Ubuntu Installation :: (initramfs) Prompt After Alternate CD 9.10 With RAID - Grub Loading: Biosdisk Read Error
Jan 13, 2010
I am trying to install Ubuntu on a nvidia board which, based on the forums I have perused, is a FAKERaid chipset. Originally I tried to install according to https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FakeRaidHowto to no avail. I gave up and am resorting to breaking down my raid setup (thus losing my Windows XP installation) and using Linux's software raid (which seems to be the recommended method) with the Alternate CD install.
I went in to the bios and completely disabled my board's RAID function. I then followed the instructions here: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/In...n/SoftwareRAID , except it popped up with a window advising me "one or more serial ATA RAID configurations have been found. Do you wish to activate these RAID devices?" which that page didn't mention. I believe I selected "Yes". Setting up the partitions I made (from beginning of disk to end of disk) a RAID1 200MB /boot partition, a RAID0 / partition (90GB?), free space not set up in RAID (approx 20GB for each SATA drive to later install Windows on [if that's even possible]) & then the SWAP partition 2GB at the end of one of the disks (is it OK that this one wasn't in RAID?).
The installation completed, as far as I can tell, without a hitch. Except also of note: my network card doesn't work in the installer (gives an error message about unable to configure dhcp) so i'm not connected to the internet. Then I restart and the following appears: grub loading: error: biosdisk read error. Followed by what appears to be the Ubuntu loading splash (just a small white shape in the middle of the screen), and then:
This morning I ran an upgrade which upgraded the kernel from 2.6.35-28 to 2.6.35-30 on my Maverick system. I then departed for a meeting and came back to discover that my system had rebooted itself and only booted into an initramfs prompt.
Rebooting again shows a very brief flashing message of "error: unknown filesystem" alongside a few other errors I cannot read in the 1/4 second the error lasts on screen before the grub prompt. Neither kernel boot nor recovery mode options take me anywhere except to the initramfs prompt. I have searched and found a few threads on similar issues, but they all involve different fixes and suggest causes (such as dual booting on an ntfs drive, which I do not do) such that I am unsure where to go from here.
I'm trying to install ubuntu-10.04-server-i386 in Virtualbox on Windows XP Home (for use as a Drupal development server) using the instructions here [URL]... the Ubuntu server will not start properly. Instead it goes to an initramfs prompt as follows
[code]...
Another thread suggested typing 'exit' after a while but it just repeats the same output. It seems the root disk doesn't exist. I allowed the installer to set up partitions to its own recommendation (Guided?) although I'm not entirely sure what it did - I think there are two partitions but you guys will know that. The host disk is SATA. The CPU is a dualcore but I've only enabled one CPU on the guest within Virtualbox. Also, I had to enable PAE mode as without it Virtualbox crashed every time I started the guest. PAE wasn't mentioned in the instructions mentioned above. I've tried changing the various other disk parameters in Virtualbox (without fully understanding them) but no luck. I also ran run the boot info script from a desktop LiveCD and the results are given below.
When I try and boot my Debian computer I get the messages: Grub Loading stage1.5. Grub loading, please wait... Error 15 Is there any way of recovering from this - or is it simply a fresh install? I was attempting an upgrade from Lenny to Squeeze and despite a few hurdles it looked like it was all happening. Got the new kernel loading, and the new grub. It looked as though grub2 was working so I ran the grub-remove-legacy-support command (something like that) and now my computer won't boot grub or Linux.
I'm assuming the MBR on my harddrive is lost, however I don't know what state the partition is in. I'm guessing that maybe this has been lost as well. I tried a few tools from the Ultimate Boot CD but nothing here was able to re-install my grub or boot from any partition or even mount my file-system. I'm fearing the worst but would like it confirmed before I blow it all away with a new install.
