Ubuntu
grub package

Installed Ubuntu 8.10 but boot menu only list 8.04 kernels

Asked by Aiden83

I have just installed Ubuntu 8.10 after upgrading from 8.04 failed and froze my system.

However after installation, the boot menu only shows the old 8.04 entries, without any 8.10 entries.

I didn't mount a separate boot partition in the installation, but Im unsure if I had a separate boot menu in the previous 8.04 installation.

I booted the computer from the alternate cd and went to recover a broken installation. I selected my root partition and loaded a shell from it. I then went to /boot/grub/

I have just checked that the /boot/grub/menu.lst has the 8.10 entries.

What do I have to do to stop the old boot menu loading and to get the new boot menu to load?

Also, The /boot/grub/menu.lst with the 8.10 entries reads (partly)
title Ubuntu 8.10, kernel 2.6.27-7-generic
uuid 8174924d-7f58-46de-965f-6f31bdf5ff58

However, the fstab table from my 8.04 installation had the root UUID as
uuid 1e452be2-etcetc
and it had a boot uuid as
uuid 099ac316

Do the uuids change from installation to installation?

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Aiden83 (aidendeem) said : 		#1

Furthermore,

trying to run grub-install /dev/sda results in the error:
"Your /usr is broken; please fix i before calling this wrapper!"

Also, running df -h shows the message:
df: '/usr/local': no such file or directory

When I installed 8.10, I had formatted /usr/local as its own partition.

Revision history for this message
ex-xp64 (ex-xp64) said : 		#2

Reinstalling grub may fix the problem:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RecoveringUbuntuAfterInstallingWindows

(->'Quickstart' section)

Do you have more than one hard disk? If so post the output of

sudo fdisk -l

Revision history for this message
Aiden83 (aidendeem) said : 		#3

I tried a number of things to fix my problem, although not exactly sure how, I think the following was the solution that worked:

I reinstalled Ubuntu from the alternate cd, deleting all partitions except for /home. My new partition scheme was then a 4GB swap, a 50GB root, and a 100GB home. My root was now a primary partition (I think that the previous install had boot and root as logical, not sure what I had for the original 8.04 installation that worked).

The new installation of Ubuntu now did not show grub at all.

I booted from the Vista cd and followed the steps to the repair command prompt and the fixed the MBR.

I booted the ubuntu alternate cd and loaded shell in root. I ran fdisk and enabled a boot flag on the Vista and Ubuntu root partitions. For some reason the boot flag for Vista wasn't set.
I exited back to alternate cd menu and then ran Repair Grub.

I then rooted to HDD and I had the grub boot menu with ubuntu only. I booted ubuntu and then added to /menu.lst:
title Vista
root (hd0,1)
makeactive
chainloader +1

I can now boot ubuntu 8.10 and Vista again.