jecook
May 3rd, 2011, 03:29 PM
I am a new LINUX user who had initially installed UNR 10.10 on a separate partition of my Acer One Netbook (Win XP) with a dual boot. An initial problem with the location of the Boot loader I had a setup which I was slowly getting used to. Last weekend I was given the option to update to the new 11.04 version.
I accepted the offer and let the update system do it's job overnight, final booting into UNR 11.04 after about 18 hours. The first job was to get into the basic desktop as I do not find Unity very helpful and on a netbook it takes up too much space. Once I the update was completed and my desktop was setup I needed to shutdown in order to do some work which required booting to Windows XP. I did not use Ubuntu again until this morning when I got to the office booted my computer up and was faced with the message,
error: symbol not found: 'grub_env_export'
grub rescue>
As a new user the message meant very little to me although clearly there was a GRUB bootloader problem. I did think that perhaps the words 'grub rescue' implied there was some simple command which would restore the boot loader but a search of the internet and Ubunti Forums showed not only that the solution was less than trivial for a newbie like myself, but that I was also not alone in having problems with the 11.04 upgrade. That was a very disappointing discovery as I had been impressed with UNR 10.10 despite a few issues with networking, printers and one invisible partition!
I tried to follow some of the instructions at this URL which I obtained from another forum post
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2#METHOD%203%20-%20CHROOT
I used a bootable USB version of 10.10 to have a look at the problems and I tried to follow the instructions but I find it very confusing to know which partitions are which and what is the 'normal' system disk or where the boot loader resides. With my working UNR 10.10 version the internal partitions were /dev/sdaX whereas with the Bootable USB system they are sdbX so which do I use sda or sdb? I could mount the partitions with the disk utility but then when it came to following the instructions to mount the critical virtual file systems I had errors saying no such mount point which completely flummoxed me.
I eventually solved the problem by using Paragon Rescue Kit to restore the WinXP boot loader, but that means I can not boot into LINUX of course.
I appreciate how helpful the community is but I do find that LINUX does have a lot of 'hard to understand' command line instructions despite the fact that I started working with computers many years ago (IBM 360/44s!) since then I have worked with numerous operating systems including CP/M, MS-DOS, VMS, UNIX before having my IT brain scrambled by numerous flavours of W-----s! I had hoped to slowly move over to LINUX but this episode has been very disappointing.
In order to get my UNR 11.04 system working again I guess I have two options,
1)
I could use the UNR10.10 Bootable USB key to re-install the GRUB Loader, or
2)
I can Download UNR 11.04 and make another bootable USB with 11.04 and then use that to install the latest 11.04 update.
My concern is that I don't know why the original GRUB was corrupted so either of these two solutions could end up with a repeat of the same problem.
Canonical have done a good job to make LINUX more user friendly but I have found this episode very disappointing as it is just the sort of thing that will put off the average Windows user who will simply return to the environment they know.
I am still keen to persevere with UBUNTU but I could do with some hand-holding to get a workable 11.04 dual boot system working.
Jon
I accepted the offer and let the update system do it's job overnight, final booting into UNR 11.04 after about 18 hours. The first job was to get into the basic desktop as I do not find Unity very helpful and on a netbook it takes up too much space. Once I the update was completed and my desktop was setup I needed to shutdown in order to do some work which required booting to Windows XP. I did not use Ubuntu again until this morning when I got to the office booted my computer up and was faced with the message,
error: symbol not found: 'grub_env_export'
grub rescue>
As a new user the message meant very little to me although clearly there was a GRUB bootloader problem. I did think that perhaps the words 'grub rescue' implied there was some simple command which would restore the boot loader but a search of the internet and Ubunti Forums showed not only that the solution was less than trivial for a newbie like myself, but that I was also not alone in having problems with the 11.04 upgrade. That was a very disappointing discovery as I had been impressed with UNR 10.10 despite a few issues with networking, printers and one invisible partition!
I tried to follow some of the instructions at this URL which I obtained from another forum post
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2#METHOD%203%20-%20CHROOT
I used a bootable USB version of 10.10 to have a look at the problems and I tried to follow the instructions but I find it very confusing to know which partitions are which and what is the 'normal' system disk or where the boot loader resides. With my working UNR 10.10 version the internal partitions were /dev/sdaX whereas with the Bootable USB system they are sdbX so which do I use sda or sdb? I could mount the partitions with the disk utility but then when it came to following the instructions to mount the critical virtual file systems I had errors saying no such mount point which completely flummoxed me.
I eventually solved the problem by using Paragon Rescue Kit to restore the WinXP boot loader, but that means I can not boot into LINUX of course.
I appreciate how helpful the community is but I do find that LINUX does have a lot of 'hard to understand' command line instructions despite the fact that I started working with computers many years ago (IBM 360/44s!) since then I have worked with numerous operating systems including CP/M, MS-DOS, VMS, UNIX before having my IT brain scrambled by numerous flavours of W-----s! I had hoped to slowly move over to LINUX but this episode has been very disappointing.
In order to get my UNR 11.04 system working again I guess I have two options,
1)
I could use the UNR10.10 Bootable USB key to re-install the GRUB Loader, or
2)
I can Download UNR 11.04 and make another bootable USB with 11.04 and then use that to install the latest 11.04 update.
My concern is that I don't know why the original GRUB was corrupted so either of these two solutions could end up with a repeat of the same problem.
Canonical have done a good job to make LINUX more user friendly but I have found this episode very disappointing as it is just the sort of thing that will put off the average Windows user who will simply return to the environment they know.
I am still keen to persevere with UBUNTU but I could do with some hand-holding to get a workable 11.04 dual boot system working.
Jon