Grub not loading on Ubuntu jaunty. Showing "grub>" promt

[ashulinux]

I have Ubuntu 9.04 installed on my laptop. It was working fine till yesterday, but now when i switched on my laptop I am getting an error.
It throws a grub> promt.
Earlier it was saying "Error 15".
Grub is not getting loaded.
I went through some of the forums but could not get a fix.

/dev/sda3 is my / partition.

Steps taken :

I booted off the live cd.
Mounted /dev/sda3 on /mnt
mounted /dev & proc as well
when I chrooted to /mnt I again get an error -
' /bin/bash' file/directory not found

I visited this link http://rothfuchs.net/2008/11/chroot-cannot-run-command-binbash-no-such-file-or-directory/ but couldn't get it.

Only thing left to fix now is to get chrooted environment. After this I can install 'grub' as mentioned in this thread http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=922678

Can anyone on list help me ?

[junke1990]

looked at this?

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/grub-error-guide.xml

-->
This error can occur in two different stages of the GRUB configuration, either during the initial configuration (installing GRUB in the master boot record) or after booting the system and attempting to launch Linux (or any other entry).

[pawhtiobo]

Hi :)

You can also try this http://www.supergrubdisk.org/ to try to fix your Grub.


see ya....

[ashulinux]

looked at this?

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/grub-error-guide.xml

-->
This error can occur in two different stages of the GRUB configuration, either during the initial configuration (installing GRUB in the master boot record) or after booting the system and attempting to launch Linux (or any other entry).

Ya, I have visited this link earlier. The problem is I am not able to 'chroot' into the directory where I have mounted my / partition [/dev/sda3].

Contents of /boot are :

ubuntu@ubuntu:/mnt/boot/grub$ ls
default fat_stage1_5 minix_stage1_5 stage2
device.map installed-version reiserfs_stage1_5 xfs_stage1_5
e2fs_stage1_5 jfs_stage1_5 stage1

Earlier there was nothing inside /boot directory. I did a grub-install to get the above contents.All I need is a menu.lst for which I need to do apt-get install grub.

Also, None of the partitions have error !

I am not able to source out where am I wrong. :-(

[ajgreeny]

Have you tried reinstalling grub with the live CD? If not give it a go, it may not sort the problem, but it's got to be worth trying.
Boot into the ubuntu live CD
open a terminal and run :

sudo grubThis gets you to a simple grub command line.
Then:

find /boot/grub/stage1This will tell you where your /boot/grub/stage1 is which is needed to boot ubuntu. If you have more than one linux install you may get more than one answer here. Use the one from which you want to use grub. Replace the question marks in the following command with the output of the this last command :

root (hd?,?)[like : root (hd0,1) ,probably]
then:

setup (hd0)This is where your windows partition and MBR normally is, but if you want grub on another disk, use hd1, etc as appropriate. It's much easier to use the windows MBR and then just change the default boot system later if others in the family demand windows boots by default.
Then:

quitFinally reboot, and hopefully you will now have a working grub bootloader.

[junke1990]

so the only thing you're missing is the menu.lst? you'll have to create one yourself since the grub install doesnt do that for you as far as I know.

maybe this will help



title Ubuntu karmic (development branch), kernel 2.6.31-6-generic
uuid 8a91b0a5-36bb-4eea-b638-35b4c1f7921c
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.31-6-generic root=UUID=a18b5bbc-97aa-41f7-ad3a-7ea979eae97b rw splash vga=771
initrd /initrd.img-2.6.31-6-generic
quiet

[ashulinux]

I have downloaded the tar-ball of SGD.I am running off live CD. USB drive is not getting detected. mount doesn't show any such device. Any idea why?

[junke1990]

is smart boot manager an option?

[ashulinux]

so the only thing you're missing is the menu.lst? you'll have to create one yourself since the grub install doesnt do that for you as far as I know.

maybe this will help



title Ubuntu karmic (development branch), kernel 2.6.31-6-generic
uuid 8a91b0a5-36bb-4eea-b638-35b4c1f7921c
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.31-6-generic root=UUID=a18b5bbc-97aa-41f7-ad3a-7ea979eae97b rw splash vga=771
initrd /initrd.img-2.6.31-6-generic
quiet


uuid on the second line of code is that of /boot right ?
uuid on the third line i.e root=UUID is the one of / ?
I ran sudo blkid to get the list of UUIDs.
Correct me if I am wrong.

[ashulinux]

is smart boot manager an option?

What is that ?

[junke1990]

should be something simular to SGB, it's in the list of unetbootin should be tool to boot too.

[ashulinux]

should be something simular to SGB, it's in the list of unetbootin should be tool to boot too.

Hey,

I was not able to recover because there was no /usr and /opt directory under the mounted partition. Probably someone would have messed up with it.
Kernel was missing so as the initrd :-( something serious would have happened. I had /home in a different partition so I recovered my personal stuffs as well as codes but lost some virtual machines.
Re-installed Jaunty over night.

I think this thread can be closed now. Good to know some new stuffs like Unetbootin etc; THANKS everybody for your help! :-)