Debian :: Unable To Boot From Grub 'error Unknown Command Initrd'
Feb 24, 2009
I'm running Debian testing and after a recent software update, suddenly I can no longer boot into my single Linux kernel image anymore. I did look at the software update before I did it and I don't believe that it removed any software packages. When I try to boot into my linux 2.6.26-1-amd64 image, I get the following message from grub:"error: unknown command `initrd'"..The same error appears if I try to boot into single-user mode. I have a Windows XP partition on the same hard disk and I am still able to boot into that from grub. I've searched the net and haven't really found my same problem replicated anywhere. I would imagine that the problem is just that somehow the initrd package got removed in my last software update, but again I don't recall seeing any software that the update planned to remove.
Any thoughts on how I would go about fixing this problem? Since I'm unable to get into Linux at all, I imagine I'll have to use a LiveCD to get in and fix the problem, but I don't know where to begin looking.
I have installed vmlinuz and initrd.gz (squeeze) in /boot/newinstallation and added to Grub the lines:titleNova Instalaçãoroot(hd0,0)kernel/boot/newinstall/vmlinuzinitrd/newinstall/initrd.gzNevertheless, when I choose this option at the grub, it begins to start the kernel vmlinuz and thus restart the system. The installed Debian Lenny boots in a normal way.
I am using Ubuntu 10.04 and am having a major issue with it not booting. My PC worked fine yesterday but when I tried to boot this morning I get the error "error: unknown filesystem" and under that I get the "grub rescue>" prompt.
At first I thought this was just a problem with Grub that would be easy fixed so I put in my Ubuntu USB and loaded it up in live mode. But when I try to look at my file system from within the live environment I can't seem to see any of my files.
I have looked at the drive in GParted and my main file system (/dev/sda1) shows up as 'unknown', while the swap partition (/dev/sda5) shows up as it should. I have also looked at the drive with the Disk Utility and the SMART Status says the disk is healthy.
I am really concerned about this as currently the system is totally unable to load, not only that but I am also unable to recover my data from the drive which is my main concern as I havent done a backup for quite some time and I have a lot of python code that I have been working on that I really need to get back.
Has anyone got any idea of what to do and how I might be able to sort this out or at the very least recover all my data. I can't understand why this has happened I have not made any changes to the system recently other than installing the updates that came through yesterday. This is a really urgent issue for me and any help will be very appreciated.
A failed upgrade, from disk images, of Fedora 10 to 11 resulted in no GRUB bootloader main menu appearing on bootup (no WIN, no LINUX choices from which to boot). I am booted directly into the GRUB command shell...so, no WIN, no LINUX, nothing. And my understanding of GRUB shell commands is very low.I have 2 hard disks, WIN on the first, LINUX on the second. I believe GRUB Bootloader is on the first disk.Sadly, I have no external install media.An old grub.conf hardcopy indicates that root =/dev/sdb2, root (hd1,0), kernel /vmlinuz....olderversion...(relative to /boot),initrd /initrd...olderversion... (relative to boot). and WINDOWS on (hd0,1), with chainloader +1
I need to somehow get past this grub shell, and re-install/re-instate the grub bootloader, so it can boot normally.What grub command(s) must I use? I've played around with the commands, but with no success.I worry that if I can't resolve this, the whole machine may be useless.
Just delete a linux partition and now when i boot a message appears and says error: unknown filesystem grub rescue >
I have search on the net for this problem and i have understand it a little. But my situation is a bit different and because i don't want to format my hard disc i wanna try to fix it. So before a couple months i download ubuntu 9.10 and i installed it a month later. But my computer used to crash all the time and i couldnt use it. So i download the latest ubuntu 10.4 and install it while having windows xp and the old ubuntu 9.10(so i had windows xp, ubuntu 9.10 and ubuntu 10.4 partitions). Now i tried to delete the partition of ubuntu 9.10 from disc utility. so i have the message i wrote above when i boot. I dont wanna delete my windows xp and ubuntu 10.4. what should i do to stop this message from appearing.
I have a dual boot system with ubuntu 9.10 x64 and Windows 7. Everything has been working fine for a a long time but yesterday I tried to delete an unused partition through the Disk Utility in ubuntu (System->Adminstration->Disk Utility) and everything was messed up. I used to get the "Grub error: Unknown filesystem". I managed to create an ubuntu bootable usb and followed some tutorials for fixing grub but all i managed to do is to get another error: "Grub error: No such disc". After some experimentation i got "Grub stage 1.5" which gave me a grub> command prompt./dev/sda is the drive containing Windows and Ubuntu.
Code:
[ Boot Info Script 0.55 dated February 15th, 2010 ============================= Boot Info Summary: ============================== => Grub 0.97 is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda and looks on the same drive in partition #6 for /boot/grub/stage2 and /boot/grub/menu.lst.
