Ubuntu 9.10 beta does not boot

[srini]

Here are the steps I followed to install ubuntu 9.10 beta:

I downloaded the ISO for Ubuntu 9.10 beta and extracted the wubi.exe.
Copied the ISO and extracted wubi.exe under same folder.
Ran the command wubi.exe --skipmd5check from Vista command prompt.
After this, I followed the instructions and installed the ubuntu on my d:(second hard drive) without creating a separate partition.
After installation it prompted me to reboot(I select to reboot now option) and immediately after reboot, I selected ubuntu from boot prompt. It booted into ubuntu and completed the installation.
After installation (I noticed that my hard disk light turned red for a second at the end of installation, not sure if this indicates some flaw), it automatically rebooted , then I again selected ubuntu at boot prompt.

Then it lands into the sh:grub> prompt and does not it take me further.

I noticed that the d:\ubuntu folder (including subfolders) does not have grub.cnf, vmlinuz-2.6.31-9-generic files.
I tried to created grub.cnf file as mentioned in the bug report 426238 and ran the configfile <grub cnf path> command from grub sh. Doing this it gave me some more errors but didn't boot into ubuntu. I guess grub didn't find the vmlinuz-2.6.31-9-generic files under the ubuntu folder.

Could any one please provide me with some guide lines on how to resolve this issues? Eager to run ubuntu asap.

Thanks and Regards,
Srini

[Mike Sandman (n8behavior)]

i have the same problem. installed by autorun from a 9.10 beta CD. This is on WIndows XP pro sp3 on a Dell E6400. anyone have any thoughts how i might trouble shoot this? GRUB and boot loaders aren't really my thing, but happy to dig in :)

[Agostino Russo (ago)]

At the grub command prompt what is the output of "ls" (LS in small case)?

[srini (schalla76)]

The output of ls:
(loop0) (hd0) (hd0, 2) (hd0, 1) (hd1) (hd1, 1)

The output of ls -l:
Device loop0: Filesystem type ext2, Last modification time .... UUID xxxxxxx...

Device hd0: Partition table
                   Partition hd0, 2: Filesystem type ntfs, UUID xxxx label xxxx
                   Partition hd0, 1: Filesystem type ntfs, UUID xxxx label xxxx

Device hd1: Partition table
                   Partition hd1, 1 Filesystem type ntfs, UUID d6ee8589ee85631b

I created the D:\ubuntu\disks\boot\grub\grub.cnf file.

On the grub command prompt when I type the following command:

configfile (hd1,1)/ubuntu/disks/boot/grub/grub.cnf the output is

file not found
You need to load the kernel first.

Attached are the grub.cnf file and wubi-9.10-rev153.log (tried to install couple of times, so consider latest lines in log file)

The laptop I am trying to install is HP HDX 18 with Nvidia graphics card and vista OS.

Please let me know if you need any other details.

--Srini

[Agostino Russo (ago)]

There should be a grub.cfg under (loop0)/boot/grub/grub.cfg, can you please check if that is present?

[srini (schalla76)]

There isn't any directory created under (loop0)/boot
I ran "ls (loop0)/boot" from grub prompt and the results are blank
If I ran "ls (loop)/boot/grub" the result is file not found.

Please let me know if you need any other details.

[moonthorn (m-coenen)]

Tested this today with an installation of Wubi on a Vista machine. As commented by Srini after a good installation in Windows and after that in Ubuntu, the next reboot failed at the grub command prompt with the same result as wrote by srini above. Tested it with Wubi rev. 156 with the daily CD-build.

[spatrow (romain-taunais)]

Today, installation of Kubuntu 9.10 beta on a Vista 32bits machine and the same problem.
It seems to work for the installation but after I reboot, i have the sh of grub.

[Bowmore (bowmore)]

Wubi with Karmic beta (091022) tested om Windows XP SP2 (32-bit).

Same behavior after a complete installation, first the message "Try (hd0,0): NTFS5:" which itself is confusing as (hd0,0) is not a valid device for grub2, should be (hd0,1). Then after a few seconds the prompt sh:grub> showed up.

The C:\ubuntu\disks\boot is empty except for the folder grub which in turn is empty. This is also the fact using e.g the commands cat (hd0,1)/ubuntu/boot/ and (hd0,1)/ubuntu/boot/grub/

I mounted the file C:\ubuntu\disks\root.disk in Ubuntu (mount) and everything seems to look ok in there. I copied the corresponding files from root.disk into C:\ubuntu\disks\boot and C:\ubuntu\disks\boot\grub but still booting fails. However those copied files now pop up using the command cat in the grub shell.

Comparing the file structure with an earlier successful wubi installation (intrepid) on other machine there is still one file missing, i.e C:\ubuntu\winboot\wubildr.exe. Not sure that one is important here.

[Agostino Russo (ago)]

Can you please try using the latest daily ISO here: http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/

[Agostino Russo (ago)]

Also when you reboot the first time, press ESC at the countdown after selecting "Ubuntu" and choose "Verbose Mode", this will generate more detailed logs (/var/log/syslog + /var/log/installer) in case we need to investigate further.

