Ok, the solution was easy. From the "grub rescue>" prompt, I had to poke around to see what was what, and where.
My laptop's /boot partition was coming up as "(hd0,msdos1)", and when I did an "ls (hd0,msdos1)", I saw things like: grub/ memtest86+.bin ... vmlinuz-3.13.0-51-generic initrd.img-3.13.0-51-generic ... So all I had to do at that point was tell grub how to boot: set root=(hd0,msdos1) set prefix=(hd0,msdos1)/grub insmod normal insmod linux linux (hd0,msdos1)/vmlinuz-3.13.0-51-generic initrd (hd0,msdos1)/initrd.img-3.13.0-51-generic boot A bunch of kernel boot-up noise appeared, and I was prompted to enter the passphrase to decrypt my root (/) directory, and after a moment, my KDE login screen appeared! I brought up a shell, and run "sudo grub-install /dev/sda" (notice, not "/dev/sda1"). Rebooted, and here I am. Whew! Thanks very much to my coworkers (and sometimes LUGOD visitors) Case & Dmitriy. And also to my wife for putting both kids to bed while I panicked in here ;) -bill! On Sat, Jul 16, 2016 at 12:36:46AM -0700, Bill Kendrick wrote: > > So we got a new SSD drive for Melissa's laptop, and I've placed a Kubuntu > installer/live demo image onto a USB flash drive. > > Melissa was busy working on her laptop, so I decided to just > get the install onto the new SSD, and we can physically migrate > drives between her laptop at our leisure. > > So, I booted _my_ laptop up with the installer USB flash drive, and > stuck the target drive for the install (the SSD drive) into an > external SATA enclosure, and connected that to my laptop via its USB cable. > > Then I told the installer to install onto that external drive. > > I answered a few questions, watched the enclosure's blue LED blink at me > for 10 minutes while the installer did its job, and done! "Great," I assume! > I unplug the installer USB flash drive, and try to boot up the > freshly-installed Linux off of the external drive enclosure. > It didn't come up. That's not good, but not a disaster. > > But, it gets worse... > > So I unplug the SATA enclosure's USB cable as well, and reboot my laptop > again. > Now I'm staring at a "grub rescue>" menu! Nooo! :^( > > Apparently, the installer slammed an update to GRUB(?) on my laptop's > _internal drive!_ (Full disclosure, I know almost nothing about GRUB since > I never need to deal with it.) So now I can't boot my laptop! > (Aaand, since it was handy, and is newer and faster than my personal drive, > I was using my work laptop. "Why should it matter," I assume, > "I'm installing Linux onto an _external drive_.") > > > I Googled around and discovered something called "boot-repair", > which I installed onto the live/install USB flash drive, but when I ran > it in it's default / recommended mode, it didn't seem to help me. > > The results of its scan can be seen here: > http://paste.ubuntu.com/19599532/ > > It seems like I got bit by this bug...? > https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub-installer/+bug/384633 > > > I'm seeing a LOT of questions and answers about this kind of problem > online, but a lot of it is old, a lot of it has to do with people > who are trying to boot Linux off an external drive (not my goal; > my goal was only to install it there; I guess it was foolish for me > to assume that that's a "thing one can do"). > > I'm asking coworkers for assistance, but since many are remote, > I figured I'd ask here, in case someone local feels like dropping by > (or meeting me somewhere) to help fix this. > > Thanks, > > -- > -bill! > Sent from my computer > _______________________________________________ > vox-tech mailing list > vox-tech@lists.lugod.org > http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech -- -bill! Sent from my computer _______________________________________________ vox-tech mailing list vox-tech@lists.lugod.org http://lists.lugod.org/mailman/listinfo/vox-tech