A fine mess... Partition help.

[Nesaskewatch]

To clarify, I do this;

sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt
sudo mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
sudo chroot /mnt
update-grub
grub-install /dev/sda

Does that look OK?

[ranch hand]

Perfect.

I should be more clear too. You could just use sda7, your 9.10 istall but then you would be on grub0.97 and the commands ore different and probably will not work from the 10.04 Live CD because it does not have that grub on it.

Just go with the commands you have in your post.

[Nesaskewatch]

OK folks. It's all good now. All partitions (except the swap while in sda7) are working fine now. I ran the commands as shown, and there was grub. Just had to run sudo update-grub from inside sda5 and there popped up sda7. Fantastic results!

I'm going to try and summarize this odyssey from what went wrong through to what fixed it. Worth it I think. I did get quite a spiel of "/poc/devices: fopen failed: No such file or directory!" and "grep: /proc/mounts: No such file etc..." after I entered update-grub, and after grub-install /dev... etc. But I just ignored the errors and pressed on to victory!

I can't thank you guys enough for all the help and cajoling. I got to being pretty down on the whole mess a bit earlier today, but I took your advice and beat the bugger!

Cheers very much all. Now on to swap file repairs!

[4Orbs]

I've heard rumors that sometimes you can fix Windows by simply hitting the computer with a hammer.

[ranch hand]

All I can say is the guy has stamina.

Geeze am I glad that is over.

I think he needs to pat himself on the back a couple times at least.

I am going to have a beer.

[4Orbs]

I am going to have a beer.

Bill Gates should send you a six pack. And pizza.

[ranch hand]

I wouldn't trust the stuff.

[mikodo]

What a great read. It was enlightening to see the spirit and fortitude of Ubuntu people helping each other, with such good humour at the end of it all!

[oleink]

MAN YOU GUYS ARE GREAT haha. You need some kind of reward

[Nesaskewatch]

I thought long and hard about the hammer solution, and believe me when I say that more than once I considered just giving up and wiping everything and starting again. But I must state most clearly that this was all due to my own fiddling with something I should have spent much more time understanding prior to doing it. Were I a more impulsive individual, this laptop would have been in a lot of tiny pieces right now. However, that would have been a shameful waste of a perfectly good machine that never intended to bother anyone in its life! One of the best things about Linux is the ability to control, and permanently change, virtually everything it does. The very thing that makes Linux so good turned out in my case to be its undoing. Sometimes the most difficult thing to understand with Ubuntu is that very little knowledge can be a very dangerous thing. This kind of worries me, as in my many years as a journeyman mechanic, I always hammered home to my apprentices to be certain that they are not causing more damage than they are being paid to fix. In this case I completely failed to listen to my own advice.

If there is one thing I am going to take away from here, it is this: Take the time to fully understand what you are doing before making any changes!

Hi. My name's Dave, and I'm an Ubuntuholic.

Hats off you guys. Nice work.

(Forensic analysis to follow soon. If I can figger it out)