Good day ladies and gentlemen.

After fighting with Windows for many years I finally decided to try Linux; still so new at it, I am practically still in the package and just picking my way out.

I have a 1.8Ghz AMD and 6HDDs on an ASRock K8Upgrade Board with 1GB of RAM, running XP Pro. Two of the drives are 500GB SATA drives. I installed Ubuntu10.4 on the first SATA drive (two partitons) and until yesterday it worked just fine.

Yesterday I decided to finally use the update manager to update the system and installed 201+MB of upgrades.
Somewhere along the way a window popped up showing my HDDs with check-marks beside the 'C' drive and the 2 SATA drives. I was asked if I wanted to install Grub; I take it that is the boot-loader, on all the drives so, I checked all the drives and then read on.
Further down I was told that, putting grub on all the drives would make it unreliable so, I unchecked all the drives but the 2 SATA drives.

Now, when I boot up, I get the option to boot into XP or Ubuntu but, when I choose Ubuntu, the machine just gives me a black screen and reboots endlessly.
I suspect, by un-checking the 'C' drive in the above mentioned window, I somehow deleted or incapacitated the boot-loader.

I have lots of instances of Grub in various locations, mostly recycle bins but, are they useful and, what do I do with them?
Here is one:
#This file is modified at runtime by bootmenu.nsh

set default=0
echo "$(title1)"
echo "$(title2)"
if sleep --verbose --interruptible 5 ; then
set timeout=0
fi
echo

# TBD try to boot directly from kernel/initrd within the ISO via the grub2 loop module

search -s -f -n $(kernel)

menuentry "$(normal_mode_title)" {
linux $(kernel) debian-installer/custom-installation=$(custom_installation_dir) iso-scan/filename=$(iso_path) automatic-ubiquity noprompt quiet splash boot=casper ro debian-installer/locale=$(locale) console-setup/layoutcode=$(keyboard_layout) console-setup/variantcode=$(keyboard_variant) -- $(accessibility) $(rootflags)
initrd $(initrd)
}

menuentry "$(safe_graphic_mode_title)" {
linux $(kernel) debian-installer/custom-installation=$(custom_installation_dir) iso-scan/filename=$(iso_path) automatic-ubiquity noprompt debug debug-ubiquity xforcevesa boot=casper ro debian-installer/locale=$(locale) console-setup/layoutcode=$(keyboard_layout) console-setup/variantcode=$(keyboard_variant) -- $(accessibility) $(rootflags)
initrd $(initrd)
}

menuentry "$(acpi_workarounds_title)" {
linux $(kernel) debian-installer/custom-installation=$(custom_installation_dir) iso-scan/filename=$(iso_path) automatic-ubiquity noprompt debug debug-ubiquity boot=casper ro debian-installer/locale=$(locale) console-setup/layoutcode=$(keyboard_layout) console-setup/variantcode=$(keyboard_variant) -- $(accessibility) $(rootflags) acpi=off noapic nolapic
initrd $(initrd)
}

menuentry "$(verbose_mode_title)" {
linux $(kernel) debian-installer/custom-installation=$(custom_installation_dir) iso-scan/filename=$(iso_path) automatic-ubiquity noprompt debug debug-ubiquity boot=casper ro debian-installer/locale=$(locale) console-setup/layoutcode=$(keyboard_layout) console-setup/variantcode=$(keyboard_variant) -- $(accessibility) $(rootflags)
initrd $(initrd)
}

menuentry "$(demo_mode_title)" {
linux $(kernel) iso-scan/filename=$(iso_path) quiet splash boot=casper ro debian-installer/locale=$(locale) console-setup/layoutcode=$(keyboard_layout) console-setup/variantcode=$(keyboard_variant) -- $(accessibility) $(rootflags)
initrd $(initrd)
}
I suspect that I need to put Grub somewhere on the 'C' drive but, I don't know where so, any help would be appreciated.

Thank you very much.

John

Hello Popeyethesailor and welcome to LQ,

can you access your Linuxsystem via a live-CD? If so, please navigate to your /boot directory and post the output of Which version of grub are you using? if you have a file /boot/grub/menu.lst, please post this file.
could you please post the output of Markus

Thank you for taking the time to reply to my post and the welcome Markus.

I booted up using the installation CD and managed to find "menu.lst"
menu.lst
# sample /boot/grub/menu.lst entry for memtest86
#
# This example assumes the contents of /boot is on the root partition.
# If your /boot is on its own partition, remove /boot from the 'kernel' line.

title memtest86+
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin

title memtest86+ (serial console 115200)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin console=ttyS0,115200n8

I opened a terminal and typed 'fdisk -l' but got no response.

