Ubuntu Installation :: USB Key Overwrote Main HD MBR
Jan 22, 2011
I wanted to install Ubuntu 10.10 onto a 16Gig USB key and did so by booting with a Live CD and doing the install to /dev/sdc1 (which is the USB key). It installed fine to the USB but it also installed grub MBR to /dev/sda1 (doh!) .. so now I can't boot into my main HD unless I have the USB key plugged in and I select the correct kernal on /dev/sdc1 to load from on the grub boot menu. If I try booting without the USB key I get... error: no such device: <long device id number here> grub rescue> _
I just did something that is moderately serious in my book.while trying to put a iso/img to a USB drive using "dd" command (actual command: "dd if/=/home/<username>/Desktop/<image file name> of/=/dev/sda1"), I accidentally wrote to /dev/sda1 (which is my windowspartition on this dual booted computer). When i try to boot into windows, it gives a error that it cannot find the parition. the iso was about 400meg, it was a install iso for another form of linux (arch linux).Is there anyway that I can get my windows partition to work again, or am i just going to have to say goodbye to all my music, pictures, etc. And I think some of my teachers require me to use windows based software... So I would like to eventually get back into windows though.I am running Ubuntu 9.10, I am on a laptop (HP HDX 16t)I am going to get ubuntu back onto my netbook (i destroyed that earlier tonight by deleting a partition that had the bootloader on it... i am just wiping that though)
This question is only partially linux-related, but I accidently typed cp file /dev/sda2 instead of cp file /mnt/sda2. The first 300 bytes or so of the ntfs partition were overwritten and now it can't mount and can't boot. I figured I would try copying the first 4096 bytes from another ntfs partition and see if that gave it enough to at least boot. It didn't and I'm wondering if there's any way to fix this sort of thing easily (without downloading an entire Windows 7 DVD) and what exactly I overwrote that was so important.
I was gonna install OpenBSD 4.6 on my PC and I accidentally overwrote my boot partition.
Initially my partition table looked something like this:
Quote:
This doesn't look like a partition table
Probably you selected the wrong device.
Partition 4 does not end on cylinder boundary.
Partition table entries are not in disk order
That's what my partition table looks like according to fdisk. So I'm wondering how I'd go about recovering /dev/sda3 (what /dev/sda3 was before I blew it up).
I just completed the ubuntu 10.04 installation using the windows' installer.After the installation, the system reboot. I chose "ubuntu" from the OS selection screen.A message appeared that the system would verify the installation parameters.
Suddently, a message was shown: "no main file system chosen. Please solve this error from the partition menu." And it wouldn't continue!
how can I find the partition menu and set the file system for the ubuntu?? An idea would be to enter the installation cd for windows (as if I would wanted to format the pc)...wouldn't then the partition menu appear?
I have installed OpenOffice 3.2.0 on Ubuntu 10.04 (64-bit) and all seems to be working ok. Currently, I need to click on
Applications -> Office -> ,,,
and select which OpenOffice module I would like to execute. It would be much easier (and preferred) to be able to execute OpenOffice.org (Main window) directly from an icon in a panel. That is, I would like to have an icon in a panel that when clicked on would bring up the Main window for OpenOffice --- this Main window menu is shown in the attached screenshot.How can I get this single icon to give (when clicked on) this Main window for OpenOffice?
I installed using USB, I formated the hard drive that has Windows because I want Ubuntu my main operating system. I can boot from USB, but when booting after installation it said
How can I set up my pc where it default boots to my main HDD with Windows 7, and a secondary HDD with ubuntu after pressing F12 or something? I was going to just do a dual boot, but I remembered I had this extra HDD sitting around (which I was 'borrowing' from walmart for something I can't remember and lost the receipt =s) so I figured I'd just install ubuntu to it and dual boot like that.
EDIT: Disregard that. Just installed Ubuntu to my second HDD and it booted to the grub loader, which had the Windows 7 option in it. However, I do have one more question: as I'm still using the Windows 7 RC (which expires pretty soon), will a clean install of Windows 7 overwrite the grub loader seen on startup? If so, how do I go about booting back into the second HDD to reinstall grub?
I want to clean my ubuntu installation and I want to find packages which I installed using .deb files or using another (not ubuntu) repositories. I'm sure it can be done using apt or dselect or dpkg, but how?)
I have recently upgraded 9.10 to 10.04 through the alternate CD. However, each time when I boot my system, post upgrade, I receive this error: INIT:failed to spawn spreadahead main process: unable to execute: No such file or directory After that it waits for a long time to show the desktop.
I have 11.04 installed, Gnome 2.32.0 - life has been good until I responded as normal to the update manager this morning. Upon reboot noticed my main menu, system menu and places menu are gone. Other icons and stuff like power button remain on the top toolbar but again, no menus.Googling around I found solutions that were years old and/or did not work for me (like installing XFCE - which did nothing).
I have upgraded my ubuntu to the latest version a few days ago. Prior to the update I played a little with my partitions (transferred about 15GB from my windows partition to ubuntu partition).Up until yesterday everything worked. For some reason ubuntu will not load up now. After selecting ubuntu on grub i get the following msg: init: mountall main fsck process (574) terminated with status 3 mount of filesystem failed one or more of the mounts
every time i try to update. The number of bytes sometimes changes but it ends up always failing to download the full 862kB and suggests checking my Internet connection.... which is fine.
I'm still fighting to migrate my Evolution email from F13 to F15. My unsuccessful attempt at data conversion (from Ver 2.32/mbox to Ver 3.2/maildir) is documented here: [URL] As a last resort I decided to try installing evolution 2.32.2-1 in F15. The process went fairly smoothly once I figured out that evolution-data-server-2.32.2-1 must be installed first. Installing the data server package first eliminated all but 1 dependency problem in the main package installation. That 1 remaining dependency is where I?m stuck.
