Ubuntu

Updates are changing my partition's coordinates (causing an unbootable situation)

Asked by fatsheep

When I first installed Ubuntu Dapper 64-bit, it was located at /dev/hdc2. However, to resize it, I had to move the partition to /dev/hdc4. Do to this GRUB could not find the partition until I corrected the coordinates in /boot/grub/menu.lst to reflect the new position of my partition. After I made the changes, Ubuntu starts up fine. I have no problems until the next update which reverts my partition's coordinates back, causing the same GRUB error. This has happened twice so far and it's looking that everytime Ubuntu updates I am going to have to boot up on a LiveCD, mount my partition, and make the necessary editing to /boot/grub/menu.lst. This is pain in the neck to be honest so any help at all would be very much appreciated.

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Alexandre Vassalotti
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Alexandre Vassalotti (avassalotti) said : 		#1

GRUB's menu.lst is auto-generated. That's why your changes are discarded each time you upgrade the kernel.

Here a guide that explains in details, how to setup GRUB correctly:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/GrubHowto

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fatsheep (jesse-fatsheep-deactivatedaccount) said : 		#2

Thanks for the reply. I have looked through that link, although it didn't provide a solution to the problem I now know that I can emulate Ubuntu's generation of the menu.lst file through the command "sudo update-grub". I got a responce at linuxforums.org concerning the /etc/fstab file so I have edited it to reflect the correct partition location. Unfortunately "sudo update-grub" is still reverting back to the incorrect partition location.

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fatsheep (jesse-fatsheep-deactivatedaccount) said : 		#3

Thanks to some help at linuxforums.org ( http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/ubuntu-help/71692-updates-changing-my-partition-coordinates.html ) I think I have solved the problem. The culprit was the /etc/fstab file which still pointed to /dev/hdc2 instead of /dev/hdc4. I have edited the file, done a sudo grub-update, booted to a LiveCD, mounted my partition inside a folder, edited the menu.lst file to have the correct coordinates so Ubuntu will boot, and restarted. This seems to have corrected the problem, check the linked thread above for more info. I'm going to consider this support request answered for now.