[ale] why Linux hurts/disappoints me more than once

[Michael H. Warfield]

On Sat, 2010-11-27 at 20:34 -0500, K Phillips wrote:
> You should be able to use any bootable livecd or liveusb and mount the
> local disk.

> If your using standard partitions, it's a few commands (sfdisk -l,
> mount, etc). If using LVM it gets a bit more challenging, although the
> basic idea is the same. 

Depending on the run-live, even LVM can be pretty reasonable.  NST does
an LVM start so you just need to sort out where your pieces are.  But,
yeah, you still may need to go digging in pv* and lv* commands if you're
going to dig on that level. Doesn't sound like the case here, however.
This sounded like purely a partitioning issue maybe with classical BIOS
vs EFI possibly being at the heart of the problem.

> Without knowing your drive assignments and partition layout, here is
> example commands using the first scsi/sata disk and first partition:
> sfdisk -l
> mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
> cd /mnt/
> ls
> cd bin
> ./grub-install /dev/sda1 
> 
> This makes a bunch of assumptions and shouldn't be run exactly, as it needs to be modified for drive type, number, partition, etc. Some of those commands are also for verification, like ls and sfdisk. 
> 
> On Nov 27, 2010, at 3:24 PM, "Michael H. Warfield" <mhw at wittsend.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Sat, 2010-11-27 at 15:00 -0500, Narahari 'n' Savitha wrote:
> >> Thank You.  If I cant even get into the OS how can I do what you have
> >> suggested.
> > 
> > Boot the Ubuntu run-live and work from the CD while you diagnose the HD?
> > 
> > There's all sorts of run-live CD's out there like my favorite to
> > customize, the Network Security Toolkit or NST, but you should have
> > everything you need on that Ubuntu CD.
> > 
> >> Is there something that I can do to get to the shell  to run
> >> commands ?
> >> 
> >> -Narahari
> > 
> > Regards,
> > Mike
> > 
> >> On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 11:24 AM, Kaerka Phillips
> >> <kbphillips80 at gmail.com>wrote:
> >> 
> >>> Based your details, this doesn't sound like a hard drive failure,
> >> but
> >>> instead, like there is a gpt bootsector installed rather than an
> >> mbr, or
> >>> other unrecognisable bootsector.
> >>> One way to determine this would be to use either gparted or fdisk on
> >> the
> >>> drive to determine the mbr/gpt type, and if you do have gpt in use,
> >> then
> >>> install grub2 instead of regular grub to handle this.  If it is an
> >> mbr, but
> >>> grub hasn't properly installed to it, you may need to do a
> >> grub-install to
> >>> change the mbr.  Another area that could be an issue is if the boot
> >>> partition or drive isn't set to active, this could cause a similar
> >> failure.
> >>> 
> >>> 
> >>> "Installed UBUNTU 10.04 server, installation went fine but then
> >> after
> >>> reboot I got Unable to mount root fs unknown block (0,0)."
> >>> 
> >>> There really isn't enough technical details here to do much more
> >> than
> >>> guess, but I would also ask - why Ubuntu Server rather than
> >> something like
> >>> Mythbuntu?  (http://www.mythbuntu.org/)
> >>> 
> >>> Last but not least, did you wipe out the partition table and mbr
> >> from the
> >>> previous windows install (was it Win7 by chance?)?  Or just install
> >> over it?
> >>> 
> >>> If you've left windows partitions on the drive, this can also be an
> >> issue
> >>> to work around, in that you'll need to adjust how grub sees the
> >> bootsector
> >>> and boot partition, drive order, and where you install the grub
> >> bootloader.
> >>> 
> >>> On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 10:10 AM, Narahari 'n' Savitha <
> >>> savithari at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> 
> >>>> Friends:
> >>>> 
> >>>> I have this decently good machine AMD BE2400.  I have Windoze on it
> >> for my
> >>>> other folks at home to use as my pseudo-HTPC.  I wanted to convert
> >> that to
> >>>> MYTH TV SERVER(It has 2 TB of storage)
> >>>> 
> >>>> Installed UBUNTU 10.04 server, installation went fine but then
> >> after
> >>>> reboot I got Unable to mount root fs unknown block (0,0).
> >>>> 
> >>>> Cleaned out that install put the DEBIAN SQUEEZE on the machine.
> >> The
> >>>> installation went fine but this time also after reboot I am getting
> >> Unable
> >>>> to mount root fs unknown block (0,0).
> >>>> 
> >>>> Before you folks say anything, this is quite a new Hard drive, may
> >> be 1.5
> >>>> year old, very light use.  So bad hard drive is ruled out.
> >>>> 
> >>>> Any hints how I can fix this ?
> >>>> 
> >>>> -Narahari
> >>>> 
> > -- 
> > Michael H. Warfield (AI4NB) | (770) 985-6132 |  mhw at WittsEnd.com
> >   /\/\|=mhw=|\/\/          | (678) 463-0932 |  http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/
> >   NIC whois: MHW9          | An optimist believes we live in the best of all
> > PGP Key: 0x674627FF        | possible worlds.  A pessimist is sure of it!
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-- 
Michael H. Warfield (AI4NB) | (770) 985-6132 |  mhw at WittsEnd.com
   /\/\|=mhw=|\/\/          | (678) 463-0932 |  http://www.wittsend.com/mhw/
   NIC whois: MHW9          | An optimist believes we live in the best of all
 PGP Key: 0x674627FF        | possible worlds.  A pessimist is sure of it!
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