Ubuntu Upgrade: "Partition cannot be mounted"

[EdSquareCat]

I began to upgrade to the newest version of Ubuntu. When I restarted my computer to finalize the installation, GRUB tells me "Partition cannot be mounted" when I attempt to select Ubuntu 8.04.
By the way: When installing, it asked me if I wanted to keep my old menu.lst or use the default one for the new version. I chose the latter. Also, my Windows partition boots properly.

[Manchunian]

Hi,

Can you post us the contents of the file /etc/fstab?

[EdSquareCat]

/etc/fstab:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# /dev/sda3
UUID=032539cc-76fd-4210-a736-4e948f06c2df / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /dev/sda1
UUID=07D6-0407 /media/sda1 vfat defaults,utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0 1
# /dev/sda2
UUID=44A85BA0A85B8F74 /media/sda2 ntfs defaults,nls=utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0 1
/dev/hda /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
/dev/hdb /media/cdrom1 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0

Thanks in advance

[Manchunian]

OK, can you now post the output of the following command (as root):

fdisk -l

note, this is the small letter l

[devils casper]

One must use sudo to gain root privileges in Ubuntu.

sudo fdisk -l

[EdSquareCat]

How can I do this without being able to access Ubuntu? I got the fdisk file through my Ubuntu 7.04 live CD (by accessing the Ubuntu 8.04 partition). Will "sudo /disk/etc/fstab -I" work?

[devils casper]

Just open Terminal in Ubuntu LiveCD and post the output of sudo fdisk -l command here.

[EdSquareCat]

Disk /dev/sda: 250.0 GB, 250000000000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30394 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 5 40131 de Dell Utility
/dev/sda2 * 6 27206 218492032+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3 27207 30394 25607610 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda5 27207 30394 25607578+ 83 Linux


P.S. how do I put things in a code box? (I thought it was <code></code>)

[Jonathan183]

Your linux partition is sda5 not sda3 you may find fstab needs to be updated. At what point during the boot process do you get the error message?
Could you post the output of

ls /dev/disk/by-uuid -l

You should have a code button above the text entry box (its go a # on) you could also use [ CODE] and [ /CODE] with no space between [ and code etc

Also from the live CD can you post the output of

sudo -s
mkdir /manmount
mount /dev/sda5 /manmount
cat /manmount/boot/grub/menu.lst

and you don't appear to have a swap partition ... how much RAM do you have in your system?

[EdSquareCat]

ls /dev/disk/by-uuid -l:

total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2008-06-25 20:13 032539cc-76fd-4210-a736-4e948f06c2df -> ../../sda5
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 2008-06-25 20:13 07D6-0407 -> ../../sda1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 title

sudo -s
mkdir /manmount
mount /dev/sda5 /manmount
cat /manmount/boot/grub/menu : (after default option stuff)

           Ubuntu 8.04, kernel 2.6.24-19-generic
root            (hd0,2)
kernel          /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-19-generic root=UUID=032539cc-76fd-4210-a736-4e948f06c2df ro quiet splash
initrd          /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-19-generic
quiet

title           Ubuntu 8.04, kernel 2.6.24-19-generic (recovery mode)
root            (hd0,2)
kernel          /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-19-generic root=UUID=032539cc-76fd-4210-a736-4e948f06c2df ro single
initrd          /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-19-generic

title           Ubuntu 8.04, kernel 2.6.22-14-generic
root            (hd0,2)
kernel          /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic root=UUID=032539cc-76fd-4210-a736-4e948f06c2df ro quiet splash
initrd          /boot/initrd.img-2.6.22-14-generic
quiet

title           Ubuntu 8.04, kernel 2.6.22-14-generic (recovery mode)
root            (hd0,2)
kernel          /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic root=UUID=032539cc-76fd-4210-a736-4e948f06c2df ro single
initrd          /boot/initrd.img-2.6.22-14-generic

title           Ubuntu 8.04, kernel 2.6.20-16-generic
root            (hd0,2)
kernel          /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-16-generic root=UUID=032539cc-76fd-4210-a736-4e948f06c2df ro quiet splash
initrd          /boot/initrd.img-2.6.20-16-generic
quiet

title           Ubuntu 8.04, kernel 2.6.20-16-generic (recovery mode)
root            (hd0,2)
kernel          /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-16-generic root=UUID=032539cc-76fd-4210-a736-4e948f06c2df ro single
initrd          /boot/initrd.img-2.6.20-16-generic

title           Ubuntu 8.04, kernel 2.6.20-15-generic
root            (hd0,2)
kernel          /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-15-generic root=UUID=032539cc-76fd-4210-a736-4e948f06c2df ro quiet splash
initrd          /boot/initrd.img-2.6.20-15-generic
quiet

title           Ubuntu 8.04, kernel 2.6.20-15-generic (recovery mode)
root            (hd0,2)
kernel          /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.20-15-generic root=UUID=032539cc-76fd-4210-a736-4e948f06c2df ro single
initrd          /boot/initrd.img-2.6.20-15-generic

title           Ubuntu 8.04, memtest86+
root            (hd0,2)
kernel          /boot/memtest86+.bin
quiet

### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

# This is a divider, added to separate the menu items below from the Debian
# ones.
title           Other operating systems:
root


# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/sda2
title           Windows XP Media Center Edition
rootnoverify            (hd0,1)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader     +1

title           Dell Thing
rootnoverify            (hd0,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader     +1
root root 10 2008-06-25 20:13 14268F80B54FB009 -> ../../sda2

This error comes up when I try to select Ubuntu 8.04 is GRUB.
I don't have a swap partition; I have 2 gigs of RAM which I thought was sufficient.

P.S. Why does it give me so many different kernel versions of Ubuntu? What are they for? Could I comment most of those out?

P.S.S. What did I just do?