If there are non-professional readers of this list, they might be interested in how this was resolved. (And even professionals *might* be curious as to why and how).
1. I was able to mount another distro from the second disk (so grub was working). (It was suggested that in other circumstances a live OS could be booted. I tried to use supergrub, but possibly hadn ot made the CD bootable?) 2. I made a new directory and mounted the / partition on it. (Accessing /etc meant that I could read fstab). 3. I mounted the other partitions to the directories under / (I realise now that vmlinuz was probably broken linked on / becaause /boot was not mounted. Derr! 4. I chrooted into the new / 5. It seemed to be possible to fix a kernel without destroying everything else. This was my BIG question ... I was even tempted to use the chroot as a sort of virtual machine. But was a little cautious about repeating disaster. In the meantime I had to press on with my tasks using an underpowered and less memory/hard disk machine (though using Ubuntu 8.10) I had no problems with complex convert scripts, with no memory or hard disk problems. So this does not seem to have caused my original failure. 6. There was a suggestion about using apt-get "reinstall kernel", but htis seems to be a wish rather than an option. Right? But doing an apt-get update/upgrade got me a new ? security upgrade, which was great. Installing the current kernel did not seem to work, but perhaps it did occur, but grub problem stopped booting) 7. I tried update-grub next. This said it could not find the root, corrupted fstab? trying hda1. Which was no use! 8. fstab was perfectly good. But grub was having trouble. I do not understand this "new-fangled" UUID or whatever.. so i thought this might be the problem. I removed the UUID and uncommented the /sdb 's 9. BINGO. 10. So did something corrupt the identification of the SATA disks? I thought the point of ther ID was to label the disk unmistakably? 11. Remaining problem. Screen resolution was 600x480. In administration I could make it lower, but not higher. Real mess. 12. I tried nvidia-settings, but that just seemed to tell me that was the best I could do ... but I do not know this program. 13. Debian to the rescue. dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg 14. Success. I do not have Compiz eye-candy, I can live without that while I churn out data.. The suggestion about bad reboot seems most plausible--but I still do not know why it would mess up both identification of disks, AND graphics config. I am left with my mistyping of 1680x1260 by 1680/1260. I have recently moved from my home in Surry Hills. But based on that experience, I think Sydney needs a LUG group for amateurs. Newbies are catered for--if they are entering the profession. But there must be other people who are clearly not beginners, but have problems keeping up with technology, for whom the internet is not home territory, have no network, but need computers and are not content with M$. Such people ask questions which appear obvious, or a case of not RTFM. Knowledge of Punched cards do not help with sound cards under ALSA. We cannot expect people whose time is limited, who are under pressure to give professional advice gratis!!! This is unreasonable ... but I am thinking of a local network of shared knowledge from those who use computers but do make a living from them. Or are there too few in Sydney? Googling often shows the problem is known -- but even there the question may hang unanswered! I am well past my biblical use-by date, which does not help in terms of circle of acquaintances, and why I like now to keep up reading the discussions here, though I cannot attend meetings. cheers, Geoffrey -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