I am using CentOS 5.2 with GRUB booting a software RAID configuration. The first disk is md0 and is mirrored across sda1 and sdb1.I manually re-installed grub using grub-install and the machine will no longer boot off of the HD. The grub menu comes up, I can select my kernel the machine then jumps to loading the initrd and hangs.It will go no further. I have a live DVD that can boot from the HD. If I use that to first boot from the DVD, then specifiy the HD, it shows the same grub menu and then the machine boots fine w/o the initrd hang.I have tried re-installing grub but not been able to get the machine to work again w/o the DVD.
I know I screwed up something. I was using Ubuntu 10 minutes ago without a hitch. Then I tried reducing the time I needed to select something in GRUB. So basically, I found this command:
[Code]...
I got it when I tried reducing the GRUB_TIMEOUT from the code above. I feel so furious now because I knew it was a bad idea to fix something that isn't broke. Can my Wubi install still be saved?
not sure what happened, yesterday i installed the new kernel and played around a bit by uninstalling some older kernels. Everything was fine but now i cant boot into ubuntu any more. I have a Dual boot and Grub let me boot into windows. for linux grub gave error 17 (if i remember correctly).o i popped in the LiveCD and tryed gparted to check for errors (nothing changed). I tried rewriting grub from the live cd and that made matters worse.
When I compile a custom kernel with this command: make-kpkg --initrd kernel_image kernel_headers and then install the .deb, there's no initrd in /boot and I have to create it manually. I've thought that the --initrd option should take care about this, but somehow it doesn't.
It behaves like this for about two years at least (since I've compiled my first kernel). Of course, it's no big deal to create it manually, I was just wondering whether do I do anything wrong or whether should I fill a bug report..
I started installing the beta of Maverick a few days ago, but the update server was running inordinately slow, so I canceled it. Several times, I have attempted to continue the installation, but I've been unable to reach the server. Shortly after this happened, I could no longer boot normally--I get the error:
Code: Kernel Panic - not syncing:VFS:Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0) Choosing the previous kernel fixes the problem.
So, I obviously want to upgrade to the release version now. When I open the update manager, I get asked if I want to do a partial upgrade to complete the install. I'm a bit leery of doing this since I only have one previous kernel to go back to (my list got really long and I have another operating system entry underneath, so I set my automagic boot manager to only keep two), and if I can no longer boot after the upgrade, I'll have to use Windows until it gets fixed... So, should I finish the upgrade, try to troubleshoot the error, or do something else to jump right to the latest release, after being partway through the upgrade?
I installed windows and haven't been able to boot to fedora since. Without a boot disk my machine complains 'BOOTMGR is missing'. If I use a boot disk to access grub on another linux partition (/dev/sda5) I can try to boot my fedora install using its old grub.conf settings. However this gives me the grub error:
Code: root (hd0,0) Filesystem type is ext2fs, partition type 0x83 kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.29.6-213.fc11.x86_64 ro root=UUID=63608748-e626-4a3f-9232-c836524f606f rhgb quiet
Error 2: Bad file or directory type Darn grub thinks the file system type is ext2fs - this makes me think windows might have written something (perhaps its bootloader) to the first partition rather than the MBR.
I am trying to install debian on my windows PC but am receiving some errors with it. I have downloaded "debian-506-amd64-DVD-1.iso" from debian website and am seeing that the md5 sum is correct. I am getting following error when I choose Graphical Install or install.
[ 1.480788] crc error [ 1.569788] kernel panic -not syncing:VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown block(253, 52)
Description of my PC: I have 2 hard disks
1. IDE hard disk (80 GB) -> windows is on this drive 2. SATA hard disk(250GB) -> I intend to install debian on this drive. 3. MSI motherboard & AMD 64 processor with 1 GB RAM. 4. NVidia external graphics card based on AGP slot(256 MB)
EDIT:: This time I got one more error message prior to the 2 shown above [some number] PCI:Cannot allocate resource region 0 of device 0000:00:00.0
A few days ago I decided to ditch Windows for good. I read for hours about a Linux distro and settled on OpenSUSE.
I just need to say one thing. Linux is not for the feint of heart, and everywhere I turn (forums), I see computers riddled with error messages, frustrated people, and the list goes on.
I'm willing to work through this though since I feel that the benefits will outweigh anything that Microsoft can offer, so here goes.
Upon installing the new build of OpenSUSE, I encountered an error message that was fixed by hitting retry (I forgot the name, but I remember it being something like Etk3 or something of the sort).
My issue now is not being able to boot into the OS. I'm getting Error 25 from GRUB on stage 1.5
I've installed 11.1 over my Windows XP partition. I want XP no more. Additionally, I read the sticky and followed all the instructions. I also selected the KDE desktop (I still don't know the difference between that and GNOME despite Googling it several times).
