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

Jim Kinney jim.kinney at gmail.com
Sun Nov 28 09:20:48 EST 2010 

Have you tried a different distro. Not trying to start a distro war here but
I've had issues with some distros just not liking certain hardware on
install. Toss on a Fedora and see if it has the same failure writing the
mbr.

Hmm. before you try that, try killing the existing mbr and reinstalling your
buntu version. from a running live CD (if your live CD won't start and it's
the latest Ubuntu version that say to me that release won't like your
hardware).

dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda size=512 count=1  if your hard drive is sda.

On Sun, Nov 28, 2010 at 1:06 AM, Narahari 'n' Savitha
<savithari at gmail.com>wrote:

> Here is where I stand.  I took all of your suggestions.
>
> Put my Kubuntu cd, LIVE CD Session wont start.
> Put my Ubuntu cd LIVE CD session wont start
> Put the system rescue from the link one of the members was kind enough to
> provide, burnt cd, session starts but machine reboots.
> Finally one of the old DEBIAN cd rescue mode works
>
> Used fdisk to delete paritions.  Then used Ubuntu Server and re installed
> it.  I chose guided with LVM.  As  ususal install went fine.
>
> When machine reboots and I start up in single user mode I see the folloiwng
> error
>
>
> http://picasaweb.google.com/savithari/LinuxStuff?authkey=Gv1sRgCJbL1PmLm5Poag&feat=directlink
> Same old VFS syncing issue.  Not sure what to do and how to fix it.  Any
> help is appreciated.
>
> Just cant seem to move beyond the first  screen to boot off of.
>
> -Narahari
> On Sat, Nov 27, 2010 at 9:17 PM, Michael H. Warfield <mhw at wittsend.com>wrote:
>
>> 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!
>> > > _______________________________________________
>> > > Ale mailing list
>> > > Ale at ale.org
>> > > http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
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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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>
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-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III
I would rather stumble along in freedom than walk effortlessly in chains.
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