I my trying to install Ubuntu onto a new 1 TByte Sata HDD on my Dell 8400. The computer has no other OS installed as the old HDD containing Windows XP has being removed. The new hdd has being fully formatted and is set up as a NTFS with a single partition of 1 TByte. I downloaded the latest version of UBuntu and burned it to a cd as a ISO file. When I boot my computer up from this cd I am asked to enter my language of choice and then I get the main menu screen. On this screen I choose option (2) - Install Ubuntu. After a few minutes during which time you can hear the cd being accessed the screen just displays this main menu and never changes. I have tried twice using this install option but after 45-50 minutes the screen still never changes. No progress information is given. If it is normal how long does the installation generally take?
A few weeks back I was trying to install this (alongside windows 7) and no matter what I tried it would not install. I tried both 9.04 32 bit and 9.10 64 bit. Each screen (language, keyboard, etc) took about 20 minutes to load, and when I finally got to the install it always stopped at about 2/3 percent, giving some type of I/O error. No matter how many times i reburned and redownloaded. (old thread if you're curious)
I eventually gave up but then realized I had an old xbox hard drive hooked up that I cannot boot or read or do anything. It was set as hard drive 0 in windows hard drive manager or whatever. So I unplugged it. Now my windows drive is drive 0, and I have a second internal drive.
I finally got back to installing this. I avoided the graphical installer at first because it was so slow, opting for the alternate cd. It went fast but when I tried to partition it was unclear to me which disk i was partitioning. Doesnt matter because when i clicked ok, it froze at 0% for 30 minutes so i had to do a hard restart. Windows ran the disk check, etc, etc, I checked the disk management in windows and it was just a single windows partition as it should be.
So I tried the graphical cd again instead. It goes really fast through the screens now, HOWEVER it will not detect my drive 0 windows drive! Just my second internal drive which of course I can't install on without wiping the entire thing. I have installed kubuntu 9.04 dual booted with windows xp on this exact hard drive, over a year ago successfully, so I don't get it. What do i do??
I installed Squeeze in Virtualbox 4 and I need to enable the main repos for debian after several google searches I gave up. I am sure this isn't the first time this has been asked and I am sure that it is a common question.
Recently I did a wget for DreamLinux 4beta6.3, which I now cannot burn to a disk. Another issue with linux in general being just a hobby. Why could a dev not set it up where you could just wget the upgrades for the main distro files themselves ?? We already do this when upgrading the apps, so why not the distro? Why could you not start at alpha, and just slap do a rolling upgrade into rc and beyond?
I understand the potential stability issues, but why can't we ghost the drive and hence have a backup on hand and then do this as outlined, and hence do a single install from alpha the distro's grave? I am wasting four months on "Setting Up" each install, only to wind up reinstalling again. This happens in every variation I have come across. Even in stable versions, the rolling upgrade just craps the install, and the major do overs hijacks all my data.
I have an Acer 9410Z laptop that I believe is running the Maverick Meerkat version of Ubuntu Studio. I just did an upgrade using Synaptic. I get to GRUB, but When I try to boot 2.6.35-22 (or the recovery mode or a real time kernel I had installed )I get the error:
INIT: Failed to spawn ureadahead main process. No such file or directory I then get the Ubuntu Studio splash screen for 2 seconds but then instead of a normal boot I end up in the terminal.
i installed ubuntu desktop 11.04 on my acer aspire one 751h and found that the wifi didnt work. the netbook remix was the same so i went through all the previous releases up until 8.0.4.4 which worked fine on the live cd. so i tried to install but the installer didnt see my main hard drives only the usb i was using to install. so i tried using wubi installer which only left me with this screen when i tried to load up ubuntu.
For some reason Update Manager is not installing updates as of yesterday.I have it set to check daily and notify if updates are available. It has been working without issues for well over a year now.
Update Manager tells me updates are available and presents the list of security, recommended, and other updates. All are selected to update, but when I select Install Updates in Update Manager it returns with a Reading Package Information window overlaid on the main Update Manager window - building dependency tree then reading state information and dumps me back to the main Update Manager window without performing any update actions.
I've got the following problem: I just noticed that there were just very few notifications about updating the system (usually there are damn many of them in a week) So I opened the update manager and clicked on "refresh list". The following result popped up: p,li{white-space:pre-wrap;}E: Error http://ppa.launchpad.net natty/main/Sources Sources 404 Not Found First I thought, it would be just some kind of server problem, but it didn't stop. The next thing was to research the thread and I even found something. However, the solution suggested didn't work at all. (Things, which might have caused this: I installed the default software center |I'm using Kubuntu, but in this case that fact doesn't matter| and used it. To sum up:
- not able to update the system referring to the launchpad main sources for 11.04 - following error: E: Error http://ppa.launchpad.net natty/main/Sources Sources 404 Not Found It would be great if this was a common issue and I've been simply too stupid to find a proper solution. So you could just post the link.
Quote: init: ureadahead main process (274) terminated with status 59 Starting up... There is a blinking cursor under the 'S' in Starting. It doesn't boot or respond to any escape combinations that I know. Several retries have yielded the same screen. I read the original post and a few comments here about ureadahead, but did not find anything related to my problem.
I have/had a PC with several hard drives, and a mix of ubuntu and windows on multi boot.The old boot drive died screaming, and I need to start again. (But my data is safe! yay!)
Is there anything special about which drive can be the main drive to start booting from? Or to put it another way, can I install to any of the other 3 and expect it to work, or do I need to switch them around so a different drive is on the connections for the recently dead one?
I did something wrong while setting up my swapspace so now my main HDD is linux-swap I am dual booting windows and ubuntu, but now I can't boot into windows nor acces the partition because it is swap now.
