Replacement Mobo, sata boot curiosity, anybody seen this?

Soadyheid · 03-14-2014, 07:28 AM

My dual core AMD Desktop system died a couple of month ago.
It had hung and my attempts to re-boot it failed miserably with fans running, lights on and nobody in... No POST and no way in. A bit of a pain as I had various docs and spread sheets which were important to me plus KWallet Manager with 30 odd passwords for accessing websites, accounts, etc, etc.

Suffice to say that I have now managed to scrape together enough to replace the toasted Mobo. I've now got an Asus M5A78L-M USB3 with 8Gb of memory and an AMD FX-6300 6 core processor. Well... It only cost £7.00 extra for 6 rather than 4 cores.

Asus Linux compatibility chart shows the Mobo as OK with Ubuntu 10.10. I've got 10.04 LTS as below.

My old system had two disks, a Samsung 120Gb PATA running XP and a WD 250Gb SATA with Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, which aren't completely compatible with the new Mobo... er.. 6 SATA connections, no PATA/IDE connectors? Hmmm... A couple of StarTech PATA2SATA adapters, one for the Samsung and one for my R/W DVD fixed this.

So... I've got my Samsung HDD connected to SATA3-1, The WD HDD to SATA3-2 and my R/W DVD drive connects to SATA3-5. Ports 5 & 6 can be configured separately for optical drives.
The BIOS sees the drives which are configured as IDE. Choices are IDE/AHCI/RAID for ports 1-4. (5 is IDE for the DVD drive. 5 & 6 can be configured separately)

On boot, I get through to the Grub menu. MBR on the XP/Samsung drive pointing to Grub on the WD drive. I boot into XP to check the hardware is OK and all is successful. I have to load all the Asus XP Support drivers and stuff but we're looking good!
I want to salvage the complete Ubuntu build if possible, anchors and all, without having to resort to a re-install and possible loss of my data.
Booting a live Ubuntu 10.04 CD succeeds so another positive action with regards to H/W compatibility! I use it and GParted to check the drives and note the UUIDs of partitions. I also re-installed Grub by mounting the Ubuntu partitions and chroot-ing into the system.
So far so good! My data looks OK but attempts to copy it onto an external drive fail due to permission problems. Now's bite the bullet time... The system was re-booted and Ubuntu selected, what I got was similar to below...

Code:

Boot from (hd1,0) ext3 57575051-06d1-4405-80db-b94523afc4c9
 Starting up...
 [ 0.380222] PCI: BIOS BUG #0[00000031] found
 Loading, please wait...
 Gave up waiting for root device. Common problem:
 -Boot args (cat /proc/cmdline)
 -Check rootdelay= (did the system wait long enough?)
 -Check root= did the system wait for the right device?)
 -Missing modules (cat /proc/modules; ls /dev)
 ALERT! /dev/disk/by-uuid/57575051-06d1-4405-80db-b94523afc4c9 does not ext. Dropping to a shell!

 BusyBox v1.10.2 rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb.
 (initramfs)

And that's yer lot!

I've tried changing the SATA3 setups for ports 1-4, IDE, AHCI and even RAID (Which gives access to the RAID config utility)and still it doesn't boot properly. Note setting AHCI causes the XP disk to fail as it can't cope without the AHCI drivers.

Now the curious part... At the initramfs prompt I decide to check on the Ubuntu disk location, so...

Code:

 initramfs cd/dev/disk/by-uuid/57575051-06d1-4405-80db-b94523afc4c9
initramfs ls 57575051-06d1-4405-80db-b94523afc4c9 (plus the other partitions!)

So why didn't it boot then?
trying

Code:

initramfs return

caused the whole thing to burst into life and way hay! I've got my system back!

If you're still with me, dear reader, I'm wondering how to cause this to happen automatically? it looks like there is a memory resident FS, (initramfs?) which is holding a temporary /dev directory which allows you to access the Linux drive.
Can I add something to Grub to ensure the path is defined?
I note that the first time I check the path and issue the "return" command that it still fails with a "huh? can't find the disk" response. It works the second time inferring that until you've pointed it at the correct directory it doesn't know where it is.

