Ubuntu ASGD: Fix of Boot Failed

I previously used Auto Super Grub Disk (ASGD) to restore the GRUB bootloader after a Windows XP installation wiped it out. That is, I had Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid Ibex) up and running on a dual-boot system with WinXP, but then I had to reinstall Windows and, when I did so, I no longer got a bootup option to go into Ubuntu instead of XP. Now the system automatically went right into Windows when I booted it, with no Ubuntu option. So I tried running ASGD, as described in that previous post, to fix the problem, but ASGD gave me no joy. Then I tried booting with the alternate Ubuntu CD (again, see the previous post for details), but this time it didn't seem to be working as I had written it up previously. This time, when I chose the "Rescue a broken system" option on the Ubuntu Alternate CD, the "Execute a shell" option gave me a prompt that didn't respond as I had described in my previous post. There was something not right, so I had to revisit the problem. The shell in question was ash (that's the name of the program that was waiting there to accept my command-line instructions), and the "grub" command didn't mean anything to ash. So I typed "exit" to get out of the shell, and reviewed the "Ubuntu installer main menu," there in the Rescue option on the Alternate CD. Another possibility on that menu was "Enter rescue mode." I tried that. It asked me what device I wanted to use as a root system. I did know the answer to that because, following my previous instructions, I had already run "fdisk -l" and had seen that my Linux program partition was located on sdc5 (also known as hd(2,4), because the hd count begins at 0, not 1). So I named /dev/sdc5 as the "device to use as root file system," there in the rescue mode option. That appeared to be the step I had neglected to write up in my previous instructions. Now, sure enough, I did get an option to "Execute a shell in /dev/sdc5." I thought I would give it another go, and this time typing "grub" did produce a "grub" prompt. So I entered the same commands as before:

root (hd2,4) setup (hd2) quit exit

and then I chose the "Reboot the system" option. And, sure enough, that was all I needed to do. It worked again. So, basically, after reinstalling Windows, if ASGD and rebooting didn't give me a GRUB menu, the thing to do was to reboot with the Alternate Ubuntu CD, designate (hd2,4) as my Linux partition, and then reboot from the hard drive.

Ubuntu and VMware: New Installation

In January 2009, I decided to install plain-vanilla Ubuntu (i.e., not one of the official derivatives, e.g., Kubuntu, or many other unofficial distributions) on a new computer. This machine was running an AMD Phenom 8450 Triple-Core CPU on a Foxconn A7GM-S motherboard (with a maximum of 8GB RAM) and, at the start, a single 640GB Seagate hard drive. The latest release available at this time was Ubuntu 8.10 (meaning it was released in October 2008), known as Intrepid Ibex, so that was what I planned to install. I chose the 64-bit version of Intrepid because I wanted VMware to have access to more than the 32-bit maximum of 4GB of RAM. As with my 2007 and 2008 investigations of virtualization, I decided that VMware remained the best candidate for my virtualization needs. I had gone through many issues in the process of refining my VMware Workstation 6.0 (and, more recently, 6.5) installation, and this time around I hoped the process would be relatively straightforward. I installed Ubuntu on the target machine. Windows XP was already installed, and GRUB set up its usual menu. (I covered most of these details at length in my previous posts. For terms not defined here, use the search box at the top of this page to search my blog, and then use Ctrl-F or whatever is appropriate in your browser to find the specific locations where the terms are discussed.) Before the installation, I used a bootable GParted CD to add two Ubuntu partitions at the end, after my Windows NTFS partitions (for PROGRAMS, DATA, etc.) -- one for the Ubuntu program files, and the other for swap. That way, it was easier to see what I was doing when I got to the partitioning part of the Ubuntu installation. I modified the panels on my Ubuntu desktop, followed the steps to install my restricted NVIDIA graphics drivers, adjusted the font sizes in File Browser (Nautilus), and otherwise got the desktop in shape to suit me. Then it was time to install VMware. The file name was VMware-Workstation-6.5.0-118166.x86_64.bundle (meaning that I was installing the 64-bit version). To run it, I opened a Terminal session, navigated to the folder where the bundle file was located, and typed "sudo sh VMware-Workstation-6.5.0-118166.i386.bundle" (here, and elsewhere in these posts, without the quotation marks except as otherwise indicated). The installation was much smoother than it had been last time, when I had