Upgraded from ext3 to ext4 successfully, ruined grub but looks fixable, help please!

[s3a]

I followed the instructions here: https: //help.ubuntu.com/community/ConvertFilesystemToExt4 (combine underlined to bolded) and to describe my situation in a few words, the last success I've had is me reading this having completed all the previous steps successfully to: "If you convert your boot file-system ("/boot") to ext4, and you use the GRUB boot loader, you will need to install a version of GRUB which understands ext4. Your system may boot OK the first time, but when your kernel is upgraded, it will become un-bootable." So yes, my system did boot OK the first time after running fsck for my home and root partitions (both use LVM) however when I attempted the commands that follow the quote above, it did not work and now when I boot Squeeze it gives me a grub console if that's what it's called. Fortunately, it looks fixable, I just don't know how to fix it and I would appreciate it if someone could give me the command(s) that would rescue my system . (make grub2 boot my operating systems again)

Any help would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks in advance!

[chris81]

Hi

Right now there's not a stable version of grub that supports booting a kernel from a ext4 partition. It's recommended that you keep /boot in a ext3 partition.

Preliminary ext4 support seems to have been added to the 1.97 version of the GRUB2 development branch.

(from Ext4 Howto - Ext4)

So, now, all you have to do is to first remove GRUB1 :

sudo apt-get remove grub

once done, install GRUB2 :

sudo apt-get install grub2

For the installation of grub2, you may have to edit your /etc/apt/source.list (or sources.list, I forgot the real name) by adding the unstable repositories, for apt to install grub2, if it's not available from stable repositories. But i suggest you to first try if grub can be found in the stable repositories, if not, then edit your source.list as told in the beginning of this paragraph.

chris81

[s3a]

Thanks for the reply but I don't have access to a terminal at least not without a live CD and given that I'm using Debian Squeeze (=testing) and not Lenny (=stable) on that computer, I also think I'm using grub2 already. Could you still help me?

[chris81]

Thanks for the reply but I don't have access to a terminal at least ...

when you boot your computer, are you in command line mode ?

the online package db of debian told me that there's also a release of Grub2 for squeeze.

grub2 (1.97~beta3-1)

So, when booting, at grub you should see the version of grub in the left upper corner of the screen.

If you already have grub2 - 1.97, then maybe it just need to be updated, because you first installed it and then you migrated from ext3 to ext4, so by doing

sudo apt-get update

might work.

[s3a]

Actually, I think I do have grub legacy. The version is 0.97. The command line is not the usual:

deniz@debian:~$

but is instead:

grub>

so I cannot do apt-get install, edit my sources.list, or do any of those kinds of things (at least that I know of).

Is it possible get to a normal terminal through grub> or is there maybe a different command in grub> that would update grub?

[chris81]

grub 1 is 0.97
grub 2 is 1.97.

what output do you get when you type mount ?
and /bin/mount ?
and /sbin/mount ?

[peteh]

Can you try booting into your system with the Super Grub disk. You can then fix your boot from inside debian.
But if it is Grub legacy it needs to be on an ext3 partition.

[s3a]

I don't have a Super Grub disk but I do have plenty of Ubuntu Live CDs (up to 9.10 - the latest release which supports grub2); can't I just use that? I'm assuming I can so, how? Plus my partitions are already ext4 and "mount" "/bin/mount" and "/sbin/mount" all output "Error 27: Unrecognized command."

[chris81]

there's a way for sure that you can mount your internal hd using that livecd. otherwise, how can the livecd be able to install the whole system ?

anyway

do you have a set of commands that you can use ?

[s3a]

When you ask for a set of commands that I can use, if you're refferring to the grub list of commands, pressing tab gives me a list of commands and I've tried some and none are what I need and the rest looks useless. So in English words, I am trying to overwrite grub1 (0.97) with grub2 (1.97), right? Is that all there really is to it? How would I go about doing that? Like which commands do I enter in the Live CD's terminal?