Grub Error 13: Invalid or unsupported executable format

Right, the quickest thing to try is reinstalling the grub-boot-loader itelf. It's quite small and so it shouldn't take long. I too am getting a bit annoyed about the way things are shifting around between "/mnt", "/dev" and now "/media" - at least /mnt and /dev made sense but /media seems quite different between one system and another. I guess next we'll be using 'easy to remember' uuid numbers for everything! At least you can find your stuff in the "Places" menu on the top taskbar?

Boot up into a LiveCd session open a terminal console and type (or copy & mouse-paste)

sudo grub

find /boot/grub/stage1

This 2nd command will be on a grub command-line, not the normal linux command-line. If the result of the find command is (hd0,0) then continue by typing in

root (hd0,0)

setup (hd0)

quit

This should reinstall a fresh grub on the Ubuntu partition. Good luck and i hope this works easily!
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Just out of curiosity, and on a different subject, how large is your Ram and how fast is your Cpu? It looks like your linux-swap is quite large so i would guess your Ram is about 2Gb? The linux-swap should be between Ram and 2xRam, any more is a waste although that's not really a problem on a 160Gb drive! If the linux-swap is less than ram then you might not be able to hibernate.sleep/suspend. Actually that's probably good because it's best to avoid using those imo & ime. A clean shut-down or reboot is almost always better.

Thanks, good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Lo Tom, i did get the grub on "esc" but again got the same error. I have now made another 10 GB or so, ext3 partition with Gparted from a systemrescue CD, installed Ibex on it, and will upgrade it to Jaunty, tomorrow. Let's see if that helps, because as it is stuff like sudo update-grub and sudo grub-install doesn't work because the Ibex live CD does not recognize ext4. That, an update from Jaunty messes up the boot loader if you are on ext4, is a fact and should be recognized as such and fixed as a bug by the developers, instead of us having to manage with these fixes. Thanks for the fix though, it will certainly help later, i am sure. Regards

Good luck and please let us know how it goes. Glad to hear you've made your system usable with Ibex, i hope it reads the ext4! There is a way of making this question into a bug report, just click on the link in the top right that says "Create bug-report" or something.

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Thanks Tom, the Ibex on my 11 Gb is working well enough for me to consider formatting the rest of my drive back to ext3--(no it doesn't read ext4 yet, i was going to wait for d-day to upgrade to the final release)--and to wait till this problem with ext4, Jaunty updater, and boot loader gets resolved--i am sure they are linked somehow. As you can see my knowledge of this distro is intuitively gleaned through 'incidents', rather than a formal study of Linux, and so i don't think i qualify to report this problem as a bug myself, when there are umpteen posts related to this problem on the web (if one was to just Google), and an equal number of workarounds, proposed by much more experienced and learned users than myself. Would you please, if you find any truth in it?

You're exactly the right person to report it for 2 main reasons
 1. It's happening on your sytem
 2. You're relatively new although not as new as many
 3. You've found other places the issue is reported

Best bet is to keep it as short as your question here. That would be perfect i think. The bug-squad are quite happy to ask for any further details or info if required. Also in the process of reporting the bug you may find one of the 10-20 listed "most similar" bugs is worth linking this question to instead of just adding your own - in which case click on the link "this bug doesn't affect me" as doing so changes it to "this bug affects me too" which is helpful for stats and stuff.

Don't be shy, it really helps the whole community when people do stuff like that :) I was nervous too first time so don't worry if you don't report a bug

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Okie-doke Tom, just did that, and surprisingly, no similar bugs were listed! Thanks for seeing this through, really appreciate it. Regards.

Nicely done. I saw the bug report a little while ago, it looks good :)
They will probably be too busy during the next week or so but having it there in bug-squad puts it in their list until they do get time to deal with it.

Thanks and regards from
Tom :)