funny boot in 12.04

[Pablo W]

Hi, forum.
After running the beta for some time, I have just made a fresh install of the official release of Ubuntu 12.04. I installed from a usb drive.

Everything went well, except for the following issue at boot:
The first problem I had was that the PC would only boot if I had the usb plugged, even if prompted to start from the hard drive.

I ran boot-repair and got the following:
http://paste.ubuntu.com/950911

The situation now is: I don't need to plug the usb stick at boot, but the boot process is very slow. It gives me a black screen a couple of times and then a get a menu page (reading "Debian, the Universal Operating System") for me to choose out of different boot options. I cannot find a way to ensure a smooth boot.

For the rest, Ubuntu 12.04 seems to be working fine.

I'll appreciate your help.

Cheers.

[Rubi1200]

Hi,
please post the full specifications for the computer, especially RAM and graphics card.

Thanks.

[Pablo W]

Hi,
please post the full specifications for the computer, especially RAM and graphics card.

Thanks.

Thanks for your answer, Rubi. And sorry for a late reply (the funny-boot PC is at the office and I only returned to work this morning).
Here is a list of the hardware


ruta H/W Dispositivo Clase Descripción
================================================== =========
system HP Compaq dc7700 Small Form Facto
/0 bus 0A54h
/0/1 memory 128KiB BIOS
/0/5 processor Intel(R) Pentium(R) D CPU 3.00GHz
/0/5/7 memory 28KiB L1 caché
/0/5/8 memory 2MiB L2 caché
/0/5/0.1 processor CPU lógica
/0/5/0.2 processor CPU lógica
/0/6 processor CPU [vacío]
/0/37 memory Memoria de sistema
/0/37/0 memory 512MiB DIMM DDR2 Síncrono 667 MH
/0/37/1 memory 512MiB DIMM DDR2 Síncrono 667 MH
/0/37/2 memory 1GiB DIMM DDR2 Síncrono 667 MHz
/0/37/3 memory DIMM DDR2 Síncrono [vacío]
/0/38 memory Memoria flash
/0/38/0 memory 1MiB Chip FLASH No volátil
/0/0 processor
/0/0/0.1 processor CPU lógica
/0/0/0.2 processor CPU lógica
/0/2 memory
/0/3 memory
/0/100 bridge 82Q963/Q965 Memory Controller Hub
/0/100/2 display 82Q963/Q965 Integrated Graphics C
/0/100/3 communication 82Q963/Q965 HECI Controller
/0/100/19 eth0 network 82566DM Gigabit Network Connectio
/0/100/1a bus 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Con
/0/100/1a.1 bus 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Con
/0/100/1a.7 bus 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Co
/0/100/1b multimedia 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Con
/0/100/1c bridge 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express
/0/100/1d bus 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Con
/0/100/1d.1 bus 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Con
/0/100/1d.7 bus 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Co
/0/100/1e bridge 82801 PCI Bridge
/0/100/1e/9 bus USB
/0/100/1e/9.1 bus USB
/0/100/1e/9.2 bus USB 2.0
/0/100/1f bridge 82801HO (ICH8DO) LPC Interface Co
/0/100/1f.2 scsi0 storage 82801H (ICH8 Family) 4 port SATA
/0/100/1f.2/0 /dev/sda disk 80GB WDC WD800JD-60LS
/0/100/1f.2/0/1 /dev/sda1 volume 72GiB partición EXT4
/0/100/1f.2/0/2 /dev/sda2 volume 2022MiB Extended partition
/0/100/1f.2/0/2/5 /dev/sda5 volume 2022MiB Linux swap / Solaris part
/0/100/1f.2/1 /dev/cdrom disk COMBO SHC-48S7K
/1 scsi3 storage

Thanks,
Pablo.

[Pablo W]

In my previous post I forgot to include the following info on the graphic card. I hope this helps:


*-display
descripción: VGA compatible controller
producto: 82Q963/Q965 Integrated Graphics Controller
fabricante: Intel Corporation
id físico: 2
información del bus: pci@0000:00:02.0
versión: 02
anchura: 64 bits
reloj: 33MHz
capacidades: msi pm vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
configuración: driver=i915 latency=0
recursos: irq:43 memoria:f0400000-f04fffff memoria:e0000000-efffffff ioport:1100(size=8)
pablo@pablo-HP-Compaq-dc7700-Small-Form-Factor:~$

Thanks.

[Pablo W]

Dear forum members,
I'm still trying to figure out how to sort this out. My Ubuntu-knowledge is pretty limited, though. Could anybody assist me with this question?
Thank you!

[grahammechanical]

Hi Pablo W

How many different operating systems do you have on this machine? Have you installed Debian?

Ubuntu is based on Debian but we do not usually see any reference to Debian in the Grub menu. No references to Ubuntu either. Just to Linux.

May I suggest that when you are in Ubuntu you run the command:


sudo update-grub

Then enter your password when asked to.

