost too strange, I was loading a few programs and rebooted Kubuntu and everything was perfect. Then I added Cairo, a few smaller installs, and, perhaps, Darkroom and I observed a reminder in the lower right corner of the desktop that advised to reboot to complete installation. I rebooted but the screen went totally black. I re-entered Grub and used all the available aids but Kubuntu would not boot. I also lost the shot of the partitions I was going to upload. So that was the third time that I got everything I wanted loaded and the Plasma desktop looking foxy when poof! everything digital gone. That represents about fourteen hours of work gone (but actually this is play for me as I am retired and have a Skylake and a Haswell-E computer sitting to the right of my desk with more hardware than is on display at Best Buy so no real time was lost just play time spent). So, on the same computer (this one) I loaded Elementary OS which takes a tad bit of getting used to because it won’t let you plaster the desktop with stuff like Kubuntu will. I am getting a little tired of searching for stuff in Elementary but it has some pluses. For one thing, it located my wireless and installed it without a struggle. For another thing, it seems rock solid so far. I really feel bad about leaving Kubuntu behind but it's like a very pretty girl that stood me up three times running. Of course that never really happened in real life...Comment
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I should add that Kubuntu did start to load but didn't enter the desktop so I was wrong to say it didn't boot I should have said the boot process listed some error messages then went black. And, Ubuntu on the other partition did boot and I like Ubuntu also but I like the Plasma desktop a LOT Lot Lot. Cheers!Comment
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Method 1:
Burn a 'System Rescue CD'
http://www.system-rescue-cd.org/Download
Boot with the CD in the drive.
From the boot menu, choose the relevant Option (yours would be option C);
B) Standard 32bit kernel (rescue32) with more choice...
C)Standard 64bit kernel (rescue64) with more choice...
Select 'Boot from Hard Disk'.
Ignore the reported errors and the first Linux bootable HDD partition should then boot.
Open Terminal and type
'ls /dev/sd*'
to make sure your system is reporting your partitions sda1, sda2, sda3 etc. in the devices directory. If they are not listed, 'ls /dev/*' and hunt through for the device names of the hard drive(s). Assuming that sda is your boot HDD;
sudo grub-install /dev/sda
sudo update-grub
Method 2:
Boot from your most recent Kubuntu install DVD.
Choose the 'Try without installing' option.
Open terminal and then proceed as above.
Take the CD/DVD out of the drive and reboot.
Grub Stuff:
Editing /etc/default/grub can change the boot countdown, the default boot partition, the boot screen resolution (lower resolution gives larger text) and a background boot image behind the grub menu. You need to use sudo kate and sudo dolphin to a) edit the grub file and b) copy your boot image into a suitable system directory; I use /usr/share/images/grub. There is info on-line, but it is mainly incorrect. It will, however, help with the grub file editing.
You must run sudo grub-update after making any changes. Please note that it will not always be clear which Linux boot partition is the one delivering the grub menu. It is usually the distribution at the top of the grub list, but not always.
Once all is booting correctly, make a note of the exact package names that you install (not the names of the programs). Use kate to create a text file along the following lines;
sudo apt-get install bless freecad musescore clementine fluidsysnth
sudo apt-get install goldendict ocrfeeder fsarchiver audacity
Save the file on a data partition and also print it out. If you are just setting up a fresh install, you can copy and paste into Terminal. If your system has gone nuclear, then you will have to type the lines in. Each line can install dozens of packages.
I have Kubuntu and Ubuntu Studio installed on my system. For each distribution I have a root partition and a home partition. Usually, reinstalling without formatting the home partition retains all your system settings and Wine programs. In addition I have a swap partition and a large shared 'T' partition.
In each distribution, I add a 'T' folder in my /home/roy directory. I then use,
sudo blkid -o full -s UUID
to get the UUID numbers for the partitions. It is possible to use /dev/sda7 (for example), but things can easily go wrong.
use sudo kate to add lines like the following in the file /etc/fstab,
# dev/sda7: (T)
UUID=42664893-e1cf-4dfe-8947-bd52aa211532 /home/roy/T ext4 defaults 0 0
The '#' line is a comment to remind me what the next line is all about. The next line says, at boot time, mount the large shared 'T' ext partition (/dev/sda7) on the 'T' folder in my home directory. If you have Windows installed, this works just as well with a Windows ntfs partition. Once you have saved the fstab (file system table) file you can try it out with,
sudo mount /dev/sda7.
If you have got it wrong then Linux will say something along the lines that the device cannot be found in any of the file system tables. If you get it right, then you will go right back to the Terminal prompt. Open Dolphin and you should find the whole of sda7 available in /home/user/T. At boot time, this will be done, automatically.Comment
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Good!this is play for me as I am retired and have a Skylake and a Haswell-E computer sitting to the right of my desk with more hardware than is on display at Best Buy so no real time was lost just play time spent
Then why not--just for kicks and out of curiosity--install the LTS version of Kubuntu, that is Kubuntu 14.04. It is not Plasma, but it is rock-solid done & stable-stable, and it should run nicely.
