Ubuntu
grub2 package

10.10 -> 11.04 upgrade has bricked my machine

Asked by Andrew M

Upgrading for 10.10 to 11.04 has bricked my machine - the upgrade process said that a one upgrade file had been corrupted (my apologies, I didn't record which one) and aborted the upgrade. I was then told that the system might be in an usable state.

Rebooting gives GNU GRUB with the choices of:
- Ubuntu, with Linux 2.6.31-35-generic
- Ubuntu, with Linux 2.6.31-35-generic (recovery mode)
- Ubuntu, with Linux 2.6.31-36-generic
- Ubuntu, with Linux 2.6.31-36-generic (recovery mode)
- and memory tests

All choices lead to the same state:

mounting /dev on /root/dev failed: no such file or directory
mounting /sys on /root/sys failed: no such file or directory
mounting /proc on /root/proc failed: no such file or directory
target filesystem doesn't have requested /sbin/init
No init found. Try passing init= bootarg

And I get BusyBox v1.15.3 shell and initramfs command line.

I don't know enough to play around here - can anyone please provide some guidance as to system recovery?

Thanks for your help.

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#1

Try booting to liveCD and you can reinstate the boot loader, may help:
http://www.omgubuntu.co.uk/2011/09/live-usb-sticking-grub-2-video/

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marcus aurelius (adbiz) said : 		#2

what do you mean by bricked? how does it brick your machine?

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Andrew M (andrew-m123) said : 		#3

Thanks Andrew - I've just watched the video. Which version of Ubuntu do you think I should I attempt to put on the USB? 11.10, 11.04 (which I attempted to install) or 10.10 (from whence I came)?

Marcus - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bricked

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#4

Either is fine, both use Grub2, the Oneiric one will have a later version no doubt so I'd shoot for that.

Your system isn't bricked, reinstalling grub2 is pretty easy.

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Andrew M (andrew-m123) said : 		#5

Thanks Andrew.

I followed those instructions, noting that my only sectors are:

    Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
    /dev/sda1 * 2048 1947891711 973944832 83 Linux
    /dev/sda2 1947893758 1953523711 2814977 5 Extended
    /dev/sda5 1947893760 1953523711 2814976 82 Linux swap / Solaris

so I attempted to install into sda1. The system said this was a BAD idea (to install grub on a partitionless disk) and prevented me from doing so. Not knowing what else to do - there are no other sectors to put it in AFAIK - I searched the forums and found advice to --force the grub-install to sda1 and did this.

On reboot I then got something different - something about grub-extended-info (or something similar) and a grub repair dialogue.

Looking for information on this, I discovered the boot-repair project on sourceforge (a bootable disk that does repairs for you). I ran that up last night and took the 'auto repair' option. It said it was doing a 'dpkg --configure -a sda1' which might take several minutes but got stuck on that dialogue overnight.

I've tried the advanced options in boot-repair for a grub reinstall which did not work but successfully repaired the MBR (just in case) using boot-repair. But it still doesn't boot.

Finally, I ran a boot info summary report from boot-repair and the results can be found here -> http://paste.ubuntu.com/777937/

Any thoughts? Thanks.

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delance (olivier-delance) said : 		#6

System is right: you should install on disk i.e. sda and not on first partition i.e. sda1
Not all file systems reserved 32kB at start for installing a boot loader.
Simply retry what you did with sda in place of sda1

And thanks to have provided http://paste.ubuntu.com/777937/

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