"error: out of disk" grub rescue on first cold boot

[Goh Lip]

On 05/03/2011 02:09 AM, Jonathan M. Polom wrote:
> I'm running Ubuntu 11.04 on
> a Intel-based system (C2DUO, 4gb ddr2, g33 chipset) with a 1 TB
> WD1001FALS SATA drive on channel 0. The BIOS hasn't been updated
> recently but I don't believe my motherboard manufacturer has updated
> it for a couple years. Anyway onto the problem:
>
> Upon first cold boot, grub does not load the menu or operating system.
> Grub2 displays an "error: out of disk" and then goes to a grub rescue
> prompt. No length of idle time permits it to load the menu (IE: just
> leaving it alone does nothing to help the problem). The really weird
> thing is that if I run 'ls' at the rescue prompt and then execute CTRL
> ALT DEL to do a warm reboot, grub WILL load Ubuntu next time around. I
> do not have any other OS on the machine so grub is configured to just
> boot Ubuntu directly (no menu).
>
> I can replicate this problem very reliably. I can also replicate it
> using both SATA AHCI and "normal" mode for my SATA controller (intel
> northbridge). When in AHCI mode, however, the error is slightly different:
> "error: no such device" is displayed instead, along with a rescue prompt.
> I can likewise get the system booted by executing 'ls' at the rescue
> prompt but this is the same annoying behavior previously described.
>
> I appreciate any help on this issue and am more than happy to provide
> config files, logs, etc. to help figure out why this problem occurs.
> While this problem doesn't prevent use of my PC, it does require a
> very inconvenient workaround. Hopefully I can pick up some insight on this
> problem on this list as it's very annoying.
>
> Note: I have submitted this to the grub help list as well. No response so far.
>


Assume you do not have any partitions (just 1 whole disk without 
partitioning)?

Then see point4-2 of http://ydal.de/using-grub2-to-recover-your-system/


If you have devices, but no par­ti­ti­ons, you’ll need a par­ti­tion 
dri­ver. It seems the default grub con­fig does not load any par­ti­tion 
dri­ver, and debug­ging this is just a bit annoy­ing. But there’s two 
easy choices for most people:

     Load the module “part_msdos”.
     If this doesn’t help, try “part_gpt”.


Hope this helps - Goh Lip