Ubuntu 9.04 NBR GRUB trouble

[ddrueding]

I've done a whole bunch of Googling on this, but I'm afraid I don't know enough about my issue to help myself.

Acer Aspire One
Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook Remix, USB install

Imaged the USB stick, boots off the stick fine.
Ran install both from the stick and from the desktop, told to use entire disk (once with defaults, once with EXT4).
Install completes successfully, reboot, immediate "GRUB Read Error"
Boot off USB again, it sees the installed filesystem, but I don't know where to go.

Help?

Thanks!

:bow:

 

[ddrueding]

I'm thinking maybe a damaged MBR? How would I fix that?

 

[Mercutio]

Is grub-install /dev/hda not working?

 

[ddrueding]

Haven't tried it. That is a command for the console, yes? I think it should be /dev/sda in my case? GParted shows the partitions as sda1 and sda2.

 

[ddrueding]

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo grub-install /dev/sda
Probing devices to guess BIOS drives. This may take a long time.
Could not find device for /boot: Not found or not a block device.
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo grub-install /dev/sda1
Could not find device for /boot: Not found or not a block device.
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo grub-install /dev/hda
/dev/hda: Not found or not a block device.

 

[Mercutio]

Hm. Sounds like how ever Ubuntu installed, it doesn't see your hard disk. Are you maybe in AHCI or some other special BIOS mode?

 

[ddrueding]

Unfortunately, the BIOS has no settings whatsoever beyond time and boot order. I had previous versions of Ubuntu installed on here fine, and once it is running from the stick it sees the drive and all it's contents. Really weird.

 

[Mercutio]

9.04 is brand new and it's entirely possible that it's not bug-free.
Here's a suggestion: Revert to whatever version actually worked and then do an upgrade, rather than a full new install.

 

[ddrueding]

Not a bad idea, as soon as I get to the office I'll give it a shot.

Thanks!

 

[Santilli]

How do you like it? Can you get the sound to work, using Ubuntu?

 

[ddrueding]

The sound works fine. The only thing I used that didn't work is the WLAN indicator light. The switch still worked to turn on and off the wireless, but the little LED didn't work. No biggie.

 

[Handruin]

You know, I think I had a similar issue with ubuntu about a week ago when I tried installing it on a friend's P4 to use as a server. I had to do a recovery/fix on grub and after that it would boot. Sadly after it booted the video would go dark and i couldn't get to a command prompt to do anything. I uninstalled it and went to fedora 10 which is working very well for what I need.

 

[ddrueding]

Tried 8.10 from CD (what it had before) and it is throwing errors of some kind. Is there any part of the drive that isn't wiped during the install? How would I do so?

 

[blakerwry]

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M

That should write zeroes to the entire disk.... including partition table (which installers typically just edit, versus wiping and recreating)

 

[Mercutio]

I don't know about Ubuntu's installer but both SuSE and Fedora/Centos will optionally format partitions during install.

 

[timwhit]

I don't know about Ubuntu's installer but both SuSE and Fedora/Centos will optionally format partitions during install.

Will that wipe the MBR?

 

[Mercutio]

Hm. I'm not entirely sure. I know I've zeroed out whole drives with dd. Generally if I'm actually installing Linux it's not a big deal. I would think that it would, since installing grub is pretty much always the last step in the install.

Hm. I'll have to try that out.

 

[ddrueding]

sudo dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sda bs=1M

That should write zeroes to the entire disk.... including partition table (which installers typically just edit, versus wiping and recreating)

This did the trick. I don't know what was going on with the hard drive, but the new version installed just fine from USB after I did this and let it run.

Thanks!