That command will refresh the Grub menu. That may improve things.

Regards.

[Pablo W]

Hi Pablo W

How many different operating systems do you have on this machine? Have you installed Debian?

Ubuntu is based on Debian but we do not usually see any reference to Debian in the Grub menu. No references to Ubuntu either. Just to Linux.

May I suggest that when you are in Ubuntu you run the command:


sudo update-grub

Then enter your password when asked to.

That command will refresh the Grub menu. That may improve things.

Regards.

Thanks, Grahammechanical.

I have only the brand new Ubuntu 12.04 installed, no other operating systems. It is a fresh install from a USB drive. I had previously used 12.04 beta and, following the forum broad preference for fresh installs, I decided to install the official 12.04 LTS from scratch (which now I think was a mistake). The reference to Debian appeared after I install boot-repair (see post #1).

Regarding the sudo update-grub command, this is the outcome:


Generating grub.cfg ...
Found background image: /usr/share/images/desktop-base/desktop-grub.png
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-24-generic-pae
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-24-generic-pae
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-3.2.0-23-generic-pae
Found initrd image: /boot/initrd.img-3.2.0-23-generic-pae
Found memtest86+ image: /boot/memtest86+.bin
done
pablo@pablo-HP-Compaq-dc7700-Small-Form-Factor:~$

Regards.

[grahammechanical]

Those messages seem normal to me.

There was a kernel update recently so you should have both the 3.2.0-23 and the 3.2.0-24 kernels and Grub should know about them. Keeping an older kernel is done so that if we have problems we can boot into the older kernel and get to a desktop.

You might what to consider this utiltity

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1664134

I use Grub Customizer to keep control over the Grub menu.

As you only have one OS you should not see the Grub menu unless you press Shift during the first part of the boot process.

There is something that I do not understand. I see this:


Found background image: /usr/share/images/desktop-base/desktop-grub.png

I have used Grub Customizer to set a background image to my Grub boot menu and it is found at /usr/share/images/grub

I do not have a /usr/share/images/desktop-base folder and I am using a 12.04 that I installed just a few hours ago.


Regards.

[Pablo W]

Those messages seem normal to me.

There was a kernel update recently so you should have both the 3.2.0-23 and the 3.2.0-24 kernels and Grub should know about them. Keeping an older kernel is done so that if we have problems we can boot into the older kernel and get to a desktop.

You might what to consider this utiltity

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1664134

I use Grub Customizer to keep control over the Grub menu.

As you only have one OS you should not see the Grub menu unless you press Shift during the first part of the boot process.

There is something that I do not understand. I see this:



I have used Grub Customizer to set a background image to my Grub boot menu and it is found at /usr/share/images/grub

I do not have a /usr/share/images/desktop-base folder and I am using a 12.04 that I installed just a few hours ago.


Regards.


Thanks, grahammechanical.
I've tried to install the Grub Customizer and I think I've made a mistake. I added the repositories as suggested in the thread you posted, but something went wrong. As a consequence, now I have an additional problem: Grub Customizer has not installed and the added lines to the repositories seem to be creating some trouble: I cannot make the software manager nor the updates manager work anymore. I have tried to delete the added repositories through nautilus (etc/apt/sources.list.d). Although I manage to find two files related to Grub Customizer, I get a message saying that I don't have the required permission to delete them (even though I am the only user and have administrator rights). Plus: I still get the funny-boot thing. Any clues?

[Pablo W]

Update: I managed to delete the faulty repositories through sudo nautilus. So the software manager is up and running again :)

I still face the situation described in post #1. I wonder if that could be fixed with grub-customizer. I have now correctly added its repositories. Nevertheless, I cannot find how to run grub-customizer, since it is not in the applications menu. I guess this is something very basic for the experts?
:confused:

[Pablo W]

HI again, forum.
I think I've found where the problem is. I went to a terminal and did

sudo fdisk -l

to see where my full install was. Since it was in sda, I did


sudo grub-install /dev/sda

and... look at the outcome:


Dispositivo Inicio Comienzo Fin Bloques Id Sistema
/dev/sda1 * 2048 152158207 76078080 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 152160254 156301311 2070529 5 Extendida
/dev/sda5 152160256 156301311 2070528 82 Linux swap / Solaris
pablo@pablo-HP-Compaq-dc7700-Small-Form-Factor:~$ sudo grub-install /dev/sda
/usr/sbin/grub-setup: aviso: Sector 33 is already in use by FlexNet; avoiding it. This software may cause boot or other problems in future. Please ask its authors not to store data in the boot track.
Installation finished. No error reported.


So it seems to me that the delayed boot comes from something related to Flexnet. This is as far as i could go. At this point, I cannot go further without expert advice. Is there any expert happy to lend a willing hand?

[Pablo W]

This issue was solved in a different thread. In case you are interested to see the details, please look at: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1976158

Thanks.