Ubuntu Dapper boot issues
Monaco (my local Ubuntu box) recently refused to boot. This happened before, but I attributed it to hard drive problems. Not so.
The error I’d get is:
kernel panic – not syncing: vfs unable to mount root fs on unknown-block (hd0,1)
Turns out grub keeps getting confused – (hd0,1) refers to hda1, but my boot partition is hda0. I’m not sure how this is happening, but I suspect it has something to do with apt updating grub behind my back (the sneaky bastard).
Though a quick googling of the problem will turn up hoardes of people with the same error message, their problems weren’t the same ones I was having (I suspect). I found my solution in the grub manual, with help from the Ubuntu forums:
- Boot from a live or rescue disk. If necessary, type:
- mkdir /mnt/linux
- mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/linux
- chroot /mnt/linux /bin/bash
- mount -t proc /proc /proc
- Start up the grub shell (type “grub”) and type:
- grub> root (hd0,0)
- grub> setup (hd0)
At least I get the pretty Ubuntu boot screen now.
Now I just have some pesky problems with corrupt filesystems. File permissions are apparently messed up and some daemons can’t start – except that they did, the second time I rebooted. Now I’m dealing with a bad superblock on my second drive, the one that I took out and is sitting in an enclosure at home. The fun never stops.
I took out the /etc/fstab entry for the second drive, and now it boots. There’s still one error (Setting sensor limits failed), probably because I yanked the second HD. Answers can be found here and here.