I installed Umbuntu (MythBuntu 11.04 as backend system) and initially when starting it just went to a blank screen (no prompt, nothing). After going through safe mode I was able to get to a prompt and into the UI in low graphic mode.After updating the graphic drivers (nvidea) to the latest and changing some grub options (GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="acpi=off splash") when I restarted it went to the busybox initramfs prompt. I typed "exit" and the UI started up normally.
The next time I restarted it went through to a blank screen. I typed "exit" again and enter and the UI started up normally again (even though I couldn't see what I was typing at the time).While I was going through the recovery mode I do remember some messages about disk not found/mounted, when I googled it I found stuff about entering rootdelay=90 in menu.lst which doesn't exist anymore. Is there a similar option I can enter somewhere in 11.04?Also I'm new to Ubuntu (in fact any Linux distro as an admin), where would I find any log files that may help with finding the problem.
I'm trying to install Debian Lenny on my new Dell XPS 8100 Desktop with 2 x 1To SATA HD. (No Windows or any other OS install is present on the system) The Bios allows me to change the SATA mode to either "ATA" or "RAID"
- When SATA mode is set to RAID, the installation goes without issues, but when it comes to load into the system, I've got that Stage 1.5 Grub Loading... Error 2 problem. I assume this is due to the Bios "RAID" configuration. I then switched the SATA mode to "ATA" in the Bios and now I can see the menu that allows me to boot my debian install but that part actually fails too saying "ALERT /dev/sda1 does not exist"
- When SATA mode was set to ATA, I tried to re-install the system but this time my drive was not recognized by the installer: "No common CD ROM drive"
I have a fancy new Quad Core Xeon machine here that I'm trying to install F10 x64 on. The installation went fine. When it reboots the first time, though, I get the dreaded Error Loading OS.
So I dug up my bookmark of the awesome Grub HOWTO here and followed the steps to install Grub manually. Alas, I get the same result after installing it. Even tried doing a makeactive (hd0) just in case, but no luck.
I did more searching and searched for "raid install" but didn't find anything helpful. So here I am... hoping somebody has some insight.
I went through the procedure to install Ubuntu 9.10 alongside Windows XP. The installation completed without complaint. But when I reboot the PC I get the error message "Grub loading error: no such partition...". and the keyboard is dead. I am using a Sony vaio PCG-FR215H laptop on which I have fitted new HDD and CD-drive. I carried out the installation by first booting up a live version of Ubuntu on a USB thumb drive and then clicking on the 'install Ubuntu' icon on the Live Ubuntu desktop. (I coudn't use a Live CD to install as this fails for some reason). I regained use of Windows XP on the PC by booting with a Windows 95 boot floppy and typing "fdisk /mbr". So, does anyone know what might have cased this grub error? Also, are there ways to try and fix the problem manually. I.e. can I get a copy of good versions of the files that are likely corrupted and then replace the stuff that I will have written over when I did the "fdisk /mbr"?
The follwing message appears when i start my computer (loaded with ubuntu 9.10 and windows) "grub loading error reading". i am not able to proceed further. and the part that baffles me the most is that i am not able to boot from the live cd as well.
I am trying to install ubuntu 10.04.2 onto a computer (alternate for RAID support). This is a fresh install - I am formatting all drives. Partitioning, setting up RAID, and the beginnings of the instilation appears to go fine. But part way through it "sticks" at a screen asking for a "media change" to the CD which is already in the CD tray. Nothing I do appears to stop this (i.e. clicking 'go back', removing/inserting the CD, etc). I've even tried unplugging the network connection.
The specific error reads: Code: [!!] Install the base system Please insert the disk labeled: 'Ubuntu 10.04.2 LTS _Lucid Lynx_ - release amd64 (20110211.3) in the drive '/cdrom/' and press enter.
Media change <Go Back> <Continue> How do I get past this point? (and yes, the red text is in red).
