Can't get past grub.

**mlsquad** · June 13th, 2009

Originally Posted by merlinus

What is on sdb1? Also, did you run those commands whilst booted into ubuntu, or using the live cd?

sdb1 is my home directory. I can't boot into Ubuntu to do anything. I can only boot into the live CD.

**synapsys** · June 13th, 2009

Maybe the livecd is trying to run it's own version of update-grub, try running the script in your /sbin/ folder. If that doesn't work try changing 'root' to hd0,0 instead of uuid in your menu.lst.

**merlinus** · June 13th, 2009

If you are running from the live cd, then /boot/grub/menu.lst is NOT the one that exists in your ubuntu install.

You can manually mount your ubuntu partition from a terminal, and get to its menu.lst that way.

**synapsys** · June 13th, 2009

I was assuming he knew that... sounds like he knows mostly what he's doing.

**merlinus** · June 13th, 2009

No insult intended, but he did post menu.lst, and it appears to be the one from the live cd.....

Of course, I could easily be totally mistaken!

**synapsys** · June 13th, 2009

no answer.... did you fix it?

**mlsquad** · July 2nd, 2009

Originally Posted by synapsys

no answer.... did you fix it?

Sorry, ubuntuforums didn't e-mail me that there was an update to this post. My computer went belly up and so this issue has not been of much priority. My BIOS displays green speckles on the screen, and booting from a live CD gives me a hard freeze when it tries to go into graphics mode, so I'm working on that one.

I did post the menu.lst from my hard drive at /media/.../boot/grub/menu.lst, not the live CD version at /boot/grub/menu.lst I'll let y'all know when my hardware is back in commission. Thanks for the help thus far.

**mlsquad** · July 8th, 2009

Originally Posted by synapsys

Maybe the livecd is trying to run it's own version of update-grub, try running the script in your /sbin/ folder. If that doesn't work try changing 'root' to hd0,0 instead of uuid in your menu.lst.

I replaced my graphics card and now my computer can boot. I did run the update-grub from /media/disk/sbin and I am still in the same spot. I still cannot boot up.

**mlsquad** · July 8th, 2009

Here's some more good information. When I boot up and get the grub menu I can boot by typing in the following.
rootnoverify (hd0,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1
kernel /vmlinuz root=/dev/sda1
boot

So I think it is definitely something crazy with this menu.lst, but I cannot figure out what. It is owned by root with rw_r__r__ permission.

**mlsquad** · September 2nd, 2009

I finally got this fixed!

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1104822 led me to http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ext4

Code:

mkdir /mnt/arch
mount -t ext4 /dev/sda1 /mnt/arch
mount -t proc proc /mnt/arch/proc
mount -t sysfs sys /mnt/arch/sys
mount -o bind /dev /mnt/arch/dev
chroot /mnt/arch /bin/bash
grub-install --recheck /dev/sda

That got my grub working but the UUIDs all over menu.lst where fubared, which was weird to me because I don't think I changed anything about my partitions. Not sure. Either way the following fixed menu.lst

Code:

sudo update-grub

Finally I added the Windwos 7 boot option back to menu.lst and I am 100% in business with sane booting. My wife will be quite happy she no longer has to manually specify kernels to boot the machine.