Upgrade disaster - grub update failed and now my machine won't boot

[David Tombs]

Hi Robert,

I'm not sure exactly when you tried "ubuntu-bug ubiquity", but it works
on a Live CD boot for me. Anyway, you can always go to
<https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubiquity>, click the "Report
a bug" link, and just attach relevant files yourself.

Thanks,
David

On 05/18/2010 04:11 PM, Robert Lummis wrote:
> I had exactly the same experience. I can't quote the text on the
> installer screen verbatim because it's different now that the wrong
> disk was partitioned, but whatever it said was misleading and needs to
> be fixed on future releases. The wording in question is on page 4 of 7
> in the installer script.
> 
> Screen 4 in the installer says something like "install side-by-side
> with the existing version" which I understood to mean install on the
> same drive as the existing version but in a different partition, which
> is what I wanted and expected. Instead it partitioned an *external*
> 500-GB USB drive that I use for backups and installed the new version
> there. The system was then unbootable. That also made my backup
> partition much smaller so now it's less useful for backups. It used to
> be the whole drive, now it's something like 250 GB with only a little
> empty space. All-in-all a bad start on 10.04.
> 
> I suspect what happened is that it selected the largest available
> partition, which is definitely the wrong thing to do! But even worse
> is that it didn't clearly state what it was going to partition before
> starting. I'm pretty sure it never said anything about partitioning my
> external drive, or if it did it slipped below my radar.
> 
> I tried to report this "bug" but couldn't figure out how to do it. I
> think the package the bug needs to be reported against is ubiquity but
> "ubuntu-bug ubiquity" fails because it can't read the ubiquity log
> file because it isn't root, and "sudo ubuntu-bug ubiquity" silently
> terminates without doing anything.
> 
> I got this fixed on my own so I'm not looking for an answer here. I'm
> writing this in case it will help improve the next release, since I
> was unable to report the problem as a bug.
> 
> On Mon, May 10, 2010 at 1:00 PM, Carl Anderson <carl.anderson at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I went through the GUI upgrade from 9.04 to 10.04 last night.  I habitually
>> keep my machine up to date, so this upgrade was not from some random or
>> uncommon configuration.
>>
>> Everything went fine until grub was being installed / upgraded.  I got a
>> popup asking me to select a device where grub should be installed - in a way
>> it resembled fdisk output, there were the individual devices listed
>> (/dev/sda, /dev/sdb, etc) as well as the individual partitions on each.  I
>> selected the partition that contains my kernel images /dev/sda2 and tried to
>> install grub there.  I saw a message saying that the operation failed.
>> Luckily I was able to retry selecting a partition and so I select different
>> partitions.  I ended up trying all of my partitions individually until I had
>> tried them all.  I got the impression that I needed to select the drive
>> device rather than the partition.  So I ended up selecting both /dev/sda and
>> /dev/sdb and none of the individual partitions.  It reported success and
>> continued on the upgrade.  When it came time to reboot, I discovered that
>> the machine was locked at the point where GRUB usually pops up with a kernel
>> selection.  I don't see anything but a black screen.
>>
>> I sure wish I knew what I did wrong!
>>
>> Any help is appreciated - I'm writing from my work machine and won't be able
>> to try anything until i get home tonight.
>>
>> Carl Anderson
>>
>> --
>> Ubuntu-bugsquad mailing list
>> Ubuntu-bugsquad at lists.ubuntu.com
>> https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugsquad
>>
>>
> 
> 
>