Hi Guys,

the following reported issue hit my notebook at Feb. 21, last.
During my work, I intended to accept a system suggestion to update. The process had started and some minutes later I got surprised by a dark screen with little characters, something vaguely resembling a boot screen!

Using a cell phone to search for help I found some that help me get out of there. But during the boot process an error message appeared, sadly I don't take note of it, somehow complaining of a unrecognised FAT partition, if I'm not mistaken.

In addition to being impressed by having seen the first reboot in linux in 20 years, I was relieved to be back in the realm of my beloved files.

Back to Ubuntu, I checked the sanity of the files I was working, all OK, but gradually I noted that many customary system modules did not load! I had no sound, no possibility to access a pen-drive or external HDD (in a notebook with no internal CD/DVD)!

I have continued to search the web, but now I want to certify that the next boot will "self heal" the situation, and "all" be back to Feb.20, before the "strike". Since than I did not restart the system anymore, waiting to know the best strategy to apply. Unsure of have found it, I'm here asking you.

My question:
Basically I want some help to check boot sanity, before trying to reboot. This notebook (Dell Inspiron 15-5557; 2014; Running Ubuntu 14-04) have no internal CD/DVD and, at this time, do not recognizes external drives!! Mainly given the possibility of an recognized FAT problem.

What I know:
* boot partition: hd0,7
* how I get out of grub: (no need to insmod linux or initrd, as I now know.)
(The following "code" section are in fact commands in grub)
* Yes, there is a /boot/grub/grub.conf
* Is it corrupt? (seems readable...how can I know for sure?)
* I installed grub-emu. Do not accept any key, simulate the default boot option by time-out and reports:
(The following "code" section are in fact messages in grub-emu)
* I think this test was not worth it. (But reinforces the mistrust of a partition problem.)
* The only plausible immediate cause I can see was the GUI update, I never touched any partitions set before install Ubuntu (Sept. 2014).
* May I be risking a almost full HDD (there is a lot of space indeed )

(The following "code" section are in fact bash terminal)
Please, I would like help for this problem for what I thank you in advance.

Caio

Your post is a little confusing.
The quote above suggests you are able to boot Ubuntu, Can you boot Windows?
If so, you can transfer your data to the data partition /dev/sda9 and recover it from there.
If you are able to boot to both Operating Systems, means there is nothing wrong with the EFI partition /dev/sda1 which contains boot information. As for what /dev/sda2 represents is a mystery for now, perhaps a Windows boot partition? None the less, if you can boot to Windows, that would be the best avenue to check the integrity of those two Fat partitions by assigning a drive letter to each with diskpart command then right clicking on them from the Windows file browser selecting: Properties/Tools/Error check.

Then when in the running Ubuntu, from the command prompt you can run command: sudo grub-install /dev/sda7 which should rebuild proper boot configuration for Ubuntu.
EDIT: Make sure to run command: sudo fdisk -l first to ensure partition 7 is /dev/sda7, on GPT drives, partitions are in the order they are created, not in disk order, it could be something else, but the root partition is where you want to direct grub to install into in a UEFI system

1 members found this post helpful.

That's unfortunate because the grub.conf file was/is used by Grub Legacy which has not been used with Ubuntu for almost 10 years. Where did that come from? You should have a grub.cfg file in the /boot/grub directory which has your boot menu.

The information you posted indicates that you have both Linux/Ubuntu and some version of windows (which one?). Were you doing the update on Ubuntu?
The no such device error means it is looking for a partition by UUID and can't find that UUID. Does it exist?

Have you mixed a Grub Legacy and Grub 2? A number of commands used in Grub2 aren't available from Grub Legacy. The reverse is also true.

Also, if you are still using 14.04, support for it ends next month.

1 members found this post helpful.

Hi guys,

first of all, let me thanks to you Yancek and Brains for the replies.

Guys, I was searching for a way to test my boot condition (Grub+Ubuntu) before to try a new boot. I this way I replied your questions, waiting for new advice.

The state of my machine stays almost the same as the date of the crash. I was able to work and make some deliveries. I decided to make space on the HDD and save some files.
Retelling:
The crash occurred during a system upgrade through the GUI. The system crashed into Grub. I tried to know how to get out of there via Grub2 CLI commands, I got help on the network, I entered commands, the boot occurred, but complained about problems.
"But during the boot process an error message appeared, sadly I don't take note of it, somehow complaining of a unrecognised FAT partition, if I'm not mistaken."
The boot was interrupted 2 or 3 times with complaints, I typed enter to it and boot went on.
In Ubuntu, I noticed that several kernel modules were not loaded. No more rebooting the machine since there, waiting for a method of checking and fixing what is wrong before boot. If there is it.
Answering your question
Can I boot Windows? I don't know, I didn't try it.
I was able to run Ubuntu and have access to all my data, nothing was lost or damaged,/dev/sda9 is safe.
This partition is FAT32 and has the label DIAGS and flag "hidden". So I think it is a windows partition.
GParted warns about /vev/sda3 which has a unknown format, follows parted list:
Fine. Maybe I give it a try, but there is 2 FAT partitions candidates to that Grub2 error (If I really can remember the error msg), one of them is the EFI. Can one check the EFI running a OS? (OK, thats reasonable).

I liked that one, I read this elsewhere but I was worried if it would not end my chances at all. I'm very inclined to try.

OK. Very good. I think this would be the best attempt, but it is a very radical step. What if it does not work?

Yancek
Sorry, the file extension found is "cfg" indeed, I confused them.

Yes Win8.1.
Yes, updating via Ubuntu GUI, now I will try to do it via CLI.
"Does it exist?" Hummm, how can I know that?

No way! Never touched it. It's the Grub I install with Ubuntu 14.04.

My experience is that doing this is less dangerous than doing the upgrades where several things stop working! Now even the upgrades are scary!

Thanks once more. If you could continue to help me it wil be of great value!

Caio

Hi all!!
Thanks for all the help I received.
I did not get any preventative way to fix or troubleshoot my system, unless I reported it to grub2 below.
In fact, as I suspected, forcing my system to restart I returned to the original menu of the problem in full grub2 (which I did not know to have complicated so much !!). Ok, this time I knew the way back and ran without complaining about anything.
Returning to the OS, I decided to be suspicious of what seemed rather obvious, that grub2 was broken, since I had read some posts on how easy it is to reinstall grub from within Ubuntu.
I found tips on:
https://techgage.com/news/repairing_...der_on_ubuntu/
In this way the grub part of the problem was solved and more the sound has returned, but some things like the "VirtualBox kernel driver" has been lost. I use several VBox VMs, which are without load from the pane in February. The icons on the top panel are gone, too.
However, I have decided to give this request a close and question each of these fails separately.
Thank you very much for your attention and for offering this resource on the net.
Caio