Cannot boot after Ubuntu 9x install

**Romad** · 06-30-2009

Hello All,

I've been working in IT on the Microsoft side of the house for 10+ years and finally made the move to Linux. I'm just getting started but have 3 clean installs under my belt, and I'm loving it! However i have a problem with one computer that I hope someone can help me with.

I installed Ubuntu on an existing Win XP box (so it seems the video drivers, etc.. are not a problem). It ran fine and i was able to boot directly into Ubuntu with no problems. After a couple days I decided to dedicate this box exclusively to Ubuntu. So I made a backup and then ran the installer from the CD.

I partitioned the drives as i had in my other installations: 2GB Swap ext3, 10GB "/" root, ext3, and 147GB "/home" ext3.

The install ran without problems, however when it rebooted after install, it comes up to a blank screen with a blinking cursor. If I boot to the CD and choose "Boot to first hard drive" it will boot into Ubuntu with no problems.

I apologize if this is an old post, i did try to find a solution first... It seems that there is a problem with the boot ldr.

any help is greatly appreciated, thanks in advance.

**Rubberman** · 06-30-2009

Not knowing the options you selected for the installation I'd have to say that you probably selected the wrong video driver. Try installing again, but just to be on the safe side, select the generic vesa driver.

**Romad** · 06-30-2009

Thanks for the quick response. I installed Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop... I boot to the CD and ran the install... wasn't prompted to choose a video/dispaly driver. And if i boot to the CD and then choose "Boot from first hard disk" it seems to work. Is there an option for advanced or custom install that i may be missing?

**Rubberman** · 06-30-2009

Well, on bootup, the gdm is started (gnome display manager) to provide a gui login screen. Unless you have more than one boot partition active, then I am clueless. Try booting to runlevel 3 instead of 5 so you are in multi-user mode, but no gui started. Login and try running the command: startx - you might see some errors that can help you diagnose the problem. If the desktop comes up, then it might be something as simple as a bad image file from the installation.

So, did you check the md5 or sha1 checksum of the cd before you installed it? If something was corrupted, then you could have any number of boot problems.

**Romad** · 06-30-2009

Thanks, Rubberman! I'll give these a try.. thanks again for quick response.

**Rubberman** · 06-30-2009

The fact that running the bootloader from the CD, but actually booting from the hard drive, works tells me that something in the installation went wonky, and it is probably related to the grub bootloader. Possibly the video card isn't being properly initialized before the system kernel itself is loaded.

**Romad** · 06-30-2009

I believe you may be right about the vid driver. Prior to the post i ran the install 3 times, with 2 different CDs... same result. Is there a command line "switch" or other method to allow me to choose the video drivers during the install? The default installation only allows for creating or modifying the partitions.

**aged hippy** · 06-30-2009

It seems to me that the installer encountered a problem during the second install, i would be inclined to download GParted Live (i'm not allowed to post the url until i've made 15 posts

but google is useful

) and burn it to CD, then stuff that CD into the drive and delete the previous installations (having backed-up all valuable data previously), create the partitions required / and /home as ext3, and swap as swap -- not as ext3 as you seem to have done, although maybe this was a typo.

You can then stuff the install CD into the drive and Bob's your uncle.

**Rubberman** · 06-30-2009

The current version of xorg is supposed to be "smart" enough to deal with the various video hardware, but sometimes its not smart enough. You might have to boot into runlevel 3 (login w/o gui) and edit the /etc/xorg.conf file to set the appropriate video driver. Using the vesa driver is usually "safe" since all video chip sets have supported the generic vesa api for over 10 years. It doesn't do well for full-motion video, but for your typical office UI, it's not really a problem, and you can then get the appropriate proprietary drivers if available. Do you know what video board/chip-set is in the system in question?

**Romad** · 06-30-2009

At the risk of sounding very ignorant... could it have something to do with the grub/boot loader? or should i stay focused on the video?

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