[Boot-Repair] Graphical tool to repair the PC boot in one click

[n.hinton]

Upgraded from lucid to 12.04 a week ago, experienced issues with application lens being unpopulated requiring numerous reboots as occasionally one would be OK.

The Ubuntu logo with the dots below was unchanged from lucid. On one occasion I hit the pc's reset button just after the menu had been executed and on the subsequent boot, the smaller "ubuntu 12.04" displayed, boot was faster and application lens works. Using the reset button on the first boot after the menu is repeatable, and the only way I've been able to have 12.04 boot in working order. The same behaviour is exhibited with sdb physically disconnected.

Ran boot-repair with purge enabled but it asks for repositories to be enabled that appear to be enabled, reinstalled grub pc and grub common from a terminal OK, but then made myself another problem by doing sudo apt-get install linux-image yesterday which has installed the same kernel but with a different name (-pae appended to name) and synaptic won't let me uninstall either alone but insists on both, with no other kernels to fall back on I'm reluctant to do this.

Do i need to wait for a new kernel update before I can safely remove those kernels mentioned? Is the dual boot logo/menu thing something that "boot-repair" can fix?

Many thanks.

http://paste.ubuntu.com/968172/

[YannBuntu]

Hello hinton,

the logo can't be changed by Boot-Repair.

If i were you, i would :
1)backup my documents
2) install a fresh 12.04 in dual-boot with your current 12.04, in order to keep your current system safe while testing the new pae kernel.
3) If the fresh 12.04 is ok, copy the old 12.04's configuration (hidden folder in the /home) to the fresh 12.04's /home folder.

[oldfred]

There was a lot of discussion when they were working on 12.04. Ended up long-winded explanation.

One was to change to suggest 64bit, but they found 25% of users were 32bit so they still suggest 32bit and assume those with 64 bit know they can change. Some older systems with 64 bit processor may not have enough memory to run 64 bit better so that also was a consideration.

The other related to very old systems. Older Intel chips cannot run PAE which is the memory extension to use more than 3GB of RAM in a 32bit system. Since the last versions of Pentium and all dual core can run pae they were going to stop using the non- pae version, so users with more memory but 32 bit systems could automatically use it. I did not follow to final conclusion, so I do not know what they decided. But if you have more than 3GB of RAM you should run the pae version. It will use the additional memory, but as a 32 bit install will not be as good as 64bit if system is capable of 64bit.

[scradock]

I need to add a note of caution - boot-repair may be great, but it can cause problems!

I have a moderately complicated install situation - Vista plus 3 ubuntu installs on sda plus another 6 ubuntu installs on sdb. My Sony Vaio won't let me boot direct into anything on sdb, so I'm using PLOP to get sdb mounted from the sda GRUB2 menu. Sda is the internal hard-drive, sdb is an external USB2 2TB drive.

I installed boot-repair from the ppa, and ran it, in a 12.04 Precise install on sda. Sdb was connected but the running install was on sda. I had noticed some error messages relating to Windows programs using parts of the disk that Ubuntu expects to be reserved for grub, and also an error message when booting into an install on sdb "hd0 out of range". It appeared that boot-repair could fix both of these, so I checked the boxes and then clicked "Apply". Boot-repair got busy, and ran several modules, sending results to the url http://paste.ubuntu.com/969224/.

However, when I rebooted, the sda GRUB2 boot menu was missing, and all I got was the grub-rescue prompt. Even "ls" would not work at first, so I went through "set prefix=" and "set root=", which were echoed properly by "set". Even then, GRUB could not "see" the /boot/grub/ files, so "insmod normal" failed, and running "ls" gave a single empty line of response.

It appeared that GRUB2 was not able to recognize the internal HD.

I booted from a live-CD, and checked that the files were in fact present in the expected locations. Rather than trying a chroot from the live-CD, I installed a fresh PP install from the live-CD, to a partition with a broken ubuntu. From there I was able to boot into the original sda install and re-establish it as the "grub master".

Even then, the sdb grub menu was unavailable (i.e. left me at grub-rescue> prompt), until I did a "grub-install /dev/sdb" from the now-working sda "grub-master", and thus regained the ability to boot into an install on sdb. From there I could do "grub-install /dev/sdb" and get back to the original state of the machine.

I will not be using boot-repair again, after this experience, and I would warn others that it is apparently capable of leaving a machine in an un-bootable state under some circumstances.

[YannBuntu]

Thanks for your feedback.

it is apparently capable of leaving a machine in an un-bootable state under some circumstances.

I agree: choosing the wrong parameters in the "Advanced options" of Boot-Repair can leave the pc unbootable. That's quite obvious, and it is what your experience shows.

Normal users should just follow the standard procedure :

try the "Recommended repair" button. When repair is finished, note the URL that appeared on a paper, then reboot and check if you recovered access to your OSs.

If the repair did not succeed, indicate the URL to people who help you by email or forum.

Maybe i should warn: "Advanced options" are for "advanced" users.

[wilee-nilee]

A very nice app, I would agree about the advanced in that people should be aware of where to put grub.

I suspect many who use this tool if they new about grub placement probably would be using the cli from a live cd.

Two Hd's or more and not putting grub where it should go for one who does not understand the mbr can be a bummer for them if it does not default correctly.

I would suggest you hang out at the IRC #ubuntu channel to see what is up. I help people quite often in this sort of a problem, after they have used this tool, it is usually an easy fix though as the bootscript is already been run. We see I would estimate about 5-10 people perday with a problem after running the app in this channel, just a estimation though.

I like the app I am just used to using the cli, or supergrub to get in, but I never have problems anymore I know where grub goes, and what OS has grub control if removing any other Linux installs.

[habana]

@yannbuntu Thanks for your reply - it was my turn to be on holiday, back today. While you were away, I resolved my boot problem using http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1752186 so I am no longer in trouble. However, it would be nice to use boot-repair in the future so I would be interested to discover if my sometimes slow internet connection is the problem or something else.

Regards
Bill

[YannBuntu]

@wilee-nilee: thanks for helping people on the IRC. Don't hesitate to mail me (or better: create a bug report) when the "Recommended repair" does not repair someone's boot.
(for information, B-R is used by ~800 users/day, so i am happy with only 10 fails )

@habana: next time you reproduce the bug, please immediately check that you can browse internet, update packages, etc... if you can, it means that there may be a problem with the way Boot-Repair detects internet connection.

@all: do you know a good way to detect internet connection? currently i use:

[[ "$(wget -T 20 -q -O - checkip.dyndns.org)" =~ "Current IP Address:" ]] && INTERNET=connected || INTERNET=no-internet

[wilee-nilee]

@wilee-nilee: thanks for helping people on the IRC. Don't hesitate to mail me (or better: create a bug report) when the "Recommended repair" does not repair someone's boot.
(for information, B-R is used by ~800 users/day, so i am happy with only 10 fails )

I think it is rather low, yeah, and my data is not empirical. I tried out the tool last week and thought it was a nice set up, and well designed. I don't ever really advise anyone to not use it.

[habana]

@yannbuntu: I can confirm that I was connected to the internet before, during and after my boot-repair sessions. My connection is sometimes slow but it is rock solid. I did try the whole process on two occasions so I doubt that lack of connection is the problem. I hope that helps.