Grub (or SSD) error

[rchille]

Good day all!

I've been running my Dell Mini 9 with the latest alpha for 10.04 since January, but over the weekend I botched things pretty badly and decided to go back to 9.10.

I saved my home directory to another machine, and proceeded to install from a 9.10 USB disk. Things didn't go terribly well (I kept seeing "devkit-disks-daemon" crashing) but the install did complete.

I shutdown the netbook, yanked the USB drive and powered it back on only to be greeted the grub menu. Choosing any option yields:



error: out of memory

Press any key to continue...


I did a little searching in places like:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2
but there is no mention of that problem there, and running though the command line instructions has the same results. (the linux command seems to be the problem)

I've tried re-installed grub from the directions on the page but it is failing with:



cp: cannot stat '/mnt/boot/grub/ufs1.mod': Input/output error


When I look up that file I see:



-????????? ? ? ? ? ? ufs1.mod


With about 15 more files in that that directory that are having the '?' fields.

I'm kinda afraid my SSD is hosed but not really sure how to tell, or if there is a way to recover. Like I said, I've pulled all the important data off so if anyone has a radical suggestion, I don't mind doing what it might take to revive this drive.

Thanks!
Rob

[dstew]

Do you have a Live CD system on the USB drive? If so, you can use tools on it to check to see if the disk is OK. You can do sudo fdisk -l to see if the drive appears, and fsck to see if the file system is intact. You can install gparted onto the live CD system using Synaptic (if it is not there to start with) and look to see if you can detect partitions.

If you get a grub menu, it is likely that some part of the disk system works. I don't have a clue as to what the errors you see mean. Are you sure the 9.10 USB system is intact? Maybe there is a menu item, like "Check CD for errors" on Live CD's that you can use to check it.

I have had problems with various Linux distributions recognizing solid state drives, like IDE flash drives, in different systems. I never got comfortable with SSDs. Maybe the newer ones behave better.

[presence1960]

Do this after running the check disk for defects from the Live CD menu as dstew suggested to verify the disk is good.

Let's get a better look at your setup & boot process. Boot the Ubuntu Live CD/USB. Choose "try ubuntu without any changes", when the desktop loads come back here and do the following:

1. Download the boot info script. There is a link in my signature.
2. Once downloaded move the boot info script to the desktop.
3. Open a terminal and run the command
sudo bash ~/Desktop/boot_info_script*.sh

This will create a RESULTS.txt file on the desktop. Paste the entire contents of that file back here. Once pasted highlight all text and click the # sign on the toolbar to place code tags around the text.

See here (http://bootinfoscript.sourceforge.net/) for more info on the boot info script.

Above link is to meierfra's Sourceforge web page.

[rchille]

Thanks for the replay guys!

sudo fdisk -l


Disk /dev/sda: 15.4 GB, 15434883072 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1876 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xb7bbe0bc

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 1876 15068938+ 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 4009 MB, 4009230336 bytes
124 heads, 62 sectors/track, 1018 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 7688 * 512 = 3936256 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00061780

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 1 1018 3913161 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)


/dev/sda is the drive in question while /dev/sdb in the USB drive I've been trying to install from.

fdisk:

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk /dev/sda

The number of cylinders for this disk is set to 1876.
There is nothing wrong with that, but this is larger than 1024,
and could in certain setups cause problems with:
1) software that runs at boot time (e.g., old versions of LILO)
2) booting and partitioning software from other OSs
(e.g., DOS FDISK, OS/2 FDISK)


This took about a minute and half to run, which doesn't sound quite right...
I can correct/change the cylinder easily enough if you think that this might be tripping up grub2

I've had 8.10 through 10.04 running on this machine, and 9.04 and up running on this SSD. Granted, solid state drives are still new-ish....but I've had this working in the past. Every the drive is dying on me, or I've really botched something :O

gParted seems to have no trouble picking up on the partitions either.

I'll go check the USB drive for errors and post back with presence1960's script.

Thanks!

[rchille]

Okay,

The Live USB checks out.

