With great help from others, especially Michael, I succeeded in getting my "real" Ubuntu Dapper-64 installation copied (rsynced) to hda2. Before leaving Fireside I rebooted and was surprised to see only one option in Grub, which listed only two kernel options. I booted to the first kernel option and it brought up my "real" installation. Evidently, reformatting hda2 wiped out the part of Grub that listed the installation on hda2. Oh well. I just figured I'd edit the Grub menu later to make it boot to the rsynced copy on hda2.
I packed up and went home. When I got home I fired up the computer and was met with a weird bunch of error messages before the Grub menu even came up. Stuff about MAC addresses and DHCP. I'm pretty stupid about these things, but I knew that the messages must have something to do with my ethernet. I unplugged the ethernet cable and restarted. Again, I got error messages before the Grub menu even came up. The messages were different when the ethernet cable was not plugged in, but still seemed to have something to do with networking. I restarted again. This time I hit Esc when the Compaq screen came up in order to get into the BIOS. It appears the boot order is hard disk, network, floppy and CD. (Odd, because this computer does not have a floppy.) Then it dawned on me that it couldn't find the hard disk and was looking on the network for something to boot to. So I put a Knoppix live CD in the drive and rebooted. It booted Knoppix live just fine. Then I tried Aaron Burt's rescue CD. That booted fine too, but gave me a bunch of error messages about hda. And then it occurred to me that my backpack had tumbled onto the floor off the sofa where I had tossed it when I got home. The backpack computer compartment is padded and the floor is carpeted, but who knows? So I turned the computer off, turned it upside down, and removed the screws holding the hard disk in. I pulled it out and it looked fine. I put it back in, making sure the connecting block seated properly, and tighted the screws. And when I restarted the computer it all came back up again. <WHEW!> Man, I tell you. If you weren't gray when you started futzing with computers you will be soon thereafter. _______________________________________________ PDXLUG (a Portland Linux user group) mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlug.org/mailman/listinfo/pdxlug IRC: irc.freenode.net #pdxlug & #orlug
