Only mem test showing on GRUB 1.98

[Marius Gedminas]

On Mon, Jan 19, 2015 at 06:28:42PM +0100, Gary J. Kirkpatrick wrote:
> I installed Ubuntu 10 on a number of computers in Panama when I was a Peace
> Corps volunteer.  One of them contacted me. When grub loads all he has to
> choose from is memory test.  Grub version 1.98.

Ouch.

> 1) Should I just have him go ahead an run the memory test, say over night?

That won't fix the problem.

> 2) He says he ran a program which resulted in this problem.  I do not know
> what he did.  I think it is probably just a GRUB issue as he is not the
> kind of user that would somehow wipe the system.

The question is: are there any kernels in /boot?  If yes, it's a simple
matter of fixing the grub configuration (by booting a live CD,
chroot'ing into the real system, bind-mounting /proc and /sys and /dev,
and running 'update-grub').  If no, it's a simple matter of
installing a kernel package (by by booting a live CD,
chroot'ing into the real system, bind-mounting /proc and /sys and /dev,
and running 'apt-get update; apt-get install linux-generic').

There are probably docs on the Internet about how to fix either of these
situations.

> I figure to just have him install Xubuntu on a usb and take a look at the
> drives to see what is there and then run Boot repair.

I think that should to fix situation 1 (bad grub config) but probably
won't help situation 2 (missing kernels).  Worth a try anyway, and
easier than doing the chroot/bind mounts etc. manually.

Marius Gedminas
-- 
If you want to trick a pointy-haired boss into letting you write software in
Lisp, you could try telling him it's XML.
                -- http://www.paulgraham.com/icad.html
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