Ubuntu Installation :: 10.04 - Whenever Attempt Upgrade Server Becomes Unbootable And Have To Reimage And Start Again
Apr 18, 2011
I have had Ubuntu desktop on my PC for a year now and am very happy with it. A couple of months ago I got a Ubuntu server 10.04 for playing about with. I have installed the gui, for personal reasons, but I want to upgrade to 10.10
Whenever I attempt the upgrade my server becomes unbootable and I have to reimage and start again. I have even tried performing the upgrade before I install the GUI but it still makes no difference.
Although I have the GUI I am doing the upgrade via command line.
Upon watching the upgrade in process, I find that no errors are occurring. Could it be something to do with my server provider?
I've just reported a launchpad bug report about my desktop system being unbootable after upgrade to lucid lynx. [URL]... I opened this thread to ask if someone else experienced a similar problem and for collecting information and workarounds (none yet) about this quite serius problem. The system has an nvidia graphic card and proprietary drivers were installed before the upgrade. However I'm not sure the problem is related to this. FYI, the system booted regularly from a usb stick with ubuntu lucid lynx. SO the problem is in the upgrade path.
I tried running an upgrade from 8.04 LTS to 10.4 last night, and things seemed to be going smoothly. The upgrade progress was nearly complete, and I wandered off for a while to let it run. When I came back, I had nothing but an orange screen and and unresponsive system. I left it alone all night with the hopes that something would happen, but this morning nothing had changed so I hard restarted the system.
Ubuntu 10.4 appears in GRUB, but the system cannot boot and exits with a kernel panic and the message "vfs unable to mount root fs on unknown-block" I was able to boot to a 10.4 LiveCD, and I can browse all of my files from there. What can I do to get this system back up an running? I have dozens of user account and a lot of customization (it acts as a webserver with a wiki for a gaming website running on it, among other things), so I really really don't want to do a fresh install and lose all my data and customizations.
I did a routine update of my ubuntu 10.4 (in wubi vista) to the latest kernel (something -26) and installed a java plugin for firefox. After a reboot, i open up the "Ubuntu" entry and i see a message flash accross the screen (something about hda,0,0 or sda im not sure) then it just reboots the PC. No command line or anything. No need to say im pretty screwed
My question is, is there any way to get my files off of wubi? Or even better can i restore Ubuntu to working again? P.S for some reason the two times i have tried to run a live CD on this laptop, it has corrupted vista.
Suffice to say I had a dual boot at work with an essential windows 7 and non-essential linux install on it, and randomly upgrading the distro made windows7 unbootable. Cue a missed days work, much embarrassment and ear bashing from those who are convinced Linux is written entirely by communists and hippies. In the end I had to re-install windows, which cut off the ability to boot to ubuntu - although I've left the existing ubuntu partitions as they were.
Although I can get away with allocating a few partitions to ubuntu, I can't really justify fiddling with the MBR based upon this experience. I need a fast boot and persistent data for doing anything further with ubuntu at work, so I'm wondering whether a safer bet would be to setup a usb stick with enough grub to boot to the existing ubuntu install? Not a full usb distribution, just enough to boot into the existing install? how this would be doneIs it really just a grub-install /dev/sdXX (where XX is the usb)?
I have tried to upgrade from 10.10 to 11.04 three times and I have had no success. Every time I get the blank purple screen and go through hell to get it back to a usable point. I have been reading and researching about this issue and have had no luck. I have went through the steps of the sticky at the top of the forum and got no where. Can someone please look at my hardware listed below and get me some insight or a different route? Graphics card: Nvidia GeForce 9500 GS Here is a link to my exact computer info:[URL]
Can't boot at all. At first, was able to boot using LiveCD USB but now whether I plug it or not, computer freezes at blank screen with blinking cursor at the top left of the screen.
I had a failed attempt at an upgrade to 10.04 but I know the error of my ways however before I go through it again does 10.04 still have the tools available for a dial-up connection, wvdial & gnome ppp?
My current situation is I have two physical hard disks, one with Windows 7 (sda) and another where I recently installed Ubuntu 9.1 (sdb). At this time there were no issues.
Now after getting used to 9.1 I selected to upgrade to 10.04 from the update manager. During this install I was told I needed to upgrade GRUB which I understand is the bootloader and was told to choose where to install it.Now at this time I had no knowledge of drive naming conventions in Linux and there was no option to cancel the upgrade to look for help, so instead I followed the advice in the help box to simply select every device listed
The result was a fully working Ubuntu installation but at the cost of an unbootable Windows 7.Windows is showing on the GRUB menu but selecting it gives only a blank screen with a flashing cursor and no ability to do anything besides ctrl-alt-delete.