One thing royleith is interested in is having you re-install GRUB. That would be another experiment to try with your 15.10 version. I'm pretty sure that Boot Repair disk would do that for you to (Boot Repair does so on all other versions), and so 'should' work on 15.10).An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way. Charles BukowskiComment
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When it's broke, fix it!
MMMmmmmmmhhhh! 14.04. I dream of the days when my installation just worked.Originally posted by Qqmike View PostGood! Then why not--just for kicks and out of curiosity--install the LTS version of Kubuntu, that is Kubuntu 14.04. It is not Plasma, but it is rock-solid done & stable-stable, and it should run nicely.
I gathered that poofdisk had several issues. The main one was that, after rebooting and installing lots of packages, the thing stalled at a grub2 black screen. Bin there... got the teeshirt. If you can't boot, you have to reinstall Grub. That is what the boot repair disk should do. However, using the actual Linux distribution on the hard drive to repair grub means that there are no incompatibilities. The System Rescue CD actually boots the installation on the hard drive without the need for grub. It's guaranteed to be a compatible version. Using the Kubuntu DVD used to install on the HDD, but in live mode does something similar, but one is relying on the software on the DVD and not on the HDD.
The next issue seemed to be having a suitable partitioning strategy that would survive upgrades and multiple distribution installations without losing settings and with the retention of shared content. That's why I suggested a root and a home partition for each distribution (the home partition cannot, of course, be safely shared). Finally, having a main data partition shared between all of the OSs means that each system does not keep your content in its own walled garden.
Finally, reinstalling a distribution when the existing install is badly borked is a real pain (Oh, that's my other teeshirt) . Getting your act together with apt-get install is so easy: just copy the line into Terminal, push enter and type your password. Then go and make tea.Comment
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Yes, good catch on a subtle point. You can only hope that if you re-install GRUB without a known compatible/up-to-date GRUB version, that it will get you booted into the OS, after which you could sudo grub-install && sudo update-grub.royleith: If you can't boot, you have to reinstall Grub. That is what the boot repair disk should do. However, using the actual Linux distribution on the hard drive to repair grub means that there are no incompatibilities.
Yes. Similarly, you could use rEFInd to boot the OS, and then when inside the OS you could do the sudo grub-install && sudo update-grub (this assumes you want GRUB installed; one could simply use rEFInd as the boot manager, without GRUB; rEFInd would boot by the stem way, booting the kernel directly).The System Rescue CD actually boots the installation on the hard drive without the need for grub. It's guaranteed to be a compatible version.An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way. Charles BukowskiComment
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Recovered photo:I found the photo of the hard disk partition that I had emailed to myself. Is this "normal" ??
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Uefi
I've always dealt with dual BIOS/UEFI and gone for the easy BIOS/grub2 solution. Looking at this link,
http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-ref...-sanity-saver/
it seems that rEFind should be used as an alternative to grub2 for UEFI-only or Windows 8, 8.1 or 10 systems.
My last PC was OS free and loaded by me with Windows 7 (don't ask!) and Linux. I will get my next computer (a power laptop with Thunderbolt) in the next couple of years. I hope those lovely distribution folk have made life easy for me in the UEFI/SecureBoot era.
Bearing in mind that poofdisk is up for experimentation and has a recent, high-powered machine, I hope he will go to the above link and investigate rEFind. I had problems with my 'mixed-up' bios when I originally installed grub/Linux and I think he may be having the same issues. I suspect he cannot drop back to using BIOS in the way I could.Comment
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Very interesting article. Many would dual boot if the opportunity came easily. Marketing and scarce software engineering resources fight against this potential, so the product becomes a reflection of the managerial philosophy of the corporation rather than geek candy for savvy consumers.Comment
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Yes, rEFInd is for UEFI, Rod Smith the author, a UEFI guru.
A few of my how-to's:
rEFInd installed to your PC:
https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...l=1#post372221
On CD and USB:
https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...l=1#post376838
https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...l=1#post379352
Using your live Kubuntu DVD/USB to fix things:
https://www.kubuntuforums.net/showth...l=1#post379485An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way. Charles BukowskiComment
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You are not using the newer (after about 2011 or so) UEFI with the GPT (partition scheme). You are using the older (but still OK) BIOS with MBR scheme and GRUB2.I found the photo of the hard disk partition that I had emailed to myself. Is this "normal" ??
I see that extended partition -- no problem with having an extended partition (in the older MBR scheme). BUT, the "boot" flag is set on it! I don't think that will fly very well. I would remove that Boot flag and place a Boot flag on the partition that holds your Kubuntu root file system, probably sda1, right? You can do this in GParted, I think this way: Highlight the partition you want to mess with (by left-clicking once on it in the list), click the Partition tab at top, select manage flags, click on (or off) the 'boot' entry (I think it is a checkmark in a small box, as I recall).An intellectual says a simple thing in a hard way. An artist says a hard thing in a simple way. Charles BukowskiComment
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