8.10 installer and grub errors

[outerspacerace]

Hi all,

I have a dual boot machine that has been running both Windows XP and Hardy Heron fine.

Tonight I decided to make the upgrade and from the 8.10 live CD selected manual partioning (long story dating back to 8.04 also not automatically picking up the correct HDD to resize - I have three installed).

I found my 8.04 installation and reformatted the ext3 area as ext3 and mount point \ again, leaving the swap and windows partitions untouched.

Had figured this would be the correct thing to do but around 82% or so my installer went a bit crazy.

It went to a black screen, keep trying to start the Gnome display manager, checking the battery state etc, then a blue screen appeared saying:

"The display server has been shut down about 6 times in the last 90 seconds. It is likely something bad is going on. Waiting for 2 minutes before trying again on display :0."

Now when I reboot I get a GRUB Error 15 and so cannot boot into windows or 8.10.

The CD has been checked for integrity and comes up fine - any ideas?

Cheers.

[outerspacerace]

Would booting from the live CD and editing my grub config to point to the new kernel, or just deleting it completely and doing another clean install of 8.10 (letting it install the grub bootloader again) be the answer?

If so, where would I find the file to modify? In the linux or windows partition?

Or would a terminal session be a better method?

From this page:

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/grub-error-guide.xml?style=printable

It seems like maybe my install did go okay and that perhaps grub being messed due to some kind of conflict with my old 8.04 config may be the problem.

Thanks in advance for any suggestions!

[outerspacerace]

Even Super Grub Disk tells me Error 15: File not found no matter what option I try.

The answer is no when it checks if these exist:

/boot/grub/stage1

/grub/stage1

/lib/grub/i386-pc/stage1

Hope that helps you help me...

[surj08]

If your install messed up at 82 you say. i believe thats even before grub gets put on. reinstall or use a live cd and manually install grub.

[surj08]

you could reinstall i dunno, that would only be if you didnt want to/didnt know how to use the live cd to make the repair.

[outerspacerace]

I'm not shy of using the live cd and doing it manually, just all the options I've tried (found from goggle searches) haven't worked, I'm thinking maybe the partition was corrupted during the install somehow...

Anyway, I've just burned another live CD on a machine I trust more (ie. not the one at work) and will be trying that out tomorrow if I can't get the live CD method to work after some more advice/attempts.

Cheers, I'll report back in.

[eyeJ]

I'm having the same problem and hope that someone can answer, in the meanwhile I'll try to install 8.04 since I got some new components lately :)

I guess that I can confirm that the boot loader doesn't get installed because I get NTLDR is missing message on boot.
And that is because i disabled the second onboard sata controller that gave me trouble with the ubuntu install and that broke the grub that was installed before that. But all this should not be directly related to the error we are getting.
:popcorn:

[eyeJ]

I fixed the boot device order now I get the GRUB loading, please wait...
Error 15

:lolflag:

[outerspacerace]

Surj08 was indeed correct. Grub didn't install at all.

I fixed things by downloading/burning another 8.10 disc overnight which completed the install ok (apart from not restarting the machine properly at the very end - but no biggie).

However, I got a clue as to to what I believe the real problem was, which had nothing to do with using a different CD to install from.

At 82% the installer takes quite a long time to scan the mirrors, the whole process had reached maybe 10mins by that stage on my pc.

It's at that point either a screensaver attempts to start or the monitor hibernates from inactivity. I saw the fade in to black beginning and quickly touched the mouse just to avoid it - things ended up fine.

So I'm gathering the display couldn't start itself again once it had been shut down and that somehow corrupted my install.

All is well now though, GRUB appears fine at boot and XP is listed as normal :)

I had to rush to work but am assuming XP should boot fine.

Hope this helps anyone out there.

[eyeJ]

Surj08 was indeed correct. Grub didn't install at all.

I fixed things by downloading/burning another 8.10 disc overnight which completed the install ok (apart from not restarting the machine properly at the very end - but no biggie).

However, I got a clue as to to what I believe the real problem was, which had nothing to do with using a different CD to install from.

At 82% the installer takes quite a long time to scan the mirrors, the whole process had reached maybe 10mins by that stage on my pc.

It's at that point either a screensaver attempts to start or the monitor hibernates from inactivity. I saw the fade in to black beginning and quickly touched the mouse just to avoid it - things ended up fine.

So I'm gathering the display couldn't start itself again once it had been shut down and that somehow corrupted my install.

All is well now though, GRUB appears fine at boot and XP is listed as normal :)

I had to rush to work but am assuming XP should boot fine.

Hope this helps anyone out there.

Yep you found the solution to my problem!
Thank you for sharing! :)

So the trick is to boot the live cd, touorn off the screensaver and idle timer and ubuntu will install perfectly. :popcorn:
Next time I install ubuntu i'l try to leve the mouse alone to confirm with 100% security that this is the solution. So if someone else is having this problem to make apsolute sure just play with the mouse at the 82% configuring apt stage :lolflag:

[outerspacerace]

That's a bit inconvenient especially for folks who, like me, just install from the first menu rather than booting into the live CD.

Hopefully this bug doesn't affect too many people out there...otherwise we all may need to buy ultra fast processors that complete the install before the screensaver kicks in :lolflag:!

Anyway, just glad to have helped mate.