Can't boot Ubuntu after dist-upgrade

[Robor]

I had a perfectly working laptop with WinXP Pro and Ubuntu 5.10 dual booting using the GRUB boot loader. I did an 'apt-get dist-upgrade' and let it run. When it restarted and tried to boot the new version I got this error:

"Error 18: Selected cylinder exceeds maximum supported by BIOS"

I have researched the error and found it has to with the GRUB being located beyond 1024 cylinders. I don't know what changed because it worked fine before. Anyway, most work arounds suggest enabling LBA mode in the BIOS. I can't do this because my Thinkpad doesn't have the option (I called IBM support as well). I tried forcing LBA mode when I did a new 'grub-install' but that didn't work either.

Another suggestion is to create a small (50MB - 100MB) partition called /boot at the front of the drive and put GRUB there. My drive has WinXP Pro (NTFS) at the front and Ubuntu /root, /home, and /swap partitions next with a /Fat32 partion at the end. Can I resize my Windows partition and create the /boot partition and put GRUB there without totally hosing my XP & Ubuntu installs?

 

[Robor]

Bump? I'm stuck here and want my Ubuntu back. If I reinstall Ubuntu am I going to lose my existing programs? What about my data and especially my Email (Evolution)? My /home directory is separate.

 

[SleepWalkerX]

I've always installed to mbr. Have you tried installing it to a /boot partition? You should be able to resize partitions if you wanted to, including ntfs. Just make sure to have free space in them.

IIRC, as long as your /home is safe all your settings should be safe too because that's where they're stored. Someone back me up on this.

 

[pcgeek11]

Install GRUB to the MBR like stated above. That is how I have my Suse installed. Dual booting with Windows.

pcgeek

 

[Robor]

I did put GRUB into the MBR. Here's my steps...

1. Install WinXP. Partitioned the HD 50/50. Windows on the 1st half.
2. Install Ubuntu. Created / (root), /home, and /swap partitions on the 2nd half of the drive. Installed GRUB into the MBR.
3. Everything worked fine - I could boot WinXP and Ubuntu (including previous kernel upgrades).
4. Did an 'apt-get dist-upgrade' to go from 5.10 to 6.06.
5. Got the 'Error 18' message on reboot.

I'm booted to WinXP right now and installed Partition Magic 8. I was going to use it to shrink the WinXP partition a little and put a boot partition at the front of the disk. Here's what I get on PM8 launch...

"Disk 1 (57231MB 7752c 240h 63s) appears to have partitions created using a different drive geometry (255h 63s). This serious problem can lead to data loss. No partition manipulations should be made to this disk using this product or the operating system's products. You should backup the data on this disk, delete all partitions, create new partitions under the new drive geometry, and then restore your data using the backup."

Isn't that just freaking dandy?

 

[Robor]

Well, I downloaded the Dapper .iso and booted it LiveCD. I'm using GParted to resize and move my partitions around. I had WinXP on a 28GB partition on the front of the drive. I shrunk it to about 1/2 that size, created a new partition, and am in the process of copying my WinXP data partition from the front of the disk to the newly created partition. After that I'm going to shrink the original front partition to about 100MB and attempt to make that /boot and install GRUB to it. I'm not sure how to make that initial partion /boot but will look while the copy is going on. I will be shocked if this works but it's worth a try. I really don't want to risk a reinstall because I definitely don't want to lose my data I've got in my Ubuntu install (especially Email).

 

[Robor]

Well, that didn't work. Same error despite putting GRUB into /dev/hda which is the first 100MB of my hard disk. I'm going to try and install 6.06 Ubuntu overtop of my existing 5.10 install. I don't mind reinstalling programs - just don't want to lose my Email and Gaim chat history. I have it backed up on a memory stick from a few weeks back but I'd prefer to have it all.

 

[Robor]

Tried 2 times to install overtop without formatting the " / " partition and with and without formatting the 'swap' partition. The installer crashed both times. Here goes the 3rd try formatting both swap and root. Copying files... Fingers crossed...

 

[Robor]

Hmmm... Installation completed but what a mess. Booting takes forever (sits on Preparing restricted drivers). It's a much longer bootup than Breezy and at least 3x what XP Pro takes to hit the desktop. When I (finally) hit the desktop my display is dim and I have to bump up the brightness. Also, I get an error saying, "The application 'gnome-settings-daemon' has quit unexpectedly", and I assume that's why I'm getting the following errors... Alt-tab doesn't work. Key repeat doesn't work. Attempt to launch 'Preferences | Keyboard' to check the settings and it bails with an error. I had used Automatix for my Breezy install so I figured I'll do it for Dapper and see if that fixes the errors I'm getting. Nope. Still screwed up. Breezy was a quick and trouble-free install. Maybe it's because I'm doing an upgrade with an existing home directory but right now I'd have to say that Dapper is pretty much suck.

I'm backing up my bookmarks, pics, Evolution mail, and Gaim message history now. It's been like 15+ minutes to make a < 1GB .rar file archive of my .evolution directory. No status to indicate how far along it is and no file on the desktop where it's being created. That's odd. I'm guessing I could do that archive in a minute or two in XP w/ WinRAR. Why so much longer in Ubuntu? :-/

I'm going to wipe and reload. The question is, do I give Ubuntu another chance or just stick with tried and true WinXP (it's been 100% stable for me).