I have just installed Lucid Lynx as after a live run of it I thought it was about time to upgrade. Everything ran smoothly in the live version so I backed up my files and installed it. When I went to boot I get this - Grub loading, please wait ... Error 2
The strange thing is it seems to be specific to the computer. I have an older, lower spaced desktop, computer that I tried the hard drive in and it worked fine. Problem is its too low spaced for what I want so it seems the install went ok but its something with the computer? How I would be able to boot into the install?
I had Ubuntu installed, i installed Debian and there was no dual boot. So i formated all the hard disk to install only Debian. It installed but at boot i get error: no such device and the grub rescue> prompt. i googled for a solution and nothing worked:
- i tryed reinstalling grub, not worked - i did the windows cd fixmbr trick, not worked - reinstalled debian with fixmbr the first step and nothing - tryed deleting with dd the mbr, not worked - reinstalled grub from debian rescue, not worked
what should i do? i can't access my computer? please tell me how should i fix it? the google guys will kill me because i put their servers on fire
I'm trying to install ubuntu from a CD. I believe it is version 8.4 The install seemed to go fine and I rebooted my computer and immediatly after start up I get a message that says: Grub Loading stage 1.5.
Grub loading, please wait... Error 18
I have no idea what this means or what to do and Im not the most computer savy guy. My computer is stuck and will do nothing at this point.
UPDATE: decided to reinstall and run the partitioner to get rid of the raid. Not worth dealing with this since seems to be lower level as /dev/mapper was not listing any devices. Error 15 at grub points to legacy grub. So avoiding the problem by getting rid of raid for now. So ignore this post. Found a nice grub2 explanation on the wiki but didn't help this situation since probably isn't a grub problem. Probably is a installer failure to map devices properly when it only used what was already available and didn't create them during the install. I don't know, just guessing. Had OpenSuSE 10.3 64bit installed with software raid mirrored swap, boot, root. Used the alternate 64bit Ubuntu iso for installation. Since partitioning was already correctly setup and the raid devices /dev/md0,1,2 were recognized by the installer, I chose to format the partitions with ext3 and accept the configuration:
Installation process failed at the point of installing grub. It had attempted to install the bootloader on /dev/sda2 and /dev/sdb2. I moved on since it would not let me fiddle with the settings and I got the machine rebooted with the rescue option on the iso used for installing. Now, I can see the root partition is populated with files as expected. dpkg will list that linux-image-generic, headers, and linux-generic are installed with other supporting kernel packages. grub-pc is installed as well. However, the /boot partition or /dev/md1 was empty initially after the reboot. What is the procedure to get grub to install the bootloader on /dev/sda2 and /dev/sdb2, which represent /dev/md1 or /boot?
Running apt-get update and apt-get upgrade installed a newer kernel and this populated the /boot partition. Running update-grub results in a "/usr/sbin/grub-probe: error: no mapping exists for 'md2'". grub-install /dev/md2 or grub-install /dev/sda2 gives the same error as well. Both commands indicate that "Autodetection of a filesystem module failed, Please specify the module with the option '--modules' explicitly". What is the right modules that need to be loaded for a raid partition in initrd? Should I be telling grub to use the a raid module?
I have a raid5 on 10 disk, 750gb and it have worked fine with grub for a long time with ubuntu 10.04 lts. A couple of days ago I added a disk to the raid, growd it and then resized it.. BUT, I started the resize-process on a terminal on another computer, and after some time my girlfriend powered down that computer! So the resize process cancelled in the middle and i couldn't acess any of the HDDs so I rebooted the server.
Now the problem, the system is not booting up, simple black with a blinking line. Used a rescue CD to boot it up, finised the resize-process and the raid seems to be working fine so I tried to boot normal again. Same problem. Rescue cd, updated grub, got several errors: error: unsupported RAID version: 0.91. I have tried to purge grub, grub-pc, grub commmon, removed /boot/grub and installed grub again. Same problem.
