[nylug-talk] Re: Boot Failure after Attempted Ubuntu Upgrade

[James Keenan]

On Nov 5, 2006, at 12:00 PM, nylug-talk-request at nylug.org wrote:

> Date: Sun, 05 Nov 2006 09:19:39 -0500
> From: James Keenan <jkeen at verizon.net>
> Subject: [nylug-talk] Boot Failure after Attempted Ubuntu Upgrade
> To: nylug-talk at nylug.org
> Message-ID: <3FA02317-4AEF-4F94-AB57-D36D3C5AEA10 at verizon.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; delsp=yes; format=flowed
>
>
> Then, all of a sudden, I got the following:
>
> segmentation fault
> segmentation fault
> segmentation fault
> segmentation fault
> segmentation fault
> segmentation fault
> segmentation fault
>
> ALERT!  /dev/sda1 does not exist.  Dropping to a shell!
> Busy Box v1.1.3 (Debian 1:1.1.3-2 ubuntu 3) Built-in shell (ash)
> Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.
>
> /bin/sh can't access tty; job-control turned off (initramfs)
>
> [Note:  I'm typing what I wrote down yesterday afternoon, but after
> googling and seeing similar error messages, I'm wondering whether it
> actually wasn't "/dev/hda1 does not exist."]
>
> At this point, screen froze and no input was accepted from the
> keyboard. The only thing I could do was hit and hold the reboot
> button on the hard drive -- which only brought me back to the same
> point.  I repeated this several times, one time holding down the F12
> key.  But the menu that came up via F12 didn't present any solutions
> that leapt out to me.  The Dell splash screen also offered F1, but I
> didn't think to explore it.
>


With the help of a very experience *nix/Perl hacker, I got this box  
halfway back to life today.  First, let me note that the error  
message I originally reported was correctly typed; it *was* /dev/sda1  
which was undetected, because, as we found out, this box has a SCSI  
drive.

I had an Ubuntu 5.10 live disc available and we booted from that.  We  
were then able to mount the hard drive to the filesystem generated by  
that boot.  We hacked /boot/grub/menu.lst and used mkinitramfs to  
create a new initrd file (I think; I'm recalling this from human  
memory).  We were able to see all my original directories intact, ssh  
to other servers we work on and establish Internet connections.

We then went to reboot without the CD.  It booted well, with one  
major exception:  We couldn't get the X Window system to start, so  
all I have currently is a terminal.  Any suggestions?

A sysadmin will take a look at this box on Monday.  My colleague's  
estimate was that we're probably just one or two commands away from  
getting everything working again.  However, I figure that if worse  
come to worst, I can rsync all my critical directories to a server  
and re-install Ubuntu 5.10 from scratch.  Does that seem plausible?

jimk