Here is the results file:

Boot Info Script 0.55 dated February 15th, 2010

============================= Boot Info Summary: ==============================

=> Grub 2 is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda and looks on the same drive in
partition #1 for /boot/grub.
=> Syslinux is installed in the MBR of /dev/sdb

sda1: __________________________________________________ _______________________

File system: ext4
Boot sector type: -
Boot sector info:
Operating System: Ubuntu 9.10
Boot files/dirs: /etc/fstab

sdb1: __________________________________________________ _______________________

File system: vfat
Boot sector type: Fat32
Boot sector info: According to the info in the boot sector, sdb1 starts
at sector 0. But according to the info from fdisk,
sdb1 starts at sector 62.
Operating System:
Boot files/dirs:

=========================== Drive/Partition Info: =============================

Drive: sda ___________________ __________________________________________________ ___

Disk /dev/sda: 15.4 GB, 15434883072 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1876 cylinders, total 30146256 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xb7bbe0bc

Partition Boot Start End Size Id System

/dev/sda1 * 63 30,137,939 30,137,877 83 Linux


Drive: sdb ___________________ __________________________________________________ ___

Disk /dev/sdb: 4009 MB, 4009230336 bytes
124 heads, 62 sectors/track, 1018 cylinders, total 7830528 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00061780

Partition Boot Start End Size Id System

/dev/sdb1 * 62 7,826,383 7,826,322 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)


blkid -c /dev/null: __________________________________________________ __________

Device UUID TYPE LABEL

/dev/loop0 squashfs
/dev/loop1 2c64a49c-b9aa-40f8-8451-c9026214c73e ext3
/dev/sda1 91cfafe7-c1f8-4bb3-8ae1-d73ae4265729 ext4
/dev/sdb1 799D-E3E6 vfat

============================ "mount | grep ^/dev output: ===========================

Device Mount_Point Type Options

aufs / aufs (rw)
/dev/sdb1 /cdrom vfat (rw)
/dev/loop0 /rofs squashfs (rw)


=============================== sda1/etc/fstab: ===============================

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid -o value -s UUID' to print the universally unique identifier
# for a device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name
# devices that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# / was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=91cfafe7-c1f8-4bb3-8ae1-d73ae4265729 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1

=================== sda1: Location of files loaded by Grub: ===================


.8GB: boot/initrd.img-2.6.31-14-generic
2.4GB: boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31-14-generic
.8GB: initrd.img
2.4GB: vmlinuz


Thanks again guys!

[dstew]

It looks like it is set up OK from the info script, and it seems that there intact file systems on the partitions, especially /dev/sda1, which is your Linux root partition.

The problem comes after the grub menu appears, so at least grub is working well enough to find and display the menu. You have a boot loader in the other disk (syslinux) but the behavior of your system suggests you are booting the grub boot loader in the MBR of /dev/sda, which is what you should be doing.

It might be interesting to look at the commands behind an item in the grub menu. You can see the menu commands by pressing 'e' instead of 'return' after highlighting a menu choice. Post to the forum the menu commands. Maybe the menu commands don't match with the location of the kernel and initrd files properly.

[presence1960]

This troubles me:


============================= Boot Info Summary: ==============================

=> Grub 2 is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda and looks on the same drive in
partition #1 for /boot/grub.
=> Syslinux is installed in the MBR of /dev/sdb

sda1: __________________________________________________ _______________________

File system: ext4
Boot sector type: -
Boot sector info:
Operating System: Ubuntu 9.10
Boot files/dirs: /etc/fstab

sdb1: __________________________________________________ _______________________

File system: vfat
Boot sector type: Fat32
Boot sector info: According to the info in the boot sector, sdb1 starts
at sector 0. But according to the info from fdisk,
sdb1 starts at sector 62.
Operating System:
Boot files/dirs:
Your ubuntu install is not complete. here is what mine looks like:


sda6: __________________________________________________ _______________________

File system: ext4
Boot sector type: -
Boot sector info:
Operating System: Ubuntu 9.10
Boot files/dirs: /boot/grub/grub.cfg /etc/fstab /boot/grub/core.img


You are missing /boot/grub so GRUB has no where to point to in partition #1 (sda). See this:


============================= Boot Info Summary: ==============================

=> Grub 2 is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda and looks on the same drive in
partition #1 for /boot/grub.

[rchille]

Sorry that it has taken so long to reply. Trying to fix my netbook during what is turning out to be a busy week leads to interesting problems :)

Anyway, I tried to reinstall hoping that it would complete the installation but no dice. It now fails out at a grub prompt rather than the menu.