I have tried to erased mbr (# dd if=/dev/null of=/dev/sdX bs=446 count=1) on sda (ide disk, system), sdb (sata, new raid disk). Same problem. Removed and reinstalled ubuntu 11.04 and is now getting error: no such device: (hdd id). Again tried to reinstall grub on both sda and sdb, no luck. update-grub is still generating error about raid id 0.91 and is back on a blinking line on normal boot. When you'r resizeing a raid MDADM changed the ID from 0.90 to 0.91 to prevent something that happend happened. But since I have completed the resize-process MDADM have indeed changed the ID back to 0.90 on all disks.
I have also tried to follow a howto on a similar problem with a patch on [URL] But I cant compile, various error about dpkg. So my problem is, I cant get grub to work. It just gives me a blinking line and unsupported RAID version: 0.91.
Have installed ubuntu on a separate partition on single hard disk and system initially worked on a dual boot basis with windows xp. However after installing most recent series of updates computer is failing to boot.
Error message is 'error : no such device : 6937cabe-f115-455b-a248-6f8d46f80682.' prompt showing is 'grub rescue>' am now unable to access either windows or ubuntu.
I was dual-booting Ubuntu 11.04 just fine for about the last week but then ran into some issues and decided to reinstall Ubuntu. Now after the install I get this error: error: nu such device: d38af2a9-740e-4d3c-b267-2a3848e5d319 and it goes into the grub rescue command prompt screen. I have tried to reinstall Ubuntu about 6 times now, complete installs. I have tried changing boot priority multiple times. I installed off a thumb drive and left the thumb drive in after install, took it out after install.
I know nothing about this at all. I have never programmed a computer.. I loaned my tower to a friend who put this on ...now i have it back and cant get to my windows 98. all i get each time i boot is ...
GRUB loading ... error:no such disk grub recover>
I have tried ubuntu sec 8.4 recover mode and all i get is unreconized command.. i do not know how to set anything.. i have no disks for this not even the orginal windows recover disk.. is their anything i can do to get win to run as it use to??
My Server runs "fine", then I type init 6 for rebooting or some cron job initiates Init 6 and my system stops in grub at: GRUB loading stage1.5. Error 18 After another Ctrl+Alt+Del the system boots as if anything happened. this is why I doubt that it's an issue of too big HDD or BIOS.
I'm currently setting up a dell server with hardware raid 1 on sas 6r. i got 4 sas installed on the server and configured to raid 1 as stated below, array 1: slot 0 & 1
array 2: slot 2 & 3
during the installation, the installer detect the array 2 as sda and array 1 as sdb.. so i proceed with installation on array 2. after completed the installation, the first reboot lead me to a 'grub-rescue" prompt. by following the guide at url Mode, i've noticed that the boot folder has changed to (hd1,1), which i believe it has changed to sdb1. default root device shows that prefix=(hd0,1)/grub.
I been running both OS's for a few months now with no major problems besides wireless internet issues. Today, however, as I go to boot my laptop up, the Dell logo loads with the F2 and F12 boot and setup options which both work. Directly after that though I get the message "GRUB loading. Symbol '?' not found. Aborted. Press any key to Exit." then it repeats when I push a key, and then it tells me to press F1 to retry, F2 to go to setup, or F5 to run diagnostics. It passes all the tests in diagnostics. I've tried booting off of the ubuntu cd I used to load it initially with no luck. So I'm stuck at either that error message or in setup but I can't go any further, and it does not change anything when I tried to boot from the cd.
I've created quite a predicament with my desktop installation and would prefer to be able to salvage it instead of having to reformat/re-install Ubuntu.
Quite a lot happened and here's my best recollection:
- My Ubuntu installation stopped working and I could not get the desktop to load.
- I backup up my entire home directory by creating a zip file along with other small zip files. I used Alt + Del + F1 to get the CLI to do this.
- I then did different things trying to get the desktop to load.
- I did a apt-get upgrade, to try and get it to work; this was not sucessful.
