error: hd0 out of disk. (???)
 

hi,

i am getting this error when i boot to ubuntu 11.04 (error: hd0 out of disk). previously the machine was running fine. its running a gateway t-series notebook

so i hit "any key" to continue and when i do get the ubuntu splash screen it says it can't find / and /tmp (or they are not ready) and seems to hang here with the five indicators changing from orange to white under the logo for awhile.

went through the reboot similar to the above but now it has dumped me out to the terminal with prompt root@<hostname>:~#...



please advise.

thank you.

I have had this. In my case I would be running, and out of the blue I'd get
hda: not found
hdb: not found

and it would sit there, uncrashed, but unable to do anything. It was hardware. Guaranteed Logic low on a 5V logic circuit is under 0.8V; Guaranteed Logic high is above 2.0V; in between is a 'twilight zone' of maybe logic levels. I was losing clear signals, so what one end thought was a logic level was not seen by the other as that same logic level.

Does it happen from cold?

Two possibilities come to mind.
First - hd0 out of disk
If the Ubuntu partition is so full that it can't load the temporary graphical environment files into /tmp, the system can't boot all the way into runlevel 5. It can only go to runlevel 1 or 3 (text mode).

Run "du -h /" (disk usage) or "df -h /" (disk free) to see how much free space you have in the partition.

Second - cant' find / or /tmp
An error in the grub config file would make it impossible to find / (and consequently /tmp). For example, if the grub.cfg says "root (hd0,0) followed by root=/dev/hda3 in the kernel line, there is a discrepancy. One line say root is in the first partition of the first hard drive, the other says root is in the third partition of the first hard drive.

To try to resolve that issue, or to eliminate that possibility, please show the output of "fdisk -l" (and indicate which partition is Ubuntu) and the menu entries from /boot/grub/grub.cfg. We don't need to see the entire grub.cfg file; just the menu stanzas.

hello and thank you for your replies.

i have reinstalled 10.10. regrettably there are still some issues with the login screen but no more "out of disk." errors.


i have reason to believe its a hardware error. this machine has a bad memory slot and subsequently may have build quality issues beyond the bad slot.:(

perhaps having a bad slot is be causing voltage control problems elsewhere.

i am going to see how it does with 10.10 again.

i hope i don't have to junk the hardware.

Trust me, if you have a bad ram slot, one of your major asics is gone. That spreads in the chip. Buy a motherboard. Usually, 90%+ of those connections go to BOTH ram slots.

there is a place selling service manuals here http://www.mpcdrivers.com/servicemanuals.html
for $8.95. can i obtain this for free anywhere? (for a gateway t-series notebook)

please advise.

thank you.

I'm afraid not. If they sell it, maybe they have a kind of copyright over their material, so that you can't find the same for free, unless illegally. From their home page, the service manuals
If you can stick with the official product documentation from Gateway (plenty of them on their site) you can download it for free. If you need/want the added value provided from the service manuals, the only way is to pay for them. Not to mention LQ is not the right place for asking this kind of questions! :)

Ello,

I had the same error.... :(

When i changed my HDD settings in my bios from IDE to AHCI the problem was solved :) I should say that the problem occurred whit a SSD not a HDD.

Hope it helps, good luck!

kunfuTUX