Boot Problem

[MisterDood]

I got a laptop from a friend. For some reason, it loaded the grub off of an SD card (He was running Xubuntu), so I tried re-installing Ubuntu itself on the hard-drive, completely ignoring the SD card. It wont work. The guy who sold the laptop to me took a look at it, and he's alright with Linux, but he can't figure out what's wrong with it. I tried adding my own partition tables, and they look something like this:

sda1 / 20G
sda2 /home 130G
sda3 SWAP 10G

I know it's more swap than I should have, but I plan on upgrading the RAM.

Anyways, we're both completely lost. I think we want it to load a grub menu at this point because one isn't loading. Any ideas?

Thanks in advance. I'm willing to try anything at this point.

[oz]

Assuming you installed one of the newer Ubuntu releases, you probably need to reinstall GRUB2. You can follow this article for using the Ubuntu LiveCD to get the job done:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Gr...ing%20GRUB%202

Check the remainder of the article for other tips on using/configuring GRUB2.

The SuperGRUB LiveCD should also be able to reinstall GRUB2.

If you installed one of the earlier versions of Ubuntu, it probably used GRUB Legacy rather than GRUB2, so install it instead.

You are correct about the swap being far larger than you should need.

[MisterDood]

This laptop says it has version 1.98-1ubuntu7, and according to the article, it says that it's version 2. And I'm trying to install 10.4 (LucidLynx). Thanks for the try.

[yancek]

This laptop says it has version 1.98-1ubuntu7, and according to the article, it says that it's version 2

Grub 1.97, 1.98 are both what people generally refer to as Grub 2. The version of Ubuntu you are installing does use what is referred to as Grub2 and the instructions in the link posted above should work if there are no other problems.

[MisterDood]

I followed the instructions, but I'm not sure if it's a grub error or not. If it's not loading a grub menu, then does that mean the problem is in the grub?

If so, I'll research more about grub and try to figure out what's wrong specifically.

Thanks in advance.

[yancek]

If it is not loading Grub and you get no menu then I suppose it is a problem with Grub.
Could be several different things. Are you trying to install from the Live CD as suggested above??
If you could tell us exactly what happens and perhaps post the commands you enter and the results, it would be helpful.
I'm not a regular Ubuntu user but, I have used this method in the past to restore Grub2.

[MisterDood]

Alright, it's a mix of me and my friend trying to fix it, so I'm not sure of everything that's been tried, but here's what happens:

Push Power button, laptop turns on. Loads BIOS menu (F2 for setup, F12 for boot menu).
Assuming I try to boot from the hard-drive, it has a black screen with a blinking underscore. That's it. There's a light that flickers when it reads from the hard-drive, and it stops flickering after so long. I've tried letting it run, but if it doesn't start flashing again within 10-15 seconds, it doesn't work. When i type something, it shows no input, and I have to do a cold restart.

I'm sure that the GRUB works now. I tried getting it to boot off of the SD card again, and it said that it couldn't find a specified media. I went into the grub.cfg file (I know, this is bad) and replaced all instances of the old media (old hard-drive name) with the new one that's currently in use. It no longer gives me the error, and does what it does when I try to boot from the hard-drive.

I think that it's having trouble loading a kernel, but I'm not sure. This is my first experience working out of the operating system. Let me know what you guys think, and thank you in advance, and for working with me so far.

Oh yeah, I've been working with Ubuntu 10.4 off a jump-drive. I re-installed the iso just to make sure, and so far it's been booting from the jump-drive without fault.

[MisterDood]

Sorry for the double post, but I know what's wrong now. I install Ubuntu, and it turns out that EVERY time it installs, it leaves the sys folder empty, which means it has no kernel, correct?
Does this mean I have to compile my own kernel or what?
We installed Backtrack and it worked fine by the way.

[yancek]

I install Ubuntu, and it turns out that EVERY time it installs, it leaves the sys folder empty, which means it has no kernel, correct?

I don't use Ubuntu but have 10.10 installed. I booted it and looked in the sys folder which is empty. Your kernel and initrd file should be in the /boot directory.

[MisterDood]

The only thing under my boot folder is the grub folder and a few grub related files. Nothing about initrd or a kernel. I checked on this laptop (the one that works) and there were 10 folders under /sys, one of which was labeled Kernel. Also, the only thing in the /boot folder on here was the grub folder and other grub related files as well.