I decided to install Ubuntu on my desktop after the setup went well on my laptop and I liked the OS. I already had Windows 7 and Backtrack 9 installed on my HDD, so when I was in setup I took the 200gb partition for BT9 and formatted SDA5 to ext3 with "/" as the root. Then checked "format" and selected SDA5 from dropdown list and continued to install.Everything went smooth in the installation and I was prompted to reboot which I did assuming I would soon see a GRUB screen. Instead I got an error saying
and then the computer just freezes. I've tried to boot from CD but I just get "CD-ROM Boot Priority ...Boot Ready" and then after about 30 seconds it tries to boot from the HDD and I get the same error.I've read that I need to configure GRUB somehow but I have no idea how to do that and I can't boot anything from a CD because it just waits and then jumps to the HDD. I guess what i'm asking is if there is a way to configure GRUB from the BIOS menu or make it possible to be able to boot from a CD.
i have changed from windows xp to ubuntu 9.10 in monday but yesterday i turned my pc on and when i get in my session all get freeze, i waited for an hour and it was the same so i turned it off pressing the on/off button of the cpu, when i restarted it it saysGrub loading...Grub failed: unknown filesystemGrub rescuei dont knoe what to do.PD:i removed windows, only ubuntu is in the PC
When I installed Debian stable on a headless machine of mine, I configured a partition with LUKS encryption (intended for swap), but told the installer not to use it. After installation, I configured that encrypted partition as swap and mounted it. I wanted my headless machine to boot all the way without manual intervention, so I can log in via ssh and mount my encrypted partitions.However, since the kernel was updated (and the initrd regenerated), the machine now waits during boot for me to enter the swap encryption password, but no others, only the swap.I have been unable to find in my searchings how the initrd is generated with that setting or how I can change it, preferably permanently so future regenerated initrd's don't try activating my encrypted swap on boot. Does anyone know how to configure a Debian style initrd generator to generate an initrd that will not try to activate swap?
I had win7 on my laptop. Before sometime I install Ubuntu 9.10 and it worked fine. Bur later that I resize the partition using third party software. Now when I restart the system it is giving me an error GRUB Loading error: unknown filesystem grub rescue> I am not able to access the harddrive. I am very new to ubuntu.
I have been using ubuntu 9.10 for a month. i have it installed on a 5GB separate partition of a 80 GB hard disk with my XP installed on a C drive(a separate partition ofcourse) then i had to remove it from my PC so i boot my PC with a partition manager cd and directly formatted that partition of 5GB from that software now i am having this error on my boot of PC....
grub rescue> error:unknown filesystem
I have tried a lot of commands here on this screen and nothing happens...i want to go to my XP .... and can't loose my XP OS and other data as well on different partitions.....
there was ubuntu on my pc operating system but it is strange for me so i wanted to instal windows 7 on my pc. I inserted Window 7 disk and started to install it and i formated Ubuntu but the disk what i was using was damaged and it could not complite the installation and now i dont have any programs in my pc. Problem is that i got another disk but i cant boot anymore my pc, i select drive and stuff and then comes error.
error: unknown filesystem grub rescue- i tryed different commands but those didnt worked.
I had dual boot with windows 7 and ubuntu 10.04 running, and working. In my grub menu on startup I could choose (among things) something called Vista loader. Dont know why, since I installed windows 7 and not vista. Could also choose windows7 and ubuntu, both worked.
Today I accidentally pressed the vista loader, and now I get the following error upon boot: Error unknown filesystem grub rescue
So the next thing I did was download the latest ubuntu and boot from live cd. I followed instructions [url] on how to purge grub2 and reinstall it, and did so with out any problems. However the same error remains when I boot.
I just recently decided to install Ubuntu alongside windows 7 64bit. I was working fine until I decided to increase the partition size of the unused space to take up some space of an unused partition I had made earlier. When I tried to reboot windows I got the error - error: unknown fileystem. grub rescue> I have tried a windows repair disc with no results, it cannot find any problem with the startup routine and I have looked at many different tutorials and information about how to restore grub using command from the grub rescue menu. Ubuntu 10.10
I have dual boot with Ubuntu 9.10 and Windows 7. Today, after using Partition Wizard on Windows to resize its partition, I got the following message when reboot:
Code:
I dont actually know what to do, I've been reading some threads on the internet but nothing equal to my case, only people who installed Windows after Linux and lost GRUB. Do I just need a live CD to reinstall GRUB? Can somebody tell what to do?
I installed GRUB 2 for someone, and I made a mistake, and did not specify the right place (/dev/sda3 for me) when it asked. Now I can't do anything. I can't boot GRUB, can't do nothing.
i installed ubuntu 10.04.. all very nice, but not the os for me.. lightscribe problems, front ir panel problems. minor niggles for sure, but enough for me to go ahead with formatting and installing windows. simple job...or so i thought... using windows set up, i formatted c: and continued with install...on first restart i got a grub error saying unknown file system... i have tried loads of different things... fix mbr fixboot, that nt60 one. dban wouldnt work either.. im at my wits end ive spunked the best part of 1000 on this system and my wife is nagging me.
