Comment 134 for bug 477169

Revision history for this message
alexlinux (alexandrelimaconde) wrote :

HOWTO: a "workaround" (before a really fix to this bug is found)

FOR PEOPLE WHO ARE ABLE TO BOOT UBUNTU MANUALLY (see bellow)*

(1) Boot ubuntu manually and copy the file /boot/grub/grub.cfg to a pen
(2) Edit the file (in the pen) with a text editor and delete the menuentry for kernel -16 and -15, (this was tested with kernel -14 only)
(3) Boot windows and copy that file to the root of disk c
(4) Boot ubuntu until you get the grub prompt (press c if you see the menu)
(5) Enter the command ls -l (you must see the disks and partitions, usually something like (loop0), (hd0,1), (hd0,2), ...)
(6) Find where grub.cfg is, with the command cat (hdX,Y)/grub.cfg for X=0,1,... and Y=1,2,... (usually is in (hd0,1))
(7) Enter configfile (hd0,1)/grub.cfg (replace (hd0,1) with what you fund in (6)!)

You must see the grub menu and choose as usual...

Each time you boot, you must enter (7) (not too bad!)

Only one more thing (just for sure), make a copy of initrd.img-2.6.31-14-generic and keep it together with the copy of grub.cfg, because if you, or the system, updates the initrd's (update-initramfs) then the system will not boot!!!

NOTE:
(A) If you don't have kernel -14 and the system worked fine before with kernel -15, please use that instead of kernel -14.
(B) As you can see, the problem is not one of corruption or bad configuration of file grub.cfg, it is much worse, grub(?) completely scrambles the content of many files inside root.disk!!! You can use the command cat in grub to verify that.
(C) This is completely orthogonal to the boot process, if in the near future a solution is fund this doesn't interfere with normal boot process.

* HOWTO BOOT UBUNTU MANUALLY [works for most of the situations here]
At the grub prompt enter (if you don't get the grub prompt press c when you see the boot menu):

grub>linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31-14-generic root=/dev/sda1 loop=/ubuntu/disks/root.disk ro quiet splash
grub>initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.31-14-generic
grub>boot

(if it doesn't work, change sda1 to sda2 or sda3 or ...)