Ubuntu Trouble

[Shao Feng-Li]

I made a Ubuntu Live CD and from that installed it to the HDD. It made a partition so I can dual boot Windows. To make sure everything was working ok... I was in Ubuntu, restarted and booted into XP, then wanted to go back to Ubuntu.

Then I got this:

[Kenshin17]

Will it boot at all? Or does it panic no matter what?

[Shao Feng-Li]

Nope. I think I gotta know a thing or two about Linux to fix this...

[Kenshin17]

Google the error and see what you get.

[Shao Feng-Li]

Help?

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/slackware-14/kernel-panic-not-syncing-vfs-unable-to-mount-root-fs-on-unknown-block-361735/

[Kenshin17]

Wow, that one is beyond my Linux experience....it looks like it might be pointing to the wrong partition.

[Shao Feng-Li]

It didn't the first time...

Well, this sucks.

[Warrior4Christ]

Are you even able to boot far enough to edit the mentioned file?

Does it have a OS selector menu thing on startup?

[Shao Feng-Li]

I do have the OS selector.

[Kenshin17]

Hm, maybe try and do some research on editing that file. That seems to be what it needs.

[Shao Feng-Li]

How do I edit that file anyways? XD

Could it have to do with the fact that it updated?

[Kenshin17]

Might, and I do not know how to edit it. You'll have to Google search to find out how

[Shao Feng-Li]

Gosh... I don't even know where to start XD I don't even know what a kernel even is yet! XD

[Kenshin17]

Kernel is the core of the OS, where everything happens. Just google [filename] edit

[Warrior4Christ]

Would reinstalling it help?

[Icarus]

I'm assuming you did a pretty basic default installation of ubuntu.


You'll need to reboot into the LiveCD and then mount your hard drive somewhere. For that, you'll need to find out what partition the / is at. Probable choices are /dev/hda1 or /dev/sda1, depending on if your computer uses IDE or SCSI connectors. Anyway, open a terminal and type

Code: Select all

ls /dev/sda

and hit tab a couple of times to see what pops up. Odds are, / is either on the first or second partition (*da1 or *da2).

Once you figure out where it is, (it doesn't hurt anything if you're wrong, so no worries) type:

Code: Select all

cd  # this is just to make sure you'll have permission to do the next step
mkdir <directoryname>
sudo mount /dev/<partition> <directoryname>


At that point, it should ask for the root passwd of the livecd, if it has one. (guess "root" if you need to). After that, if you used GRUB for the bootloader, the file you need to edit is

<directoryname>/boot/grub/menu.lst

You can open it with gedit, though you may need root permissions

Code: Select all

 <sudo> gedit

---OR---

gedit <path>/filename

Most likely what happened is that grub is looking for the root partition on the wrong one. If is, it's not that bad and all you'll need to do is increment/decrement one or two numbers. Second best case is change a couple of file names in menu.lst so the reflect what's actually on your system.

[Shao Feng-Li]

Yeah, I didn't select any special options or anything. It basically installed for me. Thanks Icarus. I'll see if I can do that.

I don't know if my HDD is IDE or SCSI but it is a laptop HHD if that matters.

[Shao Feng-Li]

I'm assuming you did a pretty basic default installation of ubuntu.


You'll need to reboot into the LiveCD and then mount your hard drive somewhere. For that, you'll need to find out what partition the / is at. Probable choices are /dev/hda1 or /dev/sda1, depending on if your computer uses IDE or SCSI connectors. Anyway, open a terminal and type

Code: Select all

ls /dev/sda

and hit tab a couple of times to see what pops up. Odds are, / is either on the first or second partition (*da1 or *da2).

Once you figure out where it is, (it doesn't hurt anything if you're wrong, so no worries) type:

Code: Select all

cd  # this is just to make sure you'll have permission to do the next step
mkdir <directoryname>
sudo mount /dev/<partition> <directoryname>


At that point, it should ask for the root passwd of the livecd, if it has one. (guess "root" if you need to). After that, if you used GRUB for the bootloader, the file you need to edit is

<directoryname>/boot/grub/menu.lst

You can open it with gedit, though you may need root permissions

Code: Select all

 <sudo> gedit

---OR---

gedit <path>/filename

Most likely what happened is that grub is looking for the root partition on the wrong one. If is, it's not that bad and all you'll need to do is increment/decrement one or two numbers. Second best case is change a couple of file names in menu.lst so the reflect what's actually on your system.

When I input-
ls /dev/sda

I get-
/dev/sda

And I'm not sure what the replace the <" "> in the code with either.

EDIT: Ok, I tried a little bit...

Code: Select all

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ ls /dev/sda
/dev/sda
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ ls /dev/sda
sda   sda1  sda3  sda5  sda6 
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ ls /dev/sda
/dev/sda
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ cd #
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ mkdir /media/disk-1
mkdir: cannot create directory `/media/disk-1': File exists
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ mkdir /dev/sda3
mkdir: cannot create directory `/dev/sda3': File exists
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo mount /dev/sda3 media/disk-1
mount: mount point media/disk-1 does not exist
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo mount /dev/media/disk-1 /dev/sda3
mount: special device /dev/media/disk-1 does not exist
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo mount /dev/sda3 /media/disk-1
mount: /dev/sda3 already mounted or /media/disk-1 busy
mount: according to mtab, /dev/sda3 is already mounted on /media/disk-1
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ /dev/sda3/boot/grub/menu.lst
bash: /dev/sda3/boot/grub/menu.lst: Not a directory
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ /media/disk-1/boot/grub/menu.lst
bash: /media/disk-1/boot/grub/menu.lst: Permission denied
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo mount /dev/sda3 /media/disk-1
mount: /dev/sda3 already mounted or /media/disk-1 busy
mount: according to mtab, /dev/sda3 is already mounted on /media/disk-1
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

EDIT: Ok. Seems Ubuntu is on SDA3 (ext3) and it's unmounted... And I have no idea how to mount it XD

[Kenshin17]

You need to edit the file like he says, the drives seem to be already mounted.

Look at where he talks about gedit.

[Shao Feng-Li]

That's... not helping me here either XD

[Kenshin17]

You can't use gedit? To edit the file those google posts said to edit?

All you need to do is tell the computer that the third partition containes what it needs. And number three is already mounted.

[Shao Feng-Li]

...

[Kenshin17]

All you have to do is get to the configuation file that tells the kernel where stuff is and change it to indicate the right partition.

Least thats what I am gathering from the posts above. This hase been an enlightening discussion XD

[Shao Feng-Li]

Yeah... The terminology takes time to get used to XD

[Kenshin17]

Judging from what I have read, all you need to do, is access the configuration file, edit it to point to partition three, and then save the changes. Least thats what this all says to me.

[Shao Feng-Li]

Yeah, that seems about it. I've just never done anything like this ever before XD

[Kenshin17]

Me neither. A geeks best friend is Google. Thats how I figure a lot of stuff out XD

[Icarus]

Personally, I learned a lot about Linux by installing Gentoo.

Mostly, the stuff in <> is where the names you would use vary.

The cd is just to make sure that you were in the home directory and would have permissions to create a new directory. After you get /dev/sda3 mounted on some directory, you can edit the file with:

Code: Select all

cd <directory>
cd boot
cd grub
sudo gedit menu.lst

That way, you get a graphical editor, as opposed to something like emacs or vim.

[Shao Feng-Li]

That sounds simple enough... I'm not sure what you're supposed to name directories and such...

I can't really gather how to mount and crap like that...

[Shao Feng-Li]

So, near as I can tell, SDA3 is mounted on /media/disk (23.5 gig volume partition) if I understand it all right.