While snooping around in the file system I looked at the properties of the root folder and was told that it is unreadable; same with the chatscripts folder.

I assume that that means a new install or, is there a way to recover those folders?
As for the output of ls -lh --- how do I get that? Probably irrelevant now with 'root' being unreadable.

Thanks for your help.
John

When you get in are you in terminal or gui?

this is ubuntu 10.10 right well 2 out of every three machines I have upgraded after a install has crashed out.But I know the system and am able to get it going. This is Kubuntu to though If you are a newbe and have nothing to loose reinstall and do the upgrade during the install.
there is some problems. If you are not a newbe to the linux world then we can go forward.
Or take advice from others to. if Ubuntu 10.10 is not a LTS Long term system and is used for a test bed for 11.04 that will come along some time. If you are new to linux please consider a stable release. This will make your experience much nicer. 10.04 is the stable long term release.

1 members found this post helpful.

Hello Popeyethesailor,

I think Draeko is right, I can't seem to understand what's wrong with your system and if/how to fix it. Maybe a fresh installation of Ubuntu 10.04 is a better choice.

Don't forget, that while every trial to repair the system, you may destroy your data even more. Try to manage a backup of your personal data before a new installation. Be sure your /home partition is not formatted.

Markus

I was wondering, if you could: Maybe the grub menu.lst needs a kick in the pants.
Just a thought.




Another long shot is... Is the BIOS trying to boot from the right HDD?

Hello again.
EDDY1, I don't get into the installed Linux at all. I boot with the installation CD and run Linux from the CD without installing anything. That allows me to explore the drives in the GUI of the trial version.

Drakeo, the Ubuntu version is 10.04LTS and yes, since the Root folder is unreadable, I will have to re-install unless someone has a workaround.
Linux ran just fine until I used the Update manager to install all the updates available; just over 201 MB of them. I am new to Linux and would have to be led by the hand through every step if I were to attempt to fix my present installation.

Markus, I will run Linux from the CD and try, as you suggest, to rescue what data I can and then do a fresh install. Not knowing how to use the terminal I would most likely scramble the installation even more.

Thanks for your comments and have a great day.

John

Eddy1, Drakeo, Markus and lein,

I did a fresh install and everything is working now.
The strange thing is though, before the crash I could see all my HDDs as administrator as well as normal user. Now I can't see some drives as the normal user even though I gave myself administrator privileges.
If anyone of you has an answer, I'd appreciate it.

Question: I need to learn about Linux so, where do I start?
Getting to know the terminal and its commands seems a good place as well as how to install programs; make etc..
Am I on the right track or should I start somewhere else?

Thanks for your help.

John

Hi Popeyethesailor,

nice to read that it's working now for youwhat do you mean with "see the drives"? with which program?
The commandwill show you every mounted partition except the swapdevice.In my opinion you'd be better off to install Slackware instead of Ubuntu. Slackware is a great distribution for learning-purposes. Otherwise, you may install Slackware as dualboot besides Ubuntu.
In order to learn Linux, I'd recommend to learn the shell (bash) http://tldp.org/LDP/abs/html/ the editor vi/vim, the commands sed, grep, find and so on. Here is a tutorial often advised for newbies: http://rute.2038bug.com/index.html.gz

Markus

1 members found this post helpful.

That is the truth and I could not say it any better. If people think Ubuntu does not have serious problems look at the forums. That said. There are reasons why. It is very popular. and I am glad Ubuntu is out there, I just wish people would read the ubuntu forms and manuals they have some very good ones. But the manuals do change from version to version.
In live cd usage and you want to see and write to it. sudo nautilus

Markus,
for some strange reason I can now see all my drives in "Places"/"Computer"; no idea why I couldn't before. Everything is back to normal.

Thanks for the link to the tutorial; it seems to be exactly what I need.

So far as using a different version of Linux goes, I might follow your (Markus and Drakeo) suggestion once I learn to use the terminal and possibly scripting but, for now I need a working OS and, that I have at the moment.

Thanks for all your help.

John

slackware is also for people that only know gui. full install make sure if hard wire you set up a network and then reboot sign in as root now type kdm put in your user name and password Kmenu->Aplications->system-Kuser manager put in root passward click on your user edit his groups for cd audio plugdev netdev deamon what every you need.
The other way is to do a full install sign in as root type startx go to kuser create the user account with the groups needed then logout at the console type kdm put in your user name and paswword.
so get in and get out