near disaster averted - "can not find /dev/by-id/xxxx"

[Goh Lip]

On Wed, 19 May 2010 14:40:13 +0200
"O. Sinclair" <o.sinclair at gmail.com> wrote:

> Have no idea what happened but if this helps someone landing in the
> same trouble then it is worth the effort of documenting it.
> 
> I am still on Karmic with all updates. Last night I was online and
> left the computer on over the night. No problems, all worked this
> morning. Shut it down to take it to where I am currently working (it
> is a laptop and I am currently travelling).
> 
> On next boot I get to the splash and then I get "BSOD" - Black Screen
> of Death. A black monitor, no activity or message or anything.
> 
> Reboot and go to "recovery option" that after a while ends up with
> the line: ...can not find /dev/by-id/xxxx long string of UUID here
> 
> I am dropped into Busybox shell and can do nothing worthwhile. I
> reboot with a usb flash I have and can see that all works and the
> disks are there (one disk, 3 partitions including swap). I check
> grub.cfg, I check /etc/fstab and all LOOKS perfect. But no boot.
> 
> I tried the 3-4 kernels and none worked. Scouted around internet for a
> solution and there were a few suggestion ranging from rebuilding the
> kernel to what eventually worked and was simple:
> 
> on bootup get into the Grub menu by hitting ESC, Shift or both
> choose a "recovery kernel",  I chose an earlier than the latest just
> to be on safe side
> press "e" to get to edit mode
> replace all UUID-strings with /dev/sda(your root number), in my case
> /dev/sda2
> press ctrl+x to boot with those settings
> drop to a root shell
> run update-grub
> reboot
> all worked as before.... except now grub.cfg points to /dev/sda2
> instead of /dev/uuid-string
> 
> Phew,
> Sinclair

You've 'sudo update-grub' and grub.cfg shows /dev/sda2?
Strange.  You may want to double check that.
But glad you've got this sorted out.

Regards - Goh Lip

-- 
If you understand, things are the way they are.
If you do not understand, things are the way they are.