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G2k
October 6th, 2009, 05:11 AM
Hey guys. Not long ago I apt-get upgraded my system to the latest Karmic release and it ruined my Ubuntu install. In the hopes of fixing it, I waited a few weeks so that maybe the bug would be fixed. I used an Ubuntu livecd and did as follows
#mkdir /mnt/ubuntu && mount -t ext3 /dev/sda4 /mnt/ubuntu && mount -t ext2 /dev/sda3 /mnt/ubuntu/boot && mount -o bind /dev/pts /mnt/ubuntu/dev/pts/ && mount -o bind /sys /mnt/ubuntu/sys && mount -o bind /proc /mnt/ubuntu/proc && chroot /mnt/ubuntu /bin/bash
then I did a
apt-get update && apt-get upgradebut I think I did something wrong because when I rebooted, I just got a black screen with a bunch of text flashing by over and over. So I rebooted into the livecd again, did the same steps as written above, only this time I ran
apt-get autoremove && apt-get dist-upgradeThis time, something went wrong with the kernel installation I guess because now when I reach the GRUB screen, it tells me it cannot find any of the kernels I try to boot into. Do you guys know what I can do to fix this problem :confused: ??

Thanks in advance...I don't really feel like doing a fresh Ubuntu install

slakkie
October 6th, 2009, 06:01 AM
I noticed some problems too with the upgrade of last night. I had to restore an old backup because I needed some work done.

Don't take this the wrong way: MAKE BACKUPS SO YOU CAN RESTORE.
Really, running a development release is likely to cause problems. If you can restore to a known state you can experiment with the upgrades you allow and which you don't allow. Then you don't have problems that you don't have access to your PC because a particular upgrade broke your system.

Regarding the issue, since you have a liveCD, boot from the liveCD. Mount your root file system (I take it /var/log is not on a seperate slice) and have a look in

* /var/log/messages
* /var/log/daemon
* /var/log/kern.log
* /var/log/debug
* /var/log/syslog
* /var/log/dmesg

See if you can find something relevant.

G2k
October 6th, 2009, 06:09 AM
hmm ok I'll give that a spin but I think i messed something up with where my kernels are pointing to or where GRUB is looking for them. How can I re-install the latest stable kernel?

slakkie
October 6th, 2009, 06:13 AM
hmm ok I'll give that a spin but I think i messed something up with where my kernels are pointing to or where GRUB is looking for them. How can I install the latest stable kernel?

Install one of these packages:



p linux-image-ec2 - Linux kernel image for ec2 machines
i linux-image-generic - Generic Linux kernel image
p linux-image-generic-pae - Generic Linux kernel image
p linux-image-rt - Rt Linux kernel image
p linux-image-virtual - Linux kernel image for virtual machines

G2k
October 6th, 2009, 07:52 AM
Ok I've finally booted back into my system...phew.
I removed grub and my kernels and then ran apt-get autoremove. Then I re-installed grub and the latest kernel, ran grub manually and rebooted. Things seem fine now.
Thanks ;-)

slakkie
October 6th, 2009, 08:37 AM
Good to hear! Best of luck during the rest of the beta :)

ottosykora
October 6th, 2009, 11:23 AM
Ok I've finally booted back into my system...phew.
I removed grub and my kernels and then ran apt-get autoremove. Then I re-installed grub and the latest kernel, ran grub manually and rebooted. Things seem fine now.
Thanks ;-)

on one system where I have separate boot partition and ubuntu root on other drive, after cloning the drive to new disk, grub refused to find what it was told to find. To me it looks as grub needs very little to break?
I also had to use the grub supperdisk and replace the grub, from then on it did find the kernel and the rest again.