Ubuntu 12 "Missing Operating System"

[-DarkAceZ-]

First off, I'd like to say this computer is a laptop with no battery and no harddrive. The harddrive went bad along with the battery, so whenever the cord gets unplugged the computer turns off, and I'm/I was running my OS on a 16GB flash drive.
The computer has went through many unexpected shutdowns, and it never broke any data... Until recently.
I was watching a movie, when someone sat on the cord, it got unplugged and it immediately turned off. By now I'm pretty used to this, and I just plugged it back in and started it up, only to find:

error: file not found
Grub rescue:

That's probably not good, and I did an "ls /" and everything seemed fine until I "ls /home". Nothing was there.
So I pop my flash drive into my 10.04 PC, only to find this in the root:

2.3GB left would also indicate my data is still there.

Someone in #ubuntu IRC suggested trying Boot-Repair (Second option, Recommended repair), but after using it (returned http://paste.ubuntu.com/1136645/ ) when I tried booting from the flash drive again, it didn't even get to Grub:

Missing Operating system
Operating System not found

If I remove the drive and press enter it just prints "Operating System not found".

The drive is no older than 5 months... I doubt it already went bad...
Any ideas? I'm not sure how fsck works, and I figured I'd better see what you people think before trying that.

If I could at least just save my home folder...

[oldfred]

BootInfo is not showing grub nor the kernels in your install. If you look in /boot are kernals there? You show the links in / that should be to the most recent kernel, but the X looks like it may be broken? If /boot got deleted that is a major problem. I think because BootRepair did not find the kernels it just installed syslinux as a default boot loader when Linux files are not found.

[-DarkAceZ-]

/boot was there when I was on grub, but I didn't check it's contents.

When trying to read /boot (on another system), along with the rest of the missing folders, it gives me an "input/output error".

[oldfred]

I would backup anything that you can backup, if not already backed up.

I might try e2fsck, but since it is missing folders not sure if testdisk would do anything more.

#From liveCD so everything is unmounted,swap off if necessary, change example shown with partition sdb1 to your partition(s)
#e2fsck is used to check the ext2/ext3/ext4 family of file systems. -p trys fixes where response not required
sudo e2fsck -C0 -p -f -v /dev/sdb1
#if errors: -y auto answers yes for fixes needing response see man e2fsck
sudo e2fsck -f -y -v /dev/sdb1

repairs including testdisk info & link to testdisk, testdisk is in repository and on most repairCDs
http://members.iinet.net.au/~herman546/p21.html
http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntucat/...rdeletedfiles/

Instructions
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/TestDisk_Step_By_Step
http://www.cgsecurity.org/wiki/Menu_Analyse

[-DarkAceZ-]

You're saying I should try
sudo e2fsck -C0 -p -f -v /dev/sda1
and then
sudo e2fsck -f -y -v /dev/sda1
?

[oldfred]

Yes the e2fsck will look for errors in file structure, but I am not sure it will then see missing files & folders.

You might also look in lost & found or trash to see if boot folder is in those.

[-DarkAceZ-]

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo e2fsck -C0 -p -f -v /dev/sda1
/dev/sda1:                                                                      Inode 130081 is in use, but has dtime set.  FIXED.
/dev/sda1: Inode 130081 has a extra size (1565) which is invalid
FIXED.
/dev/sda1: Inode 130082 is in use, but has dtime set.  FIXED.
/dev/sda1: Inode 130082 has a extra size (16412) which is invalid
FIXED.
/dev/sda1: Error while reading over extent tree in inode 130082: Corrupt extent header


/dev/sda1: UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY; RUN fsck MANUALLY.
    (i.e., without -a or -p options)
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

fsck /dev/sda1?

[oldfred]

the second version I posted does more if the first has issues. The -y answers yes on all issues which can be many.
See
man fsck
man e2fsck

sudo e2fsck -f -y -v /dev/sda1

fsck does the same as e2fsck

[-DarkAceZ-]

sudo e2fsck -f -y -v /dev/sda1
worked, went through tons of output, and:

*** journal has been re-created - filesystem is now ext3 again *** e2fsck: aborted
/dev/sda1: ***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****

Tried booting, same error ("Missing Operating system." then "Operating System not found")

[oldfred]

It made repairs but if files & folders are missing it is still an issue. Did you look in the lost & found or trash?

You may be able to chroot into your system and reinstall grub2 and install the current kernel if that is all that is missing. Otherwise backup what you can or have not backed up and totally reinstall.

I think this has a helper on the chroot as an option.
Boot Repair -Also handles LVM, GPT, separate /boot and UEFI dual boot.:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair
You can repair many boot issues with this or 'Create BootInfo' report (Other Options) & post the link it creates, so we can see your exact configuration an diagnose advanced problems.

To chroot, you need the same 32bit or 64 bit kernel. Best to use same version.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BasicChroot
drs305 chroot to purge & reinstall grub2
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1581099

#Then run whatever other commands needed - no sudo needed if chroot (maybe good to run "df- H" and "cat /etc/issue" to be certain #you mounted the correct partition).
#Commands once in chroot:
#if not chroot use: sudo -i
#houseclean
apt-get autoclean # only removes files that cannot be downloaded anymore (obsolete)
apt-get clean
#refresh
apt-get update #resync package index
apt-get upgrade #newest versions of all packages, update must be run first
#would upgrade you to the latest kernel in the repositories
#dist-upgrade is also able to remove existing packages if required
apt-get dist-upgrade
apt-get -f install
dpkg --configure -a
# reinstall desktop
apt-get remove ubuntu-desktop
apt-get install ubuntu-desktop