Ubuntu
grub package

Can't boot - karmic doesn't see partition

Asked by rew05766

I am a newbie - so don't know if I am explaining this right: I upgraded from Jaunty to Karmic and (mostly) things worked fine. Then, a few days ago, I go to boot up and get the following message: "Gave up waiting for root device" and it dropped to a shell. My machine is an Asus EeePc and has been partitioned to have a Windows partition as well as Ubuntu. I have tried some of the suggestions I've seen around: typing "exit" gets no result. I have gone into my menu.lst file - apparently there is a problem with using "UUID" to address the drive, but I don't understand how to replace this with the physical address of the drive - I don't know how to find this address. (actually, I don't understand the whole file system that linux uses - I'm used to drive letters...) I did just go into gparted and see that the linux partition is labeled /dev/sda2 which is broken down into (sub?)partitions, the big one being /dev/sda6 - is that the address I use?

I am booting to Windows OK. I am also booting from my Jaunty CD (though, as a side note, my external CD drive only starts up if I go into BIOS and often the screen which asks me to choose between operating systems comes up before I get the screen which allows me to go to BIOS). I have not been able to use the installed Karmic OS at all. I am finding my installed OS files by mounting the partition graphically then using sudo nano to edit menu.lst.

The latest is that I have downloaded 9.10 and created a CD. The interesting thing is that when I boot from this CD I cannot find the Ubuntu partition on my hard drive. I see the windows partition just like I do when booting from the Jaunty CD, but when I use Jaunty I see two drives - one with Windows and one with Ubuntu. Karmic only shows Windows.

Help would be much appreciated - and don't worry about insulting me with too much step-by-step as I only understand little bits and pieces of what I am doing... Thanks!

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Ubuntu grub Edit question
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Stefan Eggers
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rew05766 (rew05766) said : 		#1

Update:

 I edited my menu.lst file -- changed line that read:

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31-14-generic root=UUID=d8c7f389-f932-48b5-99a9-a09c2bfbcb4d ro quiet splash

to:

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31-14-generic root=/dev/sda6 ro quiet splash

System booted, but I did see a message saying that it was looking for /dev/sda6 (can't remember syntax - seemed like it was having difficulty)

Now things seem to be working normally, except that I still don't see the partition with Ubuntu in my "places" list (though I do see windows partition).

Revision history for this message
Stefan Eggers (stefan-eggers) said : 		#2

The trouble you have might be caused by changed UUID for /dev/sda6. You can list the UUID with "ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid". It should not change ever, but maybe someway this happened to you?

Important thing: Check /etc/fstab. There the UUID gets used, too.

After fixing /etc/fstab (if it needs a correction, too) and a reboot, use the "Places" menu to access "Computer". Under "Filesystem" you should find all the files on the system. Your own files are accessible via entry "Home Folder" in the "Places" menu.

Revision history for this message
rew05766 (rew05766) said : 		#3

I don't know if the UUID could have changed for /dev/sda6 (I still don't understand the purpose of the UUID or how it is used).

Here is what is returned from "ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid":

rew@rew-laptop:~$ ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid
total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2009-11-15 07:34 9c1c0c8c-85c1-43bb-9170-8692ddf59c81 -> ../../sda5
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2009-11-15 07:34 A2F48F73F48F490D -> ../../sda1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2009-11-15 07:34 CCED-990E -> ../../sda3
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2009-11-15 07:34 d8c7f389-f932-48b5-99a9-a09c2bfbcb4d -> ../../sda6

Here are the relevant lines from menu.lst:

title Ubuntu 9.10, kernel 2.6.31-14-generic
uuid d8c7f389-f932-48b5-99a9-a09c2bfbcb4d
#kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31-14-generic root=UUID=d8c7f389-f932-48b5-99a9-a09c2bfbcb4d ro quiet splash
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31-14-generic root=/dev/sda6 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.31-14-generic
quiet

Notice that the returned UUID associated with sda6 (d8c7f389-f932-48b5-99a9-a09c2bfbcb4d) is identical to the UUID in the (now commented) line in menu.lst (d8c7f389-f932-48b5-99a9-a09c2bfbcb4d) - which didn't work. This is identical to the UUID in /etc/fstab (d8c7f389-f932-48b5-99a9-a09c2bfbcb4d)

Here are the contents of /etc/fstab:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'vol_id --uuid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# / was on /dev/sda6 during installation
UUID=d8c7f389-f932-48b5-99a9-a09c2bfbcb4d / ext3 relatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# swap was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=9c1c0c8c-85c1-43bb-9170-8692ddf59c81 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0

Do I need to make any changes here? Thanks so much!

Revision history for this message
Best Stefan Eggers (stefan-eggers) said : 		#4

Three things:

Regarding additional changes needed: If you don't miss files / everything is as expected I don't think additional changes are necessary in your case. But see below for a suggestion how to fix the boot problem.

I don't know how to add your Jaunty/9.04 partition to the "Places" menu easily. This is probably hidden as Karmic/9.10 recognizes ext3 as a Linux file system and does not show Linux file systems in the menu. The other way round Jaunty/9.04 might not recognize the ext4 file system that Karmic/9.10 uses as a Linux file system, thinks it is a file system of another OS (like Windows) and places it on the menu. Just my thought why there is a difference.

You might want to mount the Jaunty partition in Karmic to make the files accessible. First create a place to mount it on (mkdir), add a line to fstab and then mount it. On reboot the system would do it automatically with this fstab entry.

1) do "mkdir /jaunty"
2) add "/dev/sd<whatever-jaunty-uses-as-root> /jaunty ext3 relatime 0 2" to /etc/fstab
3) do "mount /jaunty"

You can replace /dev/sd<...> with the UUID of course. In a netbook this won't make much of a difference (one doesn't often add disks there), but a desktop or tower PC might benefit from this.

Now all files from Jaunty system should show up under /jaunty in "Filesystem" (see above).

The boot problem might stems from Karmic using the ext4 file system instead of ext3 as older Ubuntu versions do on a new install. Maybe this causes trouble with finding the UUID. The boot loader you use seems to be grub from Jaunty.

I'd try "sudo update-grub" (creates a configuration file in /boot/grub/grub.cfg) and "sudo grub-install /dev/sda" (installs grub2 on /dev/sda disk) in the Karmic system. The grub2 (aka grub-pc) in Karmic should be able to boot both systems.

In case of problems, this might be helpful with recovering a bootable system:

   https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RecoveringUbuntuAfterInstallingWindows

As you seem not to have a separate file system for /boot (at least none listed in your fstab), skip the step "mount /dev/sda1 /media/root/boot".

Revision history for this message
rew05766 (rew05766) said : 		#5

Great. I'll try these things. I guess I wasn't that clear - I am not trying to maintain a Jaunty partition on my hard drive - I was just confused about how things were showing up differently in Karmic (Jaunty seems to show the Ubuntu partition as a separate drive in "places", while, I am getting from your post that Karmic does not). The partition I was looking for was the Karmic one.

Thanks for your help! If all my problems could be solved so quickly...

-Eric