Hi Folks,

Apologies for my newbie-ness and long-winded summary of what's happened, but hopefully the clue someone needs will be in here somewhere.

Before anything went wrong, my single HDD was divided into 5 partitions, one primary (C:\WindowsXP) and 4 logical (Windows F:, G:, H: and Ubuntu 6.06). Both WinXP and Ubuntu booted up perfectly everytime, and Linux could see and read all the partitions.

Then I deleted one of the extra Windows logical partitions and everything fell apart. Starting up the PC would crash as soon as the GRUB tried to start. I am unfamiliar with BASH editing or GRUB, so I ended up re-installing UBUNTU again on the now-empty partition. This re-made the GRUB in the process so that WindowsXP would also start up again too.

The problem is, the original UBUNTU was all set up "just the way I liked it" and I could not/can not figure out how to make it boot up instead. I can copy over all of the files I wanted, but not my Thunderbird email contacts or mailboxes, or the Firefox bookmarks, etc. etc.

I have been unable to edit GRUB to find the partitions I want, and cannot edit the menu.1st within (either) GRUB anyway it says I do not have permission even though I am the only user.

Here is the MENU.1ST from the Linux install that I want to boot from; this partition now shows up on the filesystem as hda6;


## ## End Default Options ##

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.15-28-386
root (hd0,7)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-28-386 root=/dev/hda8 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-28-386
savedefault
boot

title Ubuntu, kernel 2.6.15-28-386 (recovery mode)
root (hd0,7)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-28-386 root=/dev/hda8 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-28-386
boot


Any thoughts, comments or suggestions on how a newbie can get out of this would be gratefully accepted.

TIA

Andrew

Friendly suggestion: Please don't post every line of a big file like that---all the commented entries don't help us.

You say that you can copy data from the other install of Ubuntu?? Thus, I assume you can mount that partition. In that partition, go into boot and setup simple aliases to vmlinuz and initrd. Then, reboot--when grub comes up, hit any key to stop the countdown, "c" for command line. At the grub prompt, you can manually boot the other partition---simply enter the commands the way they appear in menu.lst.
When you enter root (hdX,Y) you will get confirmation that it is a linux partition. Similary, when you enter the kernel command you will get feedback.

Once you get into the other installation, simply install grub from there.

If I have lost you, please post the output of fdisk -l and I can give you the exact commands.

Thanks -sorry. Some gibberish deleted from post. I am also struggling with how to have full access with BASH etc in the command line editor also- when I get to the terminal and type

atoms@desktop:~$ fdisk -l

nuthin' happens.

I shall retire and further peruse my UBUNTU Linux Bible (von Hagen) and see what progress I make.

Regards

A

Got it (fdisk, anyway)

atoms@desktop:~$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 40.0 GB, 40020664320 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 4865 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 972 7807558+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/hda2 973 3697 21888562+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 973 2508 12337857 83 Linux
/dev/hda6 * 2810 3656 6803496 83 Linux
/dev/hda7 3657 3697 329301 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sda: 250.0 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 30401 244196001 7 HPFS/NTFS
atoms@desktop:~$

Contrary to your first post, it looks like you deleted two intervening partitions.
Things get a bit murky, because it's not just grub that needs to be rectified - /etc/fstab (on your original Ubuntu) also needs ajustment to handle the system mounts.
try some (non-destructive) tests:
- reboot, and at the grub menu, hit the <c> key, as per pixalleny. Enter the following and hit <Enter>
kernel (hd0,5)/boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-28-386 root=/dev/hda6 ro quiet splash
(get it right - no extra spaces). Then enter the following and hit <Enter>
initrd (hd0,5)/boot/initrd.img-2.6.15-28-386
Finally <b> to boot it.

See if that flies - it'll panic eventually, but no harm done.

Wunderbar!

I am back in my original Linux again, just as I left it. Thanks very much.

You were correct about the missing partitions. Once I saw what happened after deleting one partition, and got Linux going again on a separate partition once more, I figured I had nothing left to lose by deleting the remaining two unwanted Windows logical partitions.

Now my two biggest questions are;

How to edit GRUB so that this original Linux partition is once again active in the boot list.

How to delete the second (spare) Linux installation/partition so I am ultimately down to two ~15GB-ish partitions for (this) Linux and Windows XP, and the associated swap and root partitions.

Cheers from here

O.K., it seems you have UUID or labels in your fstab - lucky you.
Boot your "new" Ubuntu, goto a terminal, and "sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst"
Standard Windowed full-screen editor.

Create a new entry (the title line), add the "root" line from your other Ubuntu, then the two lines I gave you above.
Reboot and check it works.

Reboot into your "old" Ubuntu, check the menu.lst there (the "root" directive will be different), then from a terminal, enter "grub-install /dev/hda".

++This worked -one time only. Next reboot, I got error 15(?) "file not found"


++Tried this, and got;
atoms@atoms-desktop:~$ grub-install /dev/hda
/dev/hda8: Not found or not a block device.
atoms@atoms-desktop:~$

Can still start up 'original' Linux the manual way as described previously, but not automatically via GRUB