After a few hours of googling solutions including downgrading GRUB, there was no change and it seems that I actually have a version of GRUB on both drives. The one on the windows drive (sda) is the default loaded GRUB that shows Windows 7 but cannot boot it. The second GRUB install on the Ubuntu drive (sdb) is the one I am able to configure through Ubuntu but does not list Windows 7 on its boot list even after using "sudo update-grub"
I am attempting to upgrade Fedora 12 to 13. I get an error screen that said root could not be found. Four options are given. Not sure exactly their wording, but two appear to allow you to cancel the other two warn that if you reinitialize you will wipe out all data.
I have a Vista partition and a Fedora partition. I've added the vista ntfs partition to fstab with no help. All of the partition use the long UUID form. I added the root location (root (hd0,5) to the upgrade menu item in grub.conf and that didn't work either.
I'm reluctant to proceed for fear of initializing the entire drive. I could live with installing Fedora 13 over the existing partitions.
Recently i upgraded my laptop from ubuntu 9.10 to 10.04 but alas! after the upgrade i don't get anything, just the 10.04 boot up screen and my cursor after some time. when i run it in recovery mode and tried to startx from there , it gave me a message " no protocol defined " now i can only access my system in failsafe x mod. code...
While attempting to identify the cause of a crash in X, invoked by KMyMoney, following a change of graphics card hardware, I was advised to try another graphics driver. As a result my system start only in comand prompt mode and I cannot Startx.Somehat foolishly I followed the Howto on installing the 'latest and greatest nVidia drivers'. The installation failed (most alarmingly because the driver that the nViida web-site identified as being appropriate - X86-256.44 - actually issued an warning message during installation telling me that it did not support my installed hardware!). The recovery recommended in the Howto also failed (as I suspected it might).
If I press Ctrl+Alt+F7 at the command prompt I get many error/warning messages, starting with multiple instances of the following pair:"unknown parameter encountered""ignoring unknown pararmeter"and the system then enters a wait after the message 'checking battery status' - which confuses me, as, aside from the CMOS battery, there is no battery on my desktop system.If I issue the startx command I get many error/warning messagesincluding:
Botched upgrade to 11.04, but learned enough about Unity that I don't want to go there. (also installer to put second new 11.04 wants to erase everything on main drive). Can reach 10.10 -boot from prior Linux - but mouse and internet are gone. Everything else seems to work and I can get to System and terminal with keyboard shortcuts, but need to reinstall mouse (Logitech M110) and internet. Can't find an Xorg.conf file or a /dev/input/event3.
In MS Windows, I used a program to re-image my hard drive. It was a great way to keep my OS configurations backed up in case of trouble. Linux is more stable, but I'm capable of doing more damage to it. So is there a good way to re-image this HD? I don't see the old MS program (Acronis) for Linux. Or, is there a way to save all of the synaptic programs I have downloaded so that I could more easily reload them if needed?
I learned that, even while on Linux, using Iceweasel/Firefox 3.0.6 is not safe. So I tried to update the browser for my PPC G4 iMac (256 MB RAM, 800 MHz processor).
1. I downloaded a backported Iceweasel .deb from URL...
2. I then tried to install it with dpkg -i PathToIceweasel.deb
3. There was an error. I remember seeing xulrunner-1.9.1 is not installed. I tried to install that with apt-get but it was not available.
4. Now when I click on web browser I get the error "Failed to execute default Web Browser: Input/Output error".
I have a 4 gig Kingston USB stick. I have an Eee PC with 4 gig internal flash drive (no hard drive). I can't find the specs but I believe it is roughly equivalent to an Eee PC 900 or something.
About a year ago I downloaded the then latest version of ubuntu for netbooks, created a bootable USB drive from my Mac, as per the instructions at:url
or whatever the equivalent site was then. It booted fine, it installed fine and everything was great.
Eventually the tiny flash drive in my EeePC got full. I couldn't upgrade to the new 9.10 distro through auto updates because there wasn't enough room to download them.
I tried to delete some old kernels and then delete some other stuff. I broke my linux installation and now it won't boot to a desktop. I can get a login prompt and I can boot to the fail safe terminal but not much else.
So, I tried repeating the steps above.
I downloaded the NEW version of ubuntu netbook remix from:url
I followed the instructions for making a bootable USB stick from the first link above. I used the EXACT SAME USB stick as last time (in fact, it still had the older version of the ubuntu install files on it).