Has anybody else seen this sort of thing? If you have, how did you resolve it? As mentioned I don't want to re-load an OS at present till I'm happy everything's stable, though I HAVE now backed up both my /home partition and recovered my password data.

Sorry about the length of my post, maybe I should have raised a Blog or posted a Video on youtube!

Thanks for any thoughts!

Soadyheid

Play Bonny!

business_kid · 03-14-2014, 02:36 PM

By the time I got to the end of your post, I'd forgotten the start. Have you a line in grub after the kernel command line

initrd <blah> pointing the system to an initramfs?

DiskChris · 03-14-2014, 04:36 PM

I would try booting a livecd and seeing if you can mount all the drives just to see if its a software issue.

Soadyheid · 03-16-2014, 10:54 AM

@ business kid

I found this in 10_linux under /etc/grub.d (Ubuntu is using Grub2 obviously!)

Code:

 if [ "x${GRUB_DEVICE_UUID}" = "x" ] || [ "x${GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID}" = "xtrue" ] \
    || ! test -e "/dev/disk/by-uuid/${GRUB_DEVICE_UUID}" \
    || [ "`grub-probe -t abstraction --device ${GRUB_DEVICE} | sed -e 's,.*\(lvm\).*,\1,'`" = "lvm"  ] ; then
  LINUX_ROOT_DEVICE=${GRUB_DEVICE}
else
  LINUX_ROOT_DEVICE=UUID=${GRUB_DEVICE_UUID}
fi

# add crashkernel option if we have the required tools
if [ -x "/usr/bin/makedumpfile" ] && [ -x "/sbin/kexec" ]; then
    GRUB_CMDLINE_EXTRA="$GRUB_CMDLINE_EXTRA crashkernel=384M-2G:64M,2G-:128M"
fi

Unfortunately, even having read a Grub2 tutorial, I'm not really any wiser. Most of the tutorial is on how to customise the various OS' for booting. I really need someone to help explain the script.
I'm a bit nervous about trying to change anything in case I screw it up.

@ DiskChris

As I mentioned, I mounted all the partitions from a Live Ubuntu 10.04 CD to re-install Grub to see if that would fix it. It didn't unfortunately.

All the partitions mounted fine and were accessible, just a bit of fun identifying the three partitions as /, /usr and /home as I'd initially thought a default Ubuntu install only used one.

So... can someone knowledgeable in the Grub2 boot process advise if I need to change something; put a wait statement or

Code:

 cd /dev/disk/by-uuid/

in somewhere to allow the boot to complete without me having to manually identify the boot path to the disk at the initramfs prompt?

Thanks for taking the time to read this.

(This post is from the affected system.)

Soadyheid

Play Bonny!

business_kid · 03-16-2014, 03:39 PM

From what you showed, you should be using a UUID in grub.conf or wherever it is set up
from memory:

kernel=/somekernel root="UUID=your_root_uuid_here"

The uuid is an absolute disk address much like the MAC address of a nic. I know, I hate them too, but you are risking use of grub2

Soadyheid · 03-16-2014, 08:02 PM

Hmmm... I'm beginning to wonder if I am actually running grub2? I have no /boot/grub/grub.cfg file, no /etc/default/grub file. /boot/grub/menu.lst is showing my latest kernel which was updated the other day. (menu.lst belongs to legacy grub I believe, not grub2)

Code:

title		Ubuntu 10.04.4 LTS, kernel 2.6.32-57-generic
uuid		ad05c719-0607-4c16-8c2c-a0be70239a71
kernel		/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-57-generic root=UUID=ad05c719-0607-4c16-8c2c-a0be70239a71 ro quiet splash 
initrd		/boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-57-generic
quiet

The UUID is the actual UUID for the /partition, my original post had an example only.

I think I need to Google legacy grub and check it out. Strange as I have an /etc/grub.d directory containing 00_header, 10_linux, 20_memtest86+, 30_os_prober, 40_custom and the README. All grub2 config files???!

Soadyheid

Play Bonny!

yancek · 03-16-2014, 08:12 PM

Ubuntu 10.04 and any later releases use Grub2. Is that the only operating system you have other than xp? You seem to have a mix of Grub Legacy and Grub2 files. If you had Ubuntu 10.04 or 10.10, you should have all the Grub2 files if you are using Grub as the primary bootloader.

