Reinstall XP, problems booting Ubuntu

[Macamba]

Hi,

The other day I had to install XP again. As I had to format the partition, my boot loader was lost. I put it back using the Ubuntu Live CD, but after reboot I got an 'Error 17: Cannot mount selected partition'.

This is what I did:

1 Boot Ubunut from CD
2 Opened a terminal, performed a

sudo fdisk -l
The result was:

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 6375 51207156 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 6376 25497 153597465 6 FAT16
/dev/sda3 25498 91201 527767380 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 25498 31871 51199123+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda6 31872 38245 51199123+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda7 38246 44619 51199123+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda8 44620 46186 12586896 83 Linux
/dev/sda9 46187 57080 87506023+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda10 57081 57367 2305296 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda11 57368 70115 102398278+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda12 70116 82863 102398278+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda13 82864 91201 66974953+ 7 HPFS/NTFS

3 Next I performed a

sudo grub
4 And to be sure I had the correct partition, I performed

grub> fdisk -l
with the result

find /boot/grub/stage1
(hd0,7)
grub>
5 Next I instructed Grub where my Ubuntu partition is by entering

root (hd0,7)
setup (hd0)
quit
6 So far as instructed by the book. To be absolutely sure, I tried to find menu.lst by entering

sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst
This was the result:

## ## End Default Options ##

title Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition
root (hd0,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1

title Ubuntu 8.04.1, kernel 2.6.24-22-generic
root (hd0,10)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-22-generic root=UUID=bf978112-024f-4cd6-95d4-8bc32588e26f ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-22-generic
quiet

title Ubuntu 8.04.1, kernel 2.6.24-22-generic (recovery mode)
root (hd0,10)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-22-generic root=UUID=bf978112-024f-4cd6-95d4-8bc32588e26f ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-22-generic

title Ubuntu 8.04.1, kernel 2.6.24-19-generic
root (hd0,10)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-19-generic root=UUID=bf978112-024f-4cd6-95d4-8bc32588e26f ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-19-generic
quiet

title Ubuntu 8.04.1, kernel 2.6.24-19-generic (recovery mode)
root (hd0,10)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-19-generic root=UUID=bf978112-024f-4cd6-95d4-8bc32588e26f ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-19-generic

title Ubuntu 8.04.1, memtest86+
root (hd0,10)
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
quiet

### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST
And I noticed

title Ubuntu 8.04.1, kernel 2.6.24-22-generic
root (hd0,10)
7 Then I restarted my system. The boot menu came up fine. I can boot *******. But when I choose to boot Linux I get

Error 17: Cannot mount selected partition

Do I get this error because I'm trying to boot from my Swap partition? How can I change (hd0,10) to (hd0,7) when I can not write menu.lst (because it is part of a file system I have no write access to)?

Macamba

[Herman]

If you're doing it from the Ubuntu Live CD, you just need to mount your hard disk installed Ubuntu and then,

gksudo gedit /media/disc/boot/grub/menu.lst
Where: the mount point in /media is called 'disc', it could be something else like 'disc0, or 'disc1', if so, please replace 'disc' with whatever the name of the mount point really is.

[Macamba]

When I look at the output I got when I performed

sudo fdisk -l
I got

/dev/sda8 44620 46186 12586896 83 Linux
/dev/sda9 46187 57080 87506023+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda10 57081 57367 2305296 82 Linux swap / Solaris


I know my operating system is on

/dev/sda8

Would I need to perform


gksudo gedit /media/disc7/boot/grub/menu.lst

I tried that, and I got an empty screen.

Or should I mount (explicit) the root partition. I looked around, and could not find out how to do it.

Macamba

[coffeecat]

[/code]I know my operating system is on

/dev/sda8

OK. What you need to do is in the live session, go to the Places menu and find the sda8 partition. Click on it and a Nautilus window should open.


Would I need to perform


gksudo gedit /media/disc7/boot/grub/menu.lstI tried that, and I got an empty screen.

That assumes that sda8 has been mounted on /media/disc7, which would only happen if you create such a mountpoint and mount from the terminal.


Or should I mount (explicit) the root partition.

Yes. Having mounted sda8 from the Places menu, have a look at the Nautilus window that has opened. There's a little icon like a pen over a notebook to the left of the address bar - now probably showing the path in icons. Click on that and the path will change to something like:


/media/somethingNow, substituting for whatever 'something' is:


gksudo gedit /media/something/boot/grub/menu.lst

[Macamba]

Thanks Herman and Coffecat. I will try your suggestions.

[Herman]

Sorry, I was assuming you already knew how to mount your file system or else how did you get all the info you posted in your first post?

Here's a link that will show you how to mount a file system in the Live CD, Click-Icon Mounting (http://users.bigpond.net.au/hermanzone/p10.htm#Click-Icon_Mounting). That's 'the new way'.

The old fashioned way was to mount the file system with a 'mount' command at the command line, or edit /etc/fstab, but we had to make a 'mount point' first, in /media usually. Here's how us old timers used to do it, Mounting Filesystems with the mount command (http://users.bigpond.net.au/hermanzone/p10.htm#Mounting_Windows_with_Dapper_Desktop) - Traditional olde reliable method.

So, there should be a directory, (folder) in your /media directory and when you open it, it should have your Ubuntu files from your hard disk inside it. We call that directory the 'mount point'.
If we made it ourselves by the old method, we would have though up our own name for it, so we would remember which one it is. With the new way of doing things though, it could be just calld 'disc' or 'disc1' or something like that, because it gets named automatically.

How did you get the info you put in your first post? :D

[Herman]

Of course, you could always boot with a Super Grub Disk (http://www.supergrubdisk.org/) if you want to do it an even easier way. :D

[Macamba]

How did you get the info you put in your first post? :D

Wow, I impressed an old hand :D.

Actually, the very hard way, as I can not save what I do anyplace. By remembering what I searched for before, researching, and redoing, and finally, regurgitating what I did to you (pant pant).

Sad to say, now I stumbled upon a
Error 15: File not found

So let me reiterate what I did (what coffeecat prescribed):
I opened menu: Places -> Computer, double clicked '12.9 G Media', which is the fancy name for my SD8 partition, containing my root.

Next I executed:

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ cd /
ubuntu@ubuntu:/$ ls media
disk carydisk


Now I know SD8 is mounted, as disk ;)

Then I performed

gksudo gedit /media/disk/boot/grub/menu.lst
and got menu.lst filled in (compared to empty files, pretending to be /media/disk/boot/grub/menu.lst).

Next I made a safety copy of menu.lst (to menu.lst.org), and went back to the original menu.lst, and performed a 'search-n-replace' of (hd0,10) to (hd0,8 ).

And while writing this I notice what I did wrong. I had to replace it with (hd0,7). So now I'm going to change that. When successful I will come by to report that.

Macamba

[Macamba]

8)

It works. Thanks for your help, Herman and coffeecat.

[Herman]

:D Very good, Macamba! You are on the road to success! Well done!

Regards, Herman :)

[coffeecat]

Excellent. Good luck!