Can't reformat drive with Ubuntu
 

Ok, here is the situation. I had a friend helping my install Centos to get a server running. Once the server was set up I was really unimpressed with the features and wanted to install Ubuntu by a friends recommendation. I ran the new disk but the install failed to complete. Now even when I try to install from a new disk image all I get is the command prompt grub>. If it was windows I know what to reformat, but in Linux I am lost. Any info would be awesome. Thanks in advance.

Hmm.. are you saying that when you put in Ubuntu's live CD that it won't load and instead just puts you at a grub prompt?

The easiest thing to do is to use your Ubuntu Dapper ISO (I'm assuming you're talking about 6.06) and wipe everything out and do a clean install. If you are dual booting with Windows we'd want to know that..

How do I do that? As soon as I try to boot from the cd drive I go directy to grub? The error code I get when I do anything is 27.

I am not duel booting so I can't use a 98 bootdisk to fdisk the partition. I do not have a grub boot disk either. I was not expecting to have any issues on install.

yes you can use a dos boot disk.you use it to clean your master boot record
fdisk /mbr i do it all the time works fine for me

Grub error 27 means unrecognized command but that's really besides the point. The thing you need to do is make sure that the live CD is set to boot first. So check your bios' boot sequence to make sure it's set to boot from the CD first and then also make sure your CD is in good condition.

If all that doesn't work, I'd recommend downloading the ubuntu server cd and trying that. Can you clarify which CD you are trying to boot with?

Sounds like a bad copy of the iso, or a bad burn.
Check the iso with md5, if it checks out, reburn it at a slower speed and just do the install again over the top of the previous attempt.

If the iso is bad consider downloading from another mirror - I have had issues with mirrors with bad images on occasion.

Thanks for the info. the system is set to boot floppy, cd, hd. When I insert the 98SE floppy it still goes to grub. When I use the ISO it still goes to grub. DLing a new iso to try that, but I'm not sure what else to try.

When I boot from cd first it still goes to the grub prompt. Is there some way to reformat the hd by using a program like PuTTY? I need to get this running because it is driving me crazy.

This sounds obvious, but check the BIOS for the boot order. It is possible when the server was built the first time that the boot order put hard disk boot above CDRom boot. If CDRom is ahead of hard disk in the BIOS, and you still get to grub, then you either have a bad burn of the CD or your CDRom is malfunctioning. Grub is on the hard drive, so under normal systems, it shouldn't look at the hard drive until it has failed to boot the CDRom. If you have knoppix or any other live CD, you can use that to completely format the drives.

And no, putty is just a way onto the system through a shell. If it sticks at grub, the kernel isn't even booting for putty to connect to.

Peace,
JimBass

More worrisome is he says the floppy won't boot first either. That smells of a hardware problem. Google for the model number of your computer and see if there's anything specific there about getting it to boot from the cdrom.

Probably requires a "magic" key to give a boot menu - on my Toshiba laptop it's the "c" key, on Dell, "F12". Both will only boot the hard drive if you don't intervene - regardless of the BIOS order. (I also have a server at work which will not boot a VMWARE client from the CD if a vmdk has a boot record - had to destroy a guest at one point because of this.)

So, I'd be looking for a magic key - see the user guide.

OK, so the only thing that has worked has been to reinstall the Centos OS that was installed before I tried to "upgrade" between Centos and Ubuntu. Now that I have that done, what can I do to get Ubuntu installed over Centos. This is where the origonal problem occured. And thank you guys for the great info. Hopefully I can get it working before to long.

During the install of ubuntu, just format the drives completely. It will give a warning about erasing everything, but that is what you want. The repartition and install.

Peace,
JimBass

A huge thanks to everyone. I will continue to post becuse this forum rules. Thank you again.

jadeorb