[Agostino Russo (ago)]

FYI The new version of wubi will try to mount root.disk, using the loopmount capabilities of grub2. This means that grub.cfg will not be in C:\ubuntu\disks\boot\grub, as in previous versions. Instead you should have grub.cfg within the root.disk file (under /boot/grub). Grub.cfg should contain at least 3 menu entries. In grub2 you should have a (loop0) device, which should make root.disk accessible and hence the grub.cfg therein.

[Bowmore (bowmore)]

I'm trying the latest daily, dated Oct 20th, which also became the RC.

I guess you mean the reboot that actually do the install of Ubuntu. I'll do that tomorrow as it's midnight here by now.

I attach the grub.cfg (first part) hosed in root.disk.

Grub here points at (hd1,1), i.e sdb1 where Windows XP is located. Windows itself is booted from grub legacy using remapping of (hd0) and (hd1).

The device.map:
(hd0) /dev/sda
(hd1) /dev/sdb
(hd2) /dev/sdc
(hd3) /dev/sdd

[Agostino Russo (ago)]

Bowmore,

1) Grub will first try to load the grub.cfg you posted (does that work at all?)
2) Once that grub.cfg is loaded, it will try to find the partition with UUID 527008887008754f or fallback to sda1,1 and then load the kernel and boot.

Which stage is it failing? I assume it is #1
The commands used in #1 are the ones in c:\ubuntu\winboot\wubildr.cfg, and in particular:

search -s -f -n /ubuntu/disks/root.disk
loopback loop0 /ubuntu/disks/root.disk
set root=(loop0)
search --set=loop -f -n /boot/grub/grub.cfg
configfile /boot/grub/grub.cfg

[Bowmore (bowmore)]

Agostino,

I've done some more research I found out that Wubi interferes with itself!

As I mentioned earlier I have a Wubi installation in another Windows partition too. Listing fstab at the grub prompt showed up to include mounting of /, /boot and the swap! However, the fstab in the correct root.disk does only include mounting of / and the swap which, as you said, should be the case.

The listed fstab turned up to belong to my other Wubi installation and thus something goes wrong at initial boot up addressing the wrong C:\ubuntu folder. Renaming this other ubuntu folder made my Wubi installation finally start up.

I first tried to hide the other Windows partition but that didn't "solve" it. As it seems now only one C:\ubuntu folder, i.e one Wubi installation, may exist in the computer to make Wubi work properly.

[Agostino Russo (ago)]

Yes that is correct, only one Wubi installation per machine is supported at this stage, in fact it is strange that you were not forced to uninstall the old version before you were able to install the new one.

Do the others also have the same issue?

[moonthorn (m-coenen)]

Can't tell if this happens when you are talking about two Windows partitions and each with a Ubuntu installation. But there is a uninstall message when trying to install two "wubi's" on one Windows partition. Can't test that as I have just one Windows partition (other Windows installations are virtual only).

[moonthorn (m-coenen)]

The Wubi installation I tested was still there, so I updated it with the Update-Manager to test something else. After the updates, a reboot and a boot into Ubuntu landed me at the grub promt again without starting Ubuntu. The grub.cfg is there but unreadable with cat. So back to zero again after the update.

[Bowmore (bowmore)]

Just to make sure that it's not a grub2 cat issue. Have you tried to mount the root.disk in Ubuntu to check whether the partition is mountable or just some parts like grub.cfg are corrupted?

Command:
sudo mount /media/WinXP/ubuntu/disks/root.disk /mnt -o loop

where you have to update the path accordingly.

From there you might test to chroot it and run a manual update-grub to rewrite grub.cfg.

[moonthorn (m-coenen)]

Tested this, Bowmore. Mouted it in a Ubuntu live, as it's a test machine with Windows as main OS, Ubuntu installed via Wubi. Mounted the Win-disk, chrooted to the root.disk, checked the grub.conf with Vim and I cunclude nothing was wrong with this file (but I can't say anything on the contents, as I do not have the knowledge for it right now). So to me, it was just fine up to that point. As you suggested, did a update for grub, it mentioned a problem with the partition but I suspect that is a problem on my end and I have to check on that with another setup. But when talking about the config file, it seems to be right.

[Bowmore (bowmore)]

I had to verify this (chroot and update-grub) myself and found out that the script /etc/grub.d/10_lupin doesn't generate its part of the grub.cfg (boot alternatives for wubi ubuntu) probably because it's not tied to loop0. So what you probably achieved was (except from comments) an empty grub.cfg. This is the case if you didn't mount the /dev devices as well using "sudo mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev" before chrooting. But still the boot alternatives for wubi ubuntu will be missing. I'm not sure there's a workaround to this. moonthoorn, sorry for that.

However, the conclusion is that the root.disk was mountable and grub.cfg not corrupted. I know that update-grub is run very often at updates, so that is at least one possible source for your problem.

