[cartesian]

I would be grateful for any help for a linux novice.

I have a laptop with vista pre-installed. I shrank one partition using vista's own tool and installed ubuntu.

The installation appeared to go well. The problem is when I reboot. I get the grub menu and if I select vista, it boots into vista no problem. If I leave it to boot into ubuntu I get the error "Error 17: cannot mount selected partition". I can't access ubuntu at all unless I use the live cd.

I would be grateful for any help; I really would like to ditch windows and this was supposed to be dipping my toe in the linux pool but its not gone to plan so far!

Thanks again

[Jonathan183]

Welcome to the forums cartesian

I suggest you boot from the live CD, open a terminal and post the output of the following

sudo fdisk -l

the l is a small L

then we can see the disk partition structure.

[cartesian]

Here's a text file of the terminal screen after the sudo fdisk -l

Thanks

[yancek]

When you installed ubuntu, did you format sda3 as ext3fs?

Could you go to the /boot/grub/ directory and post the output of the file 'menu.lst' (need to do this as root - sudo).

[cartesian]

Don't remember formatting as ext3fs, it was my first linux install - I would have accepted all defaults.

Can you give me the commands to run in the termainal window to list the menu.lst file. I know some UNIX but not linux. I can't cd into that directory.

Thanks

[yancek]

Enter the following in a terminal and post:

sudo cat /boot/grub/menu.lst

You should be prompted for your user password after you type this and hit 'enter'.

After doing this, enter the following command: sudo grub
This should get you a grub prompt (grub>) type: geometry (hd0)
The above command will give you the filesystem type.

[Jonathan183]

There is something a bit odd about the fdisk output ... first of all there is no swap partition shown and second I think the default Ubuntu install will setup root, swap and home partitions.

If you accepted the defaults for Ubuntu the file system for root should be ext3 but I think there should also be a home partition. I suggest you run the commands yancek has suggested so file system type and grub menu files can be confirmed (if you are booting from the live CD I don't think you will be prompted for a password).

Ed: also if you are booting from the live cd you will need to mount the partition ... try using

sudo -s
mkdir /manmout
mount /dev/sda3 /manmount
cat /manmount/boot/grub/menu.lst

[cartesian]

Thanks guys,
here's the outputs you requested.

There may be some anomalies, this is the third linux forum I've been on and there have been some previous suggestions to sort out the problem.

Thanks again

[cartesian]

Sorry, here's the outputs.

I've had to edit the menulst file as it was too large.

I've edited out the 'commented out' parts. I presume they are default in all menu.lst files.

The stuff you are interested in is all there, I hope.

[Jonathan183]

The reason for the error 17 message when you select Linux to boot is the

title           Ubuntu 7.10, kernel 2.6.22-14-generic

root            (hd0,3)

kernel          /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic root=UUID=2a9440eb-d82d-4b81-b9f1-e76d4997e184 ro quiet splash

initrd          /boot/initrd.img-2.6.22-14-generic

quiet

The (hd0,3) is pointing to the extended partition rather than your Linux partition. Try at the grub menu press escape to exit the menu, select the first menu item, press e to edit, select the (hd0,3) line and press e and change the line to (hd0,2) press enter then b to boot. See if Linux will start.

Ed: if this works once you have Ubuntu running you can change the grub menu to allow you to boot in future by using

sudo nano /boot/grub/menu.lst

and change the (hd0,3) to (hd0,2).

The setup you have does not look to be that which Ubuntu would install by default ... not sure how much RAM you have in the system but if its less than 1GB I'd consider changing your partition structure to allow swap and home area creation and do a fresh Ubuntu install selecting manual partition ... let us know if you want a bit more guidance on this - there is a good partition editor on the live CD.