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abcde597 01-14-2013 07:52 AM

Help? I installed Ubuntu (Tobisha usb hdd) And no matter what I do I get grub errors?
 
I installed Ubuntu onto an external Tobisha USB harddrive (500 GB), and no matter what I do, it refuses to boot on anything but the computer it was installed on. Grub doesn't work properly, and I'm thrown to a Rescue prompt everytime I try to boot on my laptop.
Any ideas? I can give more details/screenshots if requested.
I'm lost.

TobiSGD 01-14-2013 08:26 AM

Always present all the details you have (error messages, screenshots, whatever). Otherwise it is very difficult for us to help you. Remember, we do not have access to your system, so we can't know what is going on if you don't tell us.

yancek 01-14-2013 10:00 AM

Quote:

I installed Ubuntu onto an external Tobisha USB harddrive (500 GB), and no matter what I do, it refuses to boot on anything but the computer it was installed on.
You probably installed the Ubuntu Grub2 on the mbr of the drive of the computer on which you used to install Ubuntu. Post more info by going to the site below, read the instructions, download and run the bootinfoscript and either review it or post it here for help:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/bootinfoscript/

abcde597 01-14-2013 05:21 PM

1 Attachment(s)
Attached are the results of running bootinfoscript...
I'm a little lost/ :scratch:
______________________________
In the years I've worked with Linux, I've never had to deal with fixing Grub.
__________________________________________________________________________
What I'm working with is the 12.10.
I also have BT installed.

celticdevildog 01-14-2013 09:53 PM

If I understand you correctly you have windows, bt on the physical machine and ubuntu on an external drive.

First question I have is

Quote:

Grub doesn't work properly, and I'm thrown to a Rescue prompt everytime I try to boot on my laptop.
Can you not start your windows/bt computer?

Grub is installed on both drives. Does the external drive need to boot by itself or is it just a drive to house Ubuntu for this computer?

This is the current partitions of your two drives

Code:

sda1:  Windows
      sda2:
      sda5: BackTrack 5 R3 - 32 Bit
      sda6:  swap
   
      sdb1: Ubuntu 12.10
      sdb2:
      sdb5:  swap

You could try running the following command on backtrack and it should give you some output that will tell you what "bootable" OSes it found

Code:

update-grub
If it finds your Ubuntu boot information it will automatically update the main grub file for you and you shouldn't need the other grub file unless you need to start that drive as a "primary" drive on another computer.

yancek 01-14-2013 10:02 PM

Since you have Grub2 installed to the mbr of the external drive pointing to the Ubuntu partition, you would need to select the external drive as first boot priority in the BIOS of whatever machine you attach it to and boot from, your laptop for instance. Have you done that? What do you have on the laptop for operating system and bootloader?

Quote:

core.img is at this location and looks
in partition 72 for .
??Partition 72 doesn't look right??

abcde597 01-15-2013 05:18 AM

My external drive needs to boot itself.
It's supposed to replace a USB drive I used on a day to day basis to boot a laptop I have no harddrive for, nor do I have the money to buy one for.
And I set it as the primary device to boot from in the BIOS, and it attempts to boot, but no matter what I do, my external hdd gives me an Error and throws me onto a "grub rescue> prompt."

TobiSGD 01-15-2013 06:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by abcde597 (Post 4870423)
my external hdd gives me an Error

Would be helpful to know which error exactly you get. As I stated before, always present all the details you have, if you want to get the best help.

abcde597 01-15-2013 07:35 PM

I don't have the exact error message, but it was something along the lines of
Quote:

(hd0,msdos1)/ Error: Trying to read or write outside of disk.
Then I get:
grub rescue>
I just tried hooking it up to my other box (A tower, not my laptop)
And it works just fine...
I'm extremely confused now.
:banghead:

yancek 01-15-2013 08:05 PM

Quote:

(hd0,msdos1)/ Error: Trying to read or write outside of disk.
The next time you try to boot it on your laptop, make a note of the above error. Your grub.cfg file for Ubuntu on sdb1 shows (hd1, msdos1). You might also run blkid and see if the uuid in the sdb1 grub.cfg file is correct.

abcde597 01-16-2013 07:39 AM

The exact error message is
Quote:

error: attempt to read or write outside of disk 'hd0'.

yancek 01-16-2013 09:16 AM

If you don't have any other hard drive on the laptop (just using the external with Ubuntu) it is probably seeing the drive as (hd0). You could try booting Backtrack with your external attached, mount the Ubuntu partition and change the entry for Ubuntu to (hd0) rather than (hd1) in the grub.cfg file set root= line.

celticdevildog 01-16-2013 12:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by abcde597 (Post 4871305)
The exact error message is
Quote:

error: attempt to read or write outside of disk 'hd0'.

So here is the part of the grub that is causing that error

Code:

menuentry 'Ubuntu' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os $menuentry_id_option 'gnulinux-simple-453415c6-c117-4867-8106-bd9f9e5d134a' {
recordfail
        gfxmode $linux_gfx_mode
        insmod gzio
        insmod part_msdos
        insmod ext2
        set root='hd1,msdos1'
        if [ x$feature_platform_search_hint = xy ]; then
          search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root --hint-bios=hd1,msdos1 --hint-efi=hd1,msdos1 --hint-baremetal=ahci1,msdos1  453415c6-c117-4867-8106-bd9f9e5d134a
        else
          search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 453415c6-c117-4867-8106-bd9f9e5d134a
        fi
        linux        /boot/vmlinuz-3.5.0-21-generic root=UUID=453415c6-c117-4867-8106-bd9f9e5d134a ro  quiet splash $vt_handoff
        initrd        /boot/initrd.img-3.5.0-21-generic
}

The grub.conf file on the Ubuntu disk is looking for root on hd1. When it is the ONLY drive in your system it is most like to be at position hd0 hence your error. So the line above should read:
Code:

set root='hd0,msdos1'
You can try yancek's suggestion and boot into your BT machine, mount this drive and edit the grub.conf file to match the root location.

abcde597 01-18-2013 12:24 PM

I tried your suggestion, and it fixed nothing. I can't even get the Grub 2 Boot menu.

celticdevildog 01-18-2013 04:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by abcde597 (Post 4873045)
I tried your suggestion, and it fixed nothing. I can't even get the Grub 2 Boot menu.

Is it still erroring at the same spot? And are you getting to the grub rescue prompt?
Quote:

error: attempt to read or write outside of disk 'hd0'.
It would be nice to get some of the line before this error too. That may point to something else we can try.

If you can get to your grub rescue prompt try the following and let us know what it says:
Code:

ls
ls /boot/grub
ls (hd0,1) *note if (hd0,1) doesn't work try (hd0,msdos1)
ls (hd0,1)/boot

ls (hd0,5)

You're looking for grub.cfg, vmlinuz, and linux-x.x.x and other such required boot files. Let us know what the output of those commands are.


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