[Solved] A slight problem....

[aged hippy]

I seem to have developed a slight problem :) in that i booted into Hardy to do the important stuff (read the papers, check emails) this morning, then hopped across to Intrepid to up-grade whatever was necessary.

There was a kernel update (~30Mb) to get, i let it, and when it was applying the update, Synaptic asked if i would like to write a new menu.lst, or keep the current local one.

As my "current local one" is a pretty, home-made job i said to keep it, with the result that the system - both Hardy and Intrepid - doesn't load to the desktop, i end up at a prompt, with a message saying that <Ctrl>D will resume boot. :(

I'm not sure what to do.... :(

[toad]

Press CTRL+D to boot up normally and build your new menu.lst

The CTRL+D prompt usually comes from changed UUIDs, so you might want to change data from your fstab and the output of sudo blkid -L

HTH

[tinker]

I'm not sure what to do.... :(


I'm not sure either but I would try pushing Ctrl+D and see what happens next. ;) It might go on to tell us more and I can't think of a way this would harm your installations.

I wouldn't expect it to rewrite your menu.list since you specifically answered that question with no. At least I hope it wouldn't with that answer. It will be a while before I can obtain 8.10 (I'm on a dialup connection) so I can't confirm or test anything about it.

Do you write the 1.5 and 2 stages of grub on the individual partitions where the two installs are or do you have a separate boot partition?

[aged hippy]

Press CTRL+D to boot up normally and build your new menu.lst

The CTRL+D prompt usually comes from changed UUIDs, so you might want to change data from your fstab and the output of sudo blkid -L

HTH



malcolm@hippy:~$ sudo blkid -L
[sudo] password for malcolm:
blkid: invalid option -- L
blkid 1.0.0 (12-Feb-2003)
usage: blkid [-c <file>] [-ghl] [-o format] [-s <tag>] [-t <token>]
[-v] [-w <file>] [dev ...]
-c cache file (default: /etc/blkid.tab, /dev/null = none)
-h print this usage message and exit
-g garbage collect the blkid cache
-s show specified tag(s) (default show all tags)
-t find device with a specific token (NAME=value pair)
-l lookup the the first device with arguments specified by -t
-v print version and exit
-w write cache to different file (/dev/null = no write)
dev specify device(s) to probe (default: all devices)
malcolm@hippy:~$

;D

[aged hippy]

I'm not sure what to do.... :(


I'm not sure either but I would try pushing Ctrl+D and see what happens next. ;) It might go on to tell us more and I can't think of a way this would harm your installations.

I wouldn't expect it to rewrite your menu.list since you specifically answered that question with no. At least I hope it wouldn't with that answer. It will be a while before I can obtain 8.10 (I'm on a dialup connection) so I can't confirm or test anything about it.

Do you write the 1.5 and 2 stages of grub on the individual partitions where the two installs are or do you have a separate boot partition?


I did the <Ctrl>D thing.... that's how i posted. :D

I always let Grub write itself to the MBR, i've fixed the Hardy Boot, but still can't boot Intrepid to the desktop without <Ctrl>D, even though i've re-done the fstab - twice. ???
It whinges about <Unclean Shutdown>, a new one on me....

Intrepid isn't so important, as Hardy is the Grub default.

I have to dash... back later. :)

[toad]

???

You can't have been in 8.10 when you tried blkid -L - your package is from the stone age :D

Whatever, the CTRL+D thingy is prolly down to mismatching system/fstab UUIDs (system UUIDs can be found out via blkid and fstab - well, fstab ;D). Once they match (note, you cannot use 8.04 UUIDs for your 8.10 install) everything should be fine.

Let us know how you get on :D

[tinker]

I always let Grub write itself to the MBR, i've fixed the Hardy Boot, but still can't boot Intrepid to the desktop without <Ctrl>D, even though i've re-done the fstab - twice. ???
It whinges about <Unclean Shutdown>, a new one on me....


No you write the first stage of GRUB to to the MBR, these days the bootloader is too big to fit the MBR and I was asking about the other stages. But, no matter, you have the boot working now so we can forget about that.

For the unclean shutdown try a fsck (filesystem check) on the partition while it's unmounted. i. e. from Hardy.

The blkid info is available in /etc/blkid.tab (block id table) if you need it, however, I don't imagine you would for this problem as you have described it. However, remember I don't have 8.10 and toad does so he probably knows better about that.

Oh, it just occurred to me, if you reformatted the partition as part of the new install, that would give it a new unique id.

[aged hippy]

I have done the sudo blkid, and adjusted the menu.lst on both Hardy and Intrepid, twice each, and still cannot boot cleanly into either desktop.

Hardy always wants to check sda5 (or sda6) which is where Intrepid lives - if i let it check the drive, it stops booting as soon as it's finished the check, and i have to <Ctrl>D to get to the desktop.

If i <Esc> to tell it not to check the drive, it continues booting with no further problems, and i can access both drives and all partitions with no problems. ???

Intrepid always stops booting, and i have to <Ctrl>D to resume boot, which it does with no problems. ???

I think that the problem was caused by the kernel-update this morning. I should have allowed it to do what it wanted to. :(

[aged hippy]

An up-date:

In Intrepid, i booted into recovery mode, it stopped shortly after with multipy? errors, it said: run fsck, i did and was warned about Plague, Pestilence, and the End of the World if i did this, so i told it not to.... but it did anyway. ???

It asked on several occasions for permission to do something - i just hit "y" without reading it. :D I was frightened enough as it was....

It finished, i re-booted, and sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll - it's fixed. ;D

[toad]

It's magic 8)

[aged hippy]

Thank You, tinker and toad for your help. :)

[Detonate]

I too, have a menu.lst setup I like to keep. When I am offered the selection of whether to keep my file or install the package maintainer's version, I immediately go backup my menu.lst file, then install the new version. Then it is a simple matter of copying the stanzas from the new file into the backup file and then renaming it back to menu.lst overwriting the new file and having all my old settings with the new stanzas.

[toad]

Some of you may have seen my thread about losing all my kernels. Yeah, @#!£ happens and it really makes sense to write a little backup script and stick it in crontab to be run every couple of days or so...