There were no errors "creating" the USB drive and it can be mounted on my Mac and I can see the files are on it.
I stuck it into my EeePC and rebooted and hit the ESC key and selected the Kingston USB drive to boot from. The light on the USB drive flashed some, then the internal flash drive light flashed some and the EeePC booted from the internal drive.
I rebooted and went into the bios settings and made triple sure that it was set to boot from USB drive first and rebooted. The same thing happened (it "looked at" the USB drive, then booted from the internal drive).
I repeated the above a dozen times. I REinstalled the ubuntu files on the USB drive from my Mac. I repeated. Still the same.
I redownloaded the ubuntu files and did everything from scratch. Again no errors "creating" the USB drive and it can be mounted on my Mac and I can see the files are on it, but again, it is absolutely useless because it is unbootable.
I tried booting my Mac from the USB drive and my Mac didn't recognize it as a bootable drive either.
I found another 4 gig USB drive and repeated the steps above with it. It was exactly the same: no errors creating it, the drive is mountable on my Mac, but it is completely unbootable.
I am at a loss to find any info on this nor do I have any idea what to try next. I KNOW this worked with the first USB drive last year (with an earlier version of ubuntu). What could possibly have changed?
I need to downgrade glibc due to a broken kernel after a libc6 upgrade attempt. See:[URL]..Especially with the reduced capabilities I have right now (few if any programs are working), how might I go about downgrading glibc to 2.6?
I updated 9.10 and system crashed during update and is now unbootable. It seems to freeze (or is just taking a really long time) at fsck. Is there any way to make my computer usable again without reinstalling the whole OS?
yesterday I performed an automatic security update suggested by the update manager on my virtualized (with VirtualBox on a Windows 7 host) Ubuntu 10.10 installation.
The update somehow failed and left me with an unbootable system. When I try to boot, I am told that various folders, files, and what not are missing. Then the system drops into a busybox and leaves me with an (initramfs) prompt.
This happens with all kernels I get offered by GRUB, although the error messages are quite different from kernel to kernel.
Well, the short of it is this: I don't have the slightest idea on how to get back to a working system and this site is the final straw I'm willing to grab. A complete disaster like this following an update initiated and executed by the system is unheard of in Windows-land; at least I haven't heard of it, yet, and therefore I am going to abandon Ubuntu and Linux altogeteher, if there is no remedy.
I was running Windows 10 on MSI GT70 2OD-064US hoped to dual boot first had three primary partitions shrunk largest one and ran debian-8.3.0-amd64-netinst.iso chose guided install with remaining free space, didn't force UEFI asked if I wanted to install GRUB after finding Windows Vista (loader) I went ahead and installed. Couldn't boot afterwards with dark screen saying no install media, changed BIOS to legacy mode and got grub prompt followed tutorial and entered these commands:
grub> set root=(hd0,5) grub> linux /vmlinuz root=/dev/sda5 grub> initrd /initrd.img grub> boot
This caused it to boot without GUI I ran grub-update and restarted back at grub> again. How to get debian to boot or even windows 10 again?
I have an Acer Aspire 1410 laptop which was running Win7. The laptop lacks a DVD drive and came pre-installed with a recovery partition as well.I've been searching for ways to dual-boot Fedora on it. I bought a Samsung USB DVD drive, but I burned two copies of Fedora 12 and neither would boot, nor would my Knoppix Live CD. I even updated the bios. Then I tried liveusb-creator from my desktop Fedora 10 system, but I would still run into strange errors that prevented booting into the installer.
Finally I downloaded UNetbootin and created a USB stick to boot Fedora 12. Neither Fedora 12 nor Ubuntu would recognize my network adaptor for some reason. Undaunted, I then used UNetbootin to create a Fedora 11 image which got me into the boot installer for the first time. I then used my Fedora 12 image from my portable DVD drive to install. The install seemed to go well.
That is, until I rebooted. Grub came up as expected. Fedora 12 runs into a very early Kernel panic (not syncing: DMAR hardware is malfunctioning) within moments. I tried rebooting into Windows, but it apparently doesn't care much for Grub. It sends me into the Recovery software and asks me to reset my hard drive. I've tried that a couple of times now and it's useless. Is the problem with Grub? I thought it would play nicely with Win7 and at least allow me to boot into it, which is why I allowed it to overwrite my MBR. I lack a Win7 disc and cannot repair the MBR that way.