The RESULTS file looks like this:


Boot Info Script 0.55 dated February 15th, 2010

============================= Boot Info Summary: ==============================

=> Grub 2 is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda and looks on the same drive in
partition #1 for /boot/grub.
=> Syslinux is installed in the MBR of /dev/sdb

sda1: __________________________________________________ _______________________

File system: ext4
Boot sector type: -
Boot sector info:
Operating System: Ubuntu 9.10
Boot files/dirs: /etc/fstab /boot/grub/core.img


sda2: __________________________________________________ _______________________

File system: Extended Partition
Boot sector type: -
Boot sector info:

sda5: __________________________________________________ _______________________

File system: swap
Boot sector type: -
Boot sector info:

sdb1: __________________________________________________ _______________________

File system: vfat
Boot sector type: Fat32
Boot sector info: According to the info in the boot sector, sdb1 starts
at sector 0. But according to the info from fdisk,
sdb1 starts at sector 62.
Operating System:
Boot files/dirs:

=========================== Drive/Partition Info: =============================

Drive: sda ___________________ __________________________________________________ ___

Disk /dev/sda: 15.4 GB, 15434883072 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 1876 cylinders, total 30146256 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xb7bbe0bc

Partition Boot Start End Size Id System

/dev/sda1 * 63 28,772,414 28,772,352 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 28,772,415 30,137,939 1,365,525 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 28,772,478 30,137,939 1,365,462 82 Linux swap / Solaris


Drive: sdb ___________________ __________________________________________________ ___

Disk /dev/sdb: 4009 MB, 4009230336 bytes
124 heads, 62 sectors/track, 1018 cylinders, total 7830528 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00061780

Partition Boot Start End Size Id System

/dev/sdb1 * 62 7,826,383 7,826,322 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)


blkid -c /dev/null: __________________________________________________ __________

Device UUID TYPE LABEL

/dev/loop0 squashfs
/dev/loop1 2c64a49c-b9aa-40f8-8451-c9026214c73e ext3
/dev/sda1 079b0314-7e93-4487-8884-8eaf513e4e9f ext4
/dev/sda5 a20f6b39-a11f-41d8-9db3-93e7a297fffd swap
/dev/sdb1 799D-E3E6 vfat

============================ "mount | grep ^/dev output: ===========================

Device Mount_Point Type Options

aufs / aufs (rw)
/dev/sdb1 /cdrom vfat (rw)
/dev/loop0 /rofs squashfs (rw)


=============================== sda1/etc/fstab: ===============================

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid -o value -s UUID' to print the universally unique identifier
# for a device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name
# devices that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# / was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=079b0314-7e93-4487-8884-8eaf513e4e9f / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
# swap was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=a20f6b39-a11f-41d8-9db3-93e7a297fffd none swap sw 0 0

=================== sda1: Location of files loaded by Grub: ===================


3.0GB: boot/grub/core.img
.8GB: boot/initrd.img-2.6.31-14-generic
2.4GB: boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31-14-generic
.8GB: initrd.img
2.4GB: vmlinuz


The section that presence highlighted in red is more complete (though it seems to be failing in a worse way).

I'm still getting devkit-disk-daemon failing both during install and while booting to the Live USB. Not sure what might be the problem there, but I'm making the assumption that the 2 problems are connected.

With the re-install, I can't see the menu and am not sure where the menu options are located (I assume they've moved to /etc/grub.d/ but not really sure how to parse the info out the files there)

Any other suggestions?
Thanks again!

[psusi]

Sounds like your filesystem is corrupt and you need to fsck it. Have you been playing with the new experimental hdparm/wiper.sh disk TRIM?

[dstew]

Maybe that devkit-disks-daemon error is significant. Maybe you are just not getting a clean install, even though it seems to finish. Do you have any other options for installing? Maybe a diskless install (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DisklessUbuntuHowto) over a local network?

[rchille]

So, the answer ended being that the USB stick I was using to install from was screwy. ;)

I had another SSD that I tried the install from and got the exact same results (bad/screwy grub, crashes during install).

I rebuilt the USB installer and switched back the original SSD and everything installed nicely.

Please note that I ran the self checker to verify the USB installer wasn't corrupt and the results came back clean (though obviously they were not quite right).

Thanks again for both of your helpful comments and insights!