- Working through several dependency issues I finally got sudo apt-get ubuntu-desktop upgrade to work, but it did not finish completely. I started to get out of memory errors. I am assuming this was because too much hard drive space was taken up by the zip files I had created
-I could not boot and do anything properly after that. Every attempt to modify the filesystem (to free up space) results in an error "Read Only File System". The root file system was not being mounted and I would see root@none on the CL
- Looking on the boot loader I now have Ubuntu 9.10 2.6.24-generic installed
- I burnt a new installation of Ubuntu 10.4 LTS
- Using Live CD I tried to see if I could free up some space and get the system back to more stable state,
However this was NOT sucessful. I tried to mount my drive by sudo mount -t ext3 <dev> <dir> but I keep getting the following error: error while loading shared libraries: /lib/libsepol.so.1: cannot read file data: Input/output error
Plus an old case and PSU and an old 18gb IDE drive, and an old CD-RW drive
I put the CD in and boot the machine. The initial Ubuntu screen comes up ("Ubuntu" with the line of dots below it) for a few seconds, and then it disappears and I see this text:
(initramfs) mount: mounting /dev/loop0 on //filesystem.squashfs failed: Input/output error Can not mount /dev/loop0 (/cdrom/casper/filesystem.squashfs) on //filesystem.squashfs
At that point it hangs and will proceed no further. I've tried this with the latest Mythbuntu Live CD and the latest Ubuntu Desktop Edition Live CD. Both were x64 versions.
I have an Ubuntu Jaunty server with 4 x 1 TB Hitachi SATA Hard drives and a 4GB IDE Flash Drive. I installed the root file system to the IDE Flash Drive and setup the 4 x 1 TB Hard Drives as a RAID 5 for the home partition (I actually allotted 3 Gigs on each drive as swap space as well). My problem occurs however when I restart my computer after the server installation. Grub doesn't load fully and I am left with a "GRUB_" message on the screen.My root partition is ext3 and I have also tried the same configuration with a boot partition as well on the IDE drive to no avail.
I have downloaded the latest Ubuntu 9.10 and used 'U904p' a program I had for creating 9.04 live USB I had before. I had 9.04 on the USB pen but thought that 9.10 would be better to install right away rather than upgrading it. So I run through the CLI and make it bootable and all that. I come to put in my pretty old (Spare parts mashed together) Linux box. I get this about 1 minute after the Ubuntu logo and loading bar:
Top of page: WARNING: Couldn't open directory /lib/modules/2.6.31-14-generic: No such file or directory
Then lots of 'FATAL: Could not load /lib/modules/2.6.31-14generic/modules.dep No Such file or directory'
Then I am dumped in to Busybox in initramfs command line. I have been googling and look around the forums all last night and this morning. I find loads of stuff from 9.04 but not 9.10? I tried the old 'Pull USB pen when Ubuntu log shows' and 'Changed SATA settings' turned them off in end, using IDE. Could it be that I created it using the old U904p program. I will look in to the newer one. Seen it about on forums. Otherwise any ideas? I am wanting to build a FOG box for imaging all my PC's and trailing it for work.
After my 2nd attempt to install from a CD my screen is now blank, my cooling fan is on full blast, and my hard drive light is on! Tried another hard drive from a different machine running Windows XP and the same thing happens. Also tried loading the ISO CD again but it won't read that as well.
After using slackpkg to update to -current on a new slack(32) install I was greeted with kernel panic "can't mount root fs" on reboot.
It was looking in the wrong place. I thought I answered yes and slackpkg would run lilo for me when it was done with the upgrade but perhaps I misunderstood.
I had my handy dandy USB boot stick so I set the bios and booted from USB. OK fine, I pointed to the correct location (hda1) and voila.
a 64bit kernel... The machine in question is a 2004 vintage celeron notebook
To my question: Is there a way I can point the loader to another kernel?
One last piece of the puzzle, the dvd drive is bad and I don't (yet) have a PXE server or even another linux box.
