Ben,
Thanks for the background info on Grub.
As it turns out, my issue wasn't with Grub after all.
After I installed Open SuSE on a spare partition, I found that I could no
longer boot up my KUbuntu partition. Both old Grub and new Grub were able
to locate the KUbuntu kernel and initrd and start booting, but the boot
process would quickly get into a wierd hanging state.
So the mystery was what about installing OpenSuSE on /dev/sda1 could cause
Ubuntu on /dev/sda3 to suddenly start hanging at startup?. The answer: In
its /etc/fstab, Ubuntu refers to partitions by UUID, and by installing open
SuSE the UUID is now different, and so Ubuntu would hang when it tried to
mount a partition identified by a UUID that no longer exists. Changed the
/etc/fstab to mount sda1 by its /dev/ pathname and life is good again.
Cheers,
Steve
On Tue, Jul 20, 2010 at 9:51 AM, Ben Straton <[email protected]>wrote:
> Grub2, while still fairly early in development to be included in a major
> distro, is a significant improvement over grub-legacy. One of the ways
> it excels is partition auto-detection. For example, it found and
> automatically chainloaded my OSX hackintosh partition. I would recommend
> reinstalling grub2 from a live CD. Please note that anytime you are
> reinstalling/trouble shooting boot issues, there is always a chance you
> could cause other issues. Here are the steps to required to reinstall
> grub2, from a live Ubuntu 10.04 CD:
>
> (assuming you have already booted the live cd and opened the terminal):
>
> Check to make sure that Kubuntu is still detected as /dev/sda3, using
> this command:
>
> sudo fdisk -l
>
>
> Assuming it is, you will need to mount all of the appropriate partitions
> and filesystems:
>
> sudo mount /dev/sda3 /mnt
> sudo mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev
> sudo mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc
>
>
> Next you will need to chroot into your Kubuntu install we have just
> mounted:
>
> sudo chroot /mnt
>
>
> Now we will install grub2:
>
> grub-install /dev/sda
>
>
> If you receive any errors from that command, run this one instead:
>
> grub-install --recheck /dev/sda
>
>
> Now you can exit the chroot environment, unmount the filesystems, and
> reboot to a (hopefully) working dual boot.
>
> exit
> sudo umount /mnt/dev
> sudo umount /mnt/proc
> sudo umount /mnt
> sudo reboot
>
>
> If that does not work for you, or you would prefer to stick with
> grub-legacy for some reason, write back here, and we will find an
> alternate solution.
>
> Ben Straton
> Lead Technician, Digital Forensic Specialist
> Seattle Tech Experts llc.
> (206) 618-9236
> [email protected]
>
>
>
--
Steve McCarthy
[email protected]
[email protected]