I performed a system update yesterday to CentOS version 5.4. Now I cannot get vmware to start. I get the error "VMware Server is installed, but it has not been (correctly) configured for the running kernel. To (re-)configure it, invoke the following command: /usr/bin/vmware-config.pl." I tried running vmware-config but that did not resolve the issue. I saw the bug related to 2.0.x (after the update), but that does not seem to apply to 1.0.9.
Since I noticed a new version of Ubuntu (10) was out and I was still running an old version (8.04) I thought about upgrading. With the update manager is selected update to 10.04 and everything went on it's way.
During the process I got asked if I wanted to update the GRUB loader. Since I also use Windows and with a previous update of GRUB I couldn't start into it anymore I selected, "keep this version" (which I think is now causing this trouble).
The upgrade completed and restarted, however, Ubuntu now doesn't start anymore. I get prompted with:
mount: mounting none on /dev failed: No such device udevd(896): error getting socket: Invalid argument ...
edit: I started Ubuntu with the live CD and typed gedit /booot/grub/menu.lst which gave me a blank file. Is that normal?
I did a distribution upgrade using "apt-get dist-upgrade". After rebooting, I receive a message saying "Failed to start the X Server". When I okay the prompt for more info, I see the following: GDM: Xserer not found: /usr/bin/X :0 -audit 0 -auth /var/lib/gdm/:0.Xauth -nolisten tcp vt7 Error: Command could not be executed! install the X server or correct GDM configuration and restart GDM.gdm[4678]: WARNING: gdm_server_spawn: Xserver not found: /usr/binX :0 -auth /var/lib/gdm/:0.Xauth -nolisten tcp vt7
I just upgrade from 10.3 to 11.4. Everything went fairly smoothly and most things are still working execp nfsserver
getting: /etc/init.d/nfsserver start Starting kernel based NFS server: mountd statd nfsdrpc.nfsd: writing fd to kernel failed: errno 13 (Permission denied) rpc.nfsd: unable to create inet6 TCP socket: errno 97 (Address family not supported by protocol) rpc.nfsd: unable to set any sockets for nfsd failed
dmesg: RPC: server localhost requires stronger authentication. [ 2545.282736] svc: failed to register nfsaclv2 RPC service (errno 13). [ 2545.282742] nfsd: last server has exited, flushing export cache [ 2545.282852] RPC: server localhost requires stronger authentication. [ 2545.282955] RPC: server localhost requires stronger authentication. [ 2545.283848] RPC: server localhost requires stronger authentication. [ 2545.283957] RPC: server localhost requires stronger authentication.
I just did a yum upgrade (5.3 to 5.4) on one node of my three node cluster (RHCS), which did:
Rebooted to the new kernel, but cman failed to start. Rebooted back to the previous kernel, but no change, so it doesn't appear to be the kernel.... Some errors are:
On the upgraded node, the following processes are running:
Whereas on the non-upgraded node, the following processes are running:
Just upgraded to 10.04 and Firefox will no longer start. I get the tab that says starting firefox, and then the tab disappears, and I never get a window.When I try to start via terminal it says (something along the lines of):Attempting to load libmoonloaderxpiSegmentation FaultI tried logging out and back in, no dice; restarted, no dice; uninstalled and reinstalled firefox, no dice.Running x64, if that matters, on a pretty decent laptop. I would describe my technical knowledge of Linux as moderate.
I upgraded to 10.04 and when trying to boot, the computer would hang at the splash screen. Going into recovery mode showed nothing in the log files. The Xorg and gdm logs were zero bytes but had the proper timestamp. I tried and tried, but could not get it to boot until I removed the nvidia-current package. Then the computer will boot, but the screen is partially corrupted with just a blue background. I can hit enter, then type my password and I can actually login, but I can't see a thing. I can cycle through the resolutions with Ctrl +, but the screen just still has a blue background and nothing else. Trying to boot in failsafe X mode gives the same screen. I tried putting the vesa driver in the xorg.conf, but no change.
I've tried the i915.modeset=0 boot option. I've tried the "xforcevesa" boot option, but nothing will give me a readable screen. As soon as I re-installed the nvidia-current package and ran nvidia-xconfigure, the problem came back and it hangs again.At this point, I'm stuck. I would settle for a plain VGA screen at this point, but I can't even seem to get that. I've read several posts here with similar problems and tried every solution put forth, I think, but have not found a solution.When the upgrade wanted to install the new /etc/default/grub, I kept my old one. I compared the two files at the time, but I didn't see anything new, but maybe I missed something. What new items if any does the upgrade put into /etc/default/grub?
