8.04 installed but drops to shell on boot

[gkaucher]

I am installing Ubuntu 8.04 on a Dell Dimension 4700 that already has Windows XP. I used the Alternate CD and the installation process ran to completion. During the installation I had to choose an HDD driver from a list, and I had some problems picking one out, but I chose something called "loop" and everything seemed to proceed from that point.

The initial boot started out fine with the grub menu showing both ubuntu and xp. However, after some time, it drops to a shell. Just before it dropped to a shell I got this message:



Alert:

/dev/disk/by-uuid/4857810e-a209-417d-8119-d0d32808c158 does not exist.

Dropping to a shell


Since I had some problems picking a HDD driver for the install, I'm guessing that this boot message has something to do with that. Is there some way for me to identify and install the proper HDD driver for a Dell Dimension 4700 operating Ubuntu 8.04?

[phillw]

Hi,

from memory, loop is where you have an iso image on the hard-drive and wish to mount it as a file-system. As you need to mount such an ISO after booting, I'm surmising that is the issue.

I'd suggest you take a look over at the Grub Legacy How-To page over here --> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/GrubHowto That has the information on repairing / reinstalling Grub Legacy.

It's worth pointing out that you have to be careful when talking about grub, a lot of people will assume grub to grub2, you are not running this on a 8.04 installation. It is quite possible that an upgrade path to Grub2 will come out with the release of 8.04.4 at the end of Febuary in readiness for the upgrade to 10.04.

Regards,

Phill.

[gkaucher]

I found that I can proceed to the desktop by typing ëxit. So at least I can get there. But the boot process takes pretty long, about 7 minutes.

When I open up a terminal and type fdisk -l I get no response. I know my partitons were set up as follows:

/dev/sda1 ntfs Windows XP (Primary)
/dev/sda2 ext3 (Extended)
/dev/sda5 ext3 (Logical)
/dev/sda3 ext3 Ubuntu 8.04 (Primary)
/dev/sda4 linux-swap

My fstab seems to confirm this:


# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# /dev/sda3
UUID=4857810e-a209-417d-8119-d0d32808c158 / ext3 relatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /dev/sda5
UUID=3ce2b0da-b71c-4518-be4b-3904e4e35aa9 /home ext3 relatime 0 2
# /dev/sda4
UUID=a7cdcb03-df4c-4d02-8225-a5c1863bdcd6 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0
/dev/scd1 /media/cdrom1 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0


The reference to UUID=4857810e-a209-417d-8119-d0d32808c158 seems to be correct for /dev/sda3 since that would be the ubuntu partition that I set to root. Yet the boot process says it does not exist. But apparently it does exist, since I am now able to boot up to ubuntu after I type exit. After I type exit I notice a message that restricted drivers are loaded. Do I need to find a way to get the correct driver for my Dell Dimension 4700 HDD to load during the boot process? If so, how do I do that?

Thanks for the help.

Gary

[gkaucher]

I used Seatools for Dos to run a zero fill, and I repartitioned the Maxtor HDD, and first installed windows XP. I then successfully installed Ubuntu 8.04 as a dual boot using the regular iso (not alternate iso).

Both operating systems seem to work fine. The only problem, is that Ubuntu takes about 7 minutes to boot. There was one time when it dropped to the shell (like it did before the reinstall) and I had to type "exit" to continue the boot. But that only happened once.

I tried these parameters and it made no difference:

acpi=off noapic nolapic
irqpoll
noirqpoll
all_generic_ide
pci=nomsi


I'm not sure, but from googling around, I came up with two possibilities for the long boot process:


1) HDD or cable might be bad
2) Ubuntu has trouble dealing with my SATA HDD. Its a Maxtor 6Y160M0 DiamondMax 9 SATA drive. My upgraded BIOS has no SATA settings for AHCI. There is an SATA setting for Normal or Combination. I have it on Combination mode now. When I had it on Normal it didn't make any difference.

The results of my fdisk-l look like this:


Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160000000000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19452 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xe182e182

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 3188 5864 21503002+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 5865 13385 60412432+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda3 13386 16062 21503002+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 16063 16193 1052257+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris


Here is what most of my dmseg looks like. I could post it all, but's it's kind of long.


[ 293.652478] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector 312499994
[ 293.652482] Buffer I/O error on device sda, logical block 39062499
[ 293.652494] ata1: EH complete
[ 296.148511] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
[ 296.148514] ata1.00: BMDMA stat 0x24
[ 296.148518] ata1.00: cmd 25/00:08:18:5f:a0/00:00:12:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 4096 in
[ 296.148519] res 51/01:00:1a:5f:a0/01:00:12:00:00/e0 Emask 0x1 (device error)
[ 296.148522] ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
[ 296.170215] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/33
[ 296.170220] ata1: EH complete
[ 298.667125] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
[ 298.667127] ata1.00: BMDMA stat 0x24
[ 298.667132] ata1.00: cmd 25/00:08:18:5f:a0/00:00:12:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 4096 in
[ 298.667133] res 51/01:00:1a:5f:a0/01:00:12:00:00/e0 Emask 0x1 (device error)
[ 298.667136] ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
[ 298.687999] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/33
[ 298.688004] ata1: EH complete
[ 299.772658] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
[ 299.772660] ata1.00: BMDMA stat 0x24
[ 299.772665] ata1.00: cmd 25/00:08:18:5f:a0/00:00:12:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 4096 in
[ 299.772666] res 51/40:00:1a:5f:a0/40:00:12:00:00/e0 Emask 0x9 (media error)
[ 299.772668] ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
[ 299.772670] ata1.00: error: { UNC }
[ 299.793277] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/33
[ 299.793282] ata1: EH complete
[ 302.291279] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
[ 302.291281] ata1.00: BMDMA stat 0x24
[ 302.291286] ata1.00: cmd 25/00:08:18:5f:a0/00:00:12:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 4096 in
[ 302.291287] res 51/01:00:1a:5f:a0/01:00:12:00:00/e0 Emask 0x1 (device error)
[ 302.291289] ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
[ 302.315017] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/33
[ 302.315022] ata1: EH complete
[ 304.868086] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
[ 304.868088] ata1.00: BMDMA stat 0x24
[ 304.868093] ata1.00: cmd 25/00:08:18:5f:a0/00:00:12:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 4096 in
[ 304.868094] res 51/01:00:1a:5f:a0/01:00:12:00:00/e0 Emask 0x1 (device error)
[ 304.868096] ata1.00: status: { DRDY ERR }
[ 304.888665] ata1.00: configured for UDMA/33
[ 304.888670] ata1: EH complete
[ 307.469830] ata1.00: exception Emask 0x0 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0
[ 307.469833] ata1.00: BMDMA stat 0x24
[ 307.469837] ata1.00: cmd 25/00:08:18:5f:a0/00:00:12:00:00/e0 tag 0 dma 4096 in
[ 307.469839] res 51/01:00:1a:5f:a0/01:00:12:00:00/e0 Emask 0x1 (device error


When I remove the "quiet" parameter from the boot process, it seems that a good deal of the boot time is spent mounting the filesystem.

Any help appreciated.

Gary