Soadyheid · 03-17-2014, 04:27 AM

@ Yancek

Yup! Only two OSs on the system, one on each disk.
Looking back, one of the first things I did when trying to resurrect the system was to boot the live Ubuntu 10.04 CD and run an "install-grub"
It looks like it may have installed the wrong thing. Possibly from the running live CD at the time?

I think my next step will be to remove grub/grub2 from the system completely and re-install grub2. Hopefully I'll be able to find the right thing within the Software Manager packages to ensure it matches the loaded OS.

Soadyheid

Play Bonny!

little_wolf_e · 03-17-2014, 04:50 AM

Hi,
I would say that the first thing to do, if you have not already done so, would be to sort out any permission problems that you are having and make sure that you backup everything you want to keep.

Soadyheid · 03-17-2014, 05:42 AM

Hi,

I've already backed up my /home directory and rescued my KWallet Manager passwords.

I'm not sure I've got permission problems? I haven't had any problems accessing anything, just some confusion with the grub brothers when booting! Even if I screw up a new "install-grub", I should still be able to gain access via the live CD.

Soadyheid.

Play Bonny!

Germany_chris · 03-17-2014, 09:51 AM

I'll be that guy..

10.04 went EOL last year and may not have the necessary drivers..

Soadyheid · 03-17-2014, 10:29 AM

Yup! I know. My system died before the EOL date in November. I needed to recover my data which I have done! I'm STILL going to check out the strange grub install but my Mobo, according to Asus, has been checked with Ubuntu 10.10.

As I say, I CAN get it to boot and function perfectly so I'm more inclined to think this grub/grub2 thing is causing the problem, not drivers.

Soadyheid.

Play Bonny!

Soadyheid · 03-17-2014, 08:05 PM

Latest update...

I picked up the Bootinfoscript diagnostic from yancek's advice to another Grub problem. It showed that I was indeed running Grub legacy V0.97.

I completely removed Grub and installed Grub_PC instead (Grub2's other name apparently in Ubuntuworld)

I also isolated the menu.lst files within /boot/grub as they seemed to get in the way of grub.cfg, at least as far as bootscriptinfo appeared to show.
So now bootscriptinfo looked fairly much the same as the one installed on my Ubuntu netbook.

Tried for the re-boot... I now get a pretty blue debian Grub menu to pick my OS... but it still fails to the initramfs prompt.

(Yes, from here I can still manually point it at /dev/disk/by-uuid/ type "return" and it boots fine.)

It's now 01:00 am so I'll pack it in for tonight.

Soadyheid

Play Bonny!

cascade9 · 03-18-2014, 04:28 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Soadyheid

Yup! I know. My system died before the EOL date in November. I needed to recover my data which I have done! I'm STILL going to check out the strange grub install but my Mobo, according to Asus, has been checked with Ubuntu 10.10.

IMO your original problem is that the UUID was different and in trying to fix it somehow you've got GRUB and GRUB2 stuff mixed up.

You dont need to use 10.04 to recover data from 10.04. You could have got a newer supported version/distro.

If it was me, I'd flick the PATA HDD/DVD and buy a SATA DVD + HDD, and do a clean install of something supported.

Soadyheid · 03-18-2014, 06:04 AM

Hi Cascade9,

Quote:

IMO your original problem is that the UUID was different

The example I used in my original post was copied from another post, the UUID is not mine, mine hasn't changed. I said it was "similar" to what I got on boot.

As mentioned, I originally did an "install-grub" which I think muddied the water. I've since cleaned out the grub legacy and am now left with Grub2. There's nothing wrong with my PATA hdd and DVD drives, they work fine so I don't see the need to replace them.
Most of the kit I run is salvaged, this is the first time I've shelled out for a Mobo bundle.

I'm going to try removing the "quiet splash" on one of the kernels from the 10_linux file to see if I can get some more info.

I may well have to upgrade to a newer OS but half the fun of Linux is that you can tinker, you learn more that way! a clean install is usually fairly automatic so is my least preferred option. (at present!)

Thanks for the interest

Soadyheid

Play Bonny!