Ubuntu boot problem

[Just4u]

Hello devils casper

I have almost the same problem, but I have 2 drives 1 ide 1 sata. The ide has xp and I installed debian on the sata, the duel boot worked fine and still does. I then installed unbuntu on the sata along with debian but can't access unbuntu. when I tryed to install grub it error'd out so I bypassed that and finished the install.
It told me I would need to pass a kernel argument to load ubuntu but I'm clueless about what that means.
any help would be appreicated here some info from the above commands if that will help.

Disk /dev/sda: 300.0 GB, 300090728448 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 36483 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0007703d

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 43 345366 83 Linux
/dev/sda2 44 36483 292704300 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 44 651 4883728+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 652 1016 2931831 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 1017 1580 4530298+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda8 1581 1629 393561 83 Linux
/dev/sda9 1630 19185 141018538+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda10 19186 35920 134423856 83 Linux
/dev/sda11 35921 36483 4522266 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/hda: 300.0 GB, 300069052416 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 36481 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xffffffff

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 19122 153597433+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 19123 36480 139428135 f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/hda5 19123 36480 139428103+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
Purelight:~# df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/sda1 327M 129M 182M 42% /
tmpfs 755M 0 755M 0% /lib/init/rw
udev 10M 840K 9.2M 9% /dev
tmpfs 755M 0 755M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/sda9 133G 195M 126G 1% /home
/dev/sda8 373M 11M 343M 3% /tmp
/dev/sda5 4.6G 2.2G 2.2G 51% /usr
/dev/sda6 2.8G 530M 2.1G 20% /var
/dev/sr0 4.4G 4.4G 0 100% /media/cdrom0

[devils casper]

Mount / partition of Ubuntu in Debian and post the filenames of all files stored in /boot folder.

su -
mkdir /media/ubuntu
mount -t ext4 /media/ubuntu /dev/sda10
cd /media/ubuntu/boot
ls -l
cd
umount /dev/sda10

Post the output of ls -l command here.
Post the contents of /boot/grub/menu.lst file of Debian too.

[Just4u]

Sry about not starting a new thread won't happen agian.

this is the output from: mount -t ext4 /media/ubuntu /dev/sda10

unknown filesystem type 'ext4'

I also tryed mount -t /media/ubuntu /dev/sda10 but it said something about fstab
here is what it said

Purelight:/media/ubuntu# mount -t /media/ubuntu /dev/sda10
Usage: mount -V : print version
mount -h : print this help
mount : list mounted filesystems
mount -l : idem, including volume labels
So far the informational part. Next the mounting.
The command is `mount [-t fstype] something somewhere'.
Details found in /etc/fstab may be omitted.
mount -a [-t|-O] ... : mount all stuff from /etc/fstab
mount device : mount device at the known place
mount directory : mount known device here
mount -t type dev dir : ordinary mount command
Note that one does not really mount a device, one mounts
a filesystem (of the given type) found on the device.
One can also mount an already visible directory tree elsewhere:
mount --bind olddir newdir
or move a subtree:
mount --move olddir newdir
One can change the type of mount containing the directory dir:
mount --make-shared dir
mount --make-slave dir
mount --make-private dir
mount --make-unbindable dir
One can change the type of all the mounts in a mount subtree
containing the directory dir:
mount --make-rshared dir
mount --make-rslave dir
mount --make-rprivate dir
mount --make-runbindable dir
A device can be given by name, say /dev/hda1 or /dev/cdrom,
or by label, using -L label or by uuid, using -U uuid .
Other options: [-nfFrsvw] [-o options] [-p passwdfd].
For many more details, say man 8 mount .

[devils casper]

It looks like you haven't created default File system.
Try one of these commands.

mount -t ext3 /media/ubuntu /dev/sda10
mount /media/ubuntu /dev/sda10

Do not execute second command if first command mounts partition successfully.

[Just4u]

It looks like you haven't created default File system.
Try one of these commands.

mount -t ext3 /media/ubuntu /dev/sda10
mount /media/ubuntu /dev/sda10

Do not execute second command if first command mounts partition successfully.

First command returns
mount: /media/ubuntu is not a block device

2nd command returns
mount: you must specify the filesystem type

[devils casper]

My Mistake !

mount -t ext3 /dev/sda10 /media/ubuntu

[Just4u]

Thanks DC

here is the output for the above command

mount -t ext3 /dev/sda10 /media/ubuntu
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda10,
missing codepage or helper program, or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so

I ran the (dmesg | tail) and got this

[ 28.404334] NET: Registered protocol family 10
[ 28.404850] lo: Disabled Privacy Extensions
[ 28.575078] lp0: using parport0 (interrupt-driven).
[ 28.596885] ppdev: user-space parallel port driver
[ 48.744010] eth0: no IPv6 routers present
[ 56.197854] UDF-fs: No VRS found
[ 56.211980] ISO 9660 Extensions: Microsoft Joliet Level 3
[ 56.503562] ISO 9660 Extensions: RRIP_1991A
[ 6372.131418] EXT3-fs: sda10: couldn't mount because of unsupported optional features (240).
[ 6442.514593] EXT3-fs: sda10: couldn't mount because of unsupported optional features (240).

I'm thinking maybe the install wasn't good, but the only error I recievied during the install of ubuntu was trying to load grub. Grub showed the Debian installation but didn't find the xp on drive 1and wouldn't install the loader on hd0 mbr.

When I skipped the loading of grub because of the error it told me I'd need to pass a kernel argument to
/dev/sda10
root=/dev/sda10

I take it that I would need to know the kernel # e.g. 2.26.31.14 or something like that is that correct?

I used the ubuntu cd to mount sda10 and the kernel was vmlinuz-2.6.31.14 generic don't know it that will help, all of the files systems are there.

[Just4u]

Another ? trying to solve this I edited my menu.lst file and saved.
The first time I rebooted it showed Ubuntu in my options to load system along with Debian and xp but I got an error 11 when I tryed to load it.

So I went back in and changed the root in menu.lst from (hda1,0) to (hda1,10) and rebooted, now it doesn't even show Ubuntu and when
I edited the menu.lst again and ran update-grub it doesn't save the changes and gets rid of the info I entered for ubuntu.
But the change shows in the menu.lst~ file. What else can I try

I thought I had it when it showed both version at startup (
below is both entries for menu.lst
Org:
title Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.26-2-amd64
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-2-amd64 root=/dev/sda1 ro quiet
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.26-2-amd64

title Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.26-2-amd64 (single-user mode)
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-2-amd64 root=/dev/sda1 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.26-2-amd64

menu.lst~

title Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.26-2-amd64
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-2-amd64 root=/dev/sda1 ro quiet
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.26-2-amd64

title Debian GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.26-2-amd64 (single-user mode)
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-2-amd64 root=/dev/sda1 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.26-2-amd64

title Ubuntu GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.31-14-generic
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31-14-generic root=/dev/sda10 ro quiet
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.31-14-generic

title Ubuntu GNU/Linux, kernel 2.6.31-14-generic (single-user mode)
root (hd1,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31-14-generic root=/dev/sda10 ro single
initrd /boot/vmlinuz.img-2.6.31-14-generic

[devils casper]

Are you sure that /dev/sda10 is root partition of Ubuntu.
If yes then boot up from Ubuntu LiveCD instead of Debian and execute this in Terminal

sudo mount /dev/sda10 /mnt
sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sda
sudo umount /dev/sda10

Reboot machine.

Above code will re-install Ubuntu GRUB and it will detect both, Debian and Ubuntu.