For some time now,I have been enjoying the use (semi-dual boot) of Ubuntu 9.04 installed under(inside) XP. A few months ago, I upgraded to the early release of 9.10 without problems. (I surmise that I was still using legacy grub) But after so many upgrades and what not-- I suddenly found I could not boot 9.10-- but only XP..I finally did a fresh install of the release version of 9.10 and at first things seemed ok. Then today, I could not boot into ubuntu (again--same symptoms) -- fortunately I could still boot XP. when I boot to the primary boot screen (from system off), (XP or Ubuntu) selecting Ubuntu only gets me a Grub command prompt.
I've seen some posts regarding GRUB2 issues--but nothing on this specific case. I was wondering if anyone has any suggestions on moving forward so as NOT to run into this issue again. Reinstalling 9.10 is certainly an option--but I want to know exactly what is wrong and how to avoid it.


To clarify what was happening. The secondary platform selection menu was being replaced with
the Minimalist GNU GRUB Command Line. Just as if the user had hit the key "C"

Because I could not get boot options in the command line to work. I reinstalled 9.10 OS. I then discovered that the during subsequent system update process(2), GRUB PC installation was apparently removing/corrupting the necessary configure files in /BOOT.
Then, apparently when GRUB could not find certain files,, it did the next best thing and went to command prompt. For now, I will have to make sure that any system updates do not contain GRUB=PC updates. I will have to manually deselected them before commenting the update process. And so, at least for me, the GRUB 1.97 upgrade is regressive. The other possibility is to make a copy of the /BOOT directory and restore it before shutting the system down--- for I could find no way to restore it prior to boot up--- if this was a "normal" dual boot system, using the liveCD might allow one to overwrite that folder and therefore restore normal operation. This issue is the only one I've found with the unbunto in a windows system since I started using it 6 months ago. I do hope that this issue will be corrected soon.

hi

1) can you explain how you install linux under xp in a bit more detail please?

2) why were you de-selecting grub packages? Can you explain what happened if you did not please?

3) Bearing in mind I do not understand my (1) if you read my signature you can see some stuff on grub2.

http://sidux.com/index.php?module=Wikula&tag=Grub2cli

this way does not attempt to use UUID and in theory should work if you have grub2 in mbr....but that is not clear to me

He may have used Wubi to install Ubuntu inside Windows:
http://wubi-installer.org/
I have never used Wubi so I don't know much about it. I suspect the move to grub2 may have complicated things with the Wubi installer.

JRC903,
If you are using Wubi, remember that, according to Wubi's developer, Wubi is only meant to try out Ubuntu, and it is not meant for long term installs. If you have been using Ubuntu in Wubi for a while and like it, perhaps you should take the plunge and install Ubuntu to a dedicated partition. You can easily set up a dual boot system with XP. Just be sure to defragement Windows before you setup a dual boot system with XP.

And welcome to the LQ forums!

Yes, I should "take the plunge." And will in due time. I may not have been clear about what (or why) I did to stabilize my current situation. Upon installing 9.10 (Wubi) from a freshly minted CD, things worked very well---as they have for many months with previous releases. However, after installing 9.10 from the CD-- the natural thing is to then bring the installation current by doing an overall update. It was this process that broke install. So.. in lieu of any other good ideas, I simply do not allow GRUB PC update as part of the overall update. Since Wubi has been working so well. I felt not need to move beyond that.. until now.

When there is an update that requires a change in grub, you sometimes get that dialog box that pops up asking you what you want to do with grub.cfg (with grub-legacy it was menu.lst). When this happens I always choose to keep the grub.cfg I already have. I think this is the default anyway. I have some custom entries for Slackware in there that I don't want overwritten. If I need to update grub to add a new kernel for Ubuntu then I just run "sudo update-grub" from the terminal.
I don't know if this is the same in Wubi though.

hi

news to me!....when you upgrade grub2 files....it should run update-grub automatically....it should not offer you any chance to save your grub.cfg because you are supposed to use scripts to manipulate it.

2) Likewise when you upgrade your kernel....your distro should call update-grub so it can update your grub.cfg

I'm not sure why that message box sometimes pops up in Ubuntu. I think it may be because I always had custom entries in my menu.lst, and now have custom entries in /etc/grub.d/ directory.
Ubuntu does still run the update-grub script though, even when I select the option to keep the grub.cfg I already have.

tommcd

we may be getting off topic as we are not the OP....but your mention of menu.lst indicates you either have a gremlin and grub2 chainloading or you are still using grub-legacy.

But I thank you for the link on wubi....that explains a lot.

OP

I suggest you ask at wubi in case its wubi related

http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.php?f=333