[LucidStrike (lucidstrike)]

My Ubuntu boot fails more completely, as it isn't even an option. Windows just boots up normally, as if it knows of no other installed operating system, even though Kubuntu does indeed show up as a program in Windows. My own laptop is Ubuntu/Kubuntu operated, but it's in the shop. I'm trying to set up a dual boot with XP SP3 on my mom's computer, so she can be weened off of Windows. I would normally just install to a partition, but I don't have any removable media to boot the iso from. Wubi was the only option.

I should note that I'm more or less competent handling Ubuntu/Linux, but I never really did anything technical on Windows...except that time I changed XP to look like Vista and ended up killin' it. =/

[Agostino Russo (ago)]

LucidStrike, check the boot options on windows, it could be that the timeout on the boot menu is set to 0.
In XP the relevant file is C:\boot.ini, note that the file is usually hidden.

[Soma (somapurkait)]

Hello,
          The same bug affects me as well as many others as I found out in ubuntu forums. I tried to do clean installation of wubi 9.10 but after installation when it reboots it takes to grub shell with grub prompt and the following message

" GNU GRUB version 1.97~beta4

[ Minimal BASH-like line editing is supported. For the first word, TAB
lists possible command completions. Anywhere else TAB lists possible
device/file completions. ]
"

I tried to reinstall but problem persists.

[Soma (somapurkait)]

In addition to above I would like to mention that I first did installation of wubi 9.10 directly from http://wubi-installer.org/. But I got the above error.
The next time, I tried to do it by downloading ubuntu-9.10-desktop-amd64.iso and installing wubi 9.10 exe. But nothing worked!!

[Agostino Russo (ago)]

There are several reasons why that might happen, are you using raid or encrypted disks?

[Soma (somapurkait)]

No Agostino, I am not using raid or encrypted disks. I had wubi 9.04 installed previously and I never had any problems with that. However I thought of getting clean installation of wubi 9.10 to get benefits of grub2 and ext4 and so i uninstalled wubi 9.04 and tried to get wubi 9.10. It didn't work. Now I am thinking is it worth doing clean installation of wubi 9.10 or just upgrading from wubi 9.04 will do. I am quite new to ubuntu, so any suggestion will be great!!

[mivespaudee (mives29)]

It's the same with me as with Soma. I had Ubuntu 8.10 installed w/ Wubi before but I uninstalled it a while back. Then tried wubi 9.10 on the main site, then used ISO image ubuntu-9.10-desktop-amd64.iso of ubuntu from BitTorrent. Have the exact same screen after choosing Ubuntu on OS to boot menu.

[Niraj999 (niraj-thapaliya)]

I have the same problems as most of the posters here. I downloaded the iso (this was yesterday, so its not the beta, like the first poster, but the final thing, x64) to my D: drive, and ran wubi.exe from the same location. The first reboot (from windows) runs fine; you boot to the ubuntu installer and it installs perfectly. The reboot after that doesn't work, you drop straight to the grub shell after selecting "ubuntu" from the list.
This is rather aggravating. the shell itself says that grub is a beta version, and so problems are to be expected. but so are fixes. any updates?

[mauriceplus (mauriceplus)]

Hi Agostino,

I don't know if it should be interesting. I run wubi in a eeepc with windows 7. I installed Kubuntu 9.10 netbook version. It started at reboot without problems. Running the upgrade I noticed that there are the grub-pc and grub-common updates. After four or five installation and full apgrades, giving to me the grub shell, I decided to upgrade all the things BUT TO NOT MAKE these two upgrades and if seemed to work, after the reboot was all OK. I tried to fix the version of these two files with synaptic. Then installing other things with a different program manager it installed also these two and it gaves to me the grub shell. So, maybe the fault is on the installation of grub-pc that FAIL to create the /boot/grub/grub.cfg file, that I miss.

[mauriceplus (mauriceplus)]

Hi again,

with a fresh install of kubuntu 9.10 netbook version, after the full upgrade (with also the two packages grub-pc and grub-common) it was necessary to run sudo update-grub2. Then it was all OK at the reboot.

[FajardXorg (rehevoli)]

Ubuntu 9.10 ran fine in my Compaq Presario Pc for a full week. i had downloaded some other iso's and i turned on today. this bug is not allowing me to access those file.

[Joe Bronkema (dr-jose-ameknorb)]

I had the same problem. I installed Ubuntu 9.10 for AMD64 via Wubi under Windows Vista. It did the Windows portion of the install, rebooted and did the Linux portion of the install, rebooted, and failed at grub.

I experimented based on some of the things mentioned by others above.

For me, the following worked to fix this problem:
Boot from the live CD.
Mount the windows disk. (I clicked on it from the Places menu to do this).
Mount the disk image, bind mount /dev, chroot, and upgrade the system.

sudo mount /media/[UUID]/ubuntu/disks/root.disk /mnt -o loop
sudo mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
sudo chroot /mnt
apt-get update
agt-get upgrade

After this, I rebooted and was able to successfully boot into Ubuntu.

I expect that it would have worked if I had only upgraded the grub-related packages.

Don't run update-grub2! I tried that on my first attempt at a fix, but doing so, at least in the chrooted environment, couldn't find all the information it needed, and it trashed the grub config files.