Ubuntu 10.10, Getting Grub Recover prompt after running fine for about a month
 

Hi all, I am using a toshiba Satellite which is about 3 years (?) old. Its been doing fine with Ubuntu 10.10. Last night, I left the Ham radio station and left the local NOAA radar on in refresh mode. today, I came in the station, went to check the radar by hitting refresh, Firefox vanished and would not boot again. I then tried to quit and assuming i would "cold boot. When I did this, I got the grub recover prompt. doing any command other then a LS would display a few drives, HD0, and a few others. the only way I could get back on the internet to research was to swap hard drives (Currently running Xubuntu to get help) but all my ham radio programs, my Dual screen configs and all my contact information is stuck on the other drive...What the heck happened? Is there a repair "tool" or script I can run? I do NOT have any other OS on that drive. I saw a lot of information where people had this occur, but always seemed sticking Windows is on the drive with the Ubuntu. any thoughts?

Put the hard drive back in and try this:

1) insert the Ubuntu installation disk. You should have options to a)install. b) boot from hard drive, c) boot from cd, and others. Select boot from hard drive. Do you still get the grub prompt?

2) If yes, reboot the Ubuntu install disk and select boot from cd in order to use it as a liveCD. Once Ubuntu is up and running from CD, mount the hard drive. Open a terminal and run "du -h /path/to/your/drive" to see how much disk is used. You may find it full. If it is, navigate to the /tmp directory and start deleting temporary files, especially if they are related to NOAA. Then navigate to your home folder and delete and NOAA hidden files, and clear out the CACHE directories in .mozilla and subdirectories (such as firefox).

Leaving NOAA running all night may have accumulated a lot the temporary files, enough to fill the hard drive.

Solved-hard drive died....
 

Hi Big rig and anyone else who read this...

Well I am at least out of the norm as far as the fix! took Bigrigdriver's suggestion and put the hard drive back in that not DOES NOT CONTAIN ANYTHING BUT FRAGS OF THE PLATTER! Yup! she must have been heating up or was on its way to its death, But when everything was going apr was because the Hard drive was on its way to that big storage space in the Sky! I will admit, It was a heck of a show! I turned the Lap top back on, Held the shift button and got the GRUB message I would expect and then a sound...Something between a half pound of sheet metal screws, the sound your brakes make when you hit rivets to Disc and a gerbil being pushed through a old fashioned wringer in a washer machine. funny thing was? At the end, grub only displayed one partition when I tried anything past that it would make a thumping noise and finally just stopped.

So- Not every Grub error can be fixed I guess! ;-) But I can at least call this one SOLVED....Or Screwed?

Now going to have to see if i can convert Xbuntu to Ubuntu without losing whats on this drive...Thanks to all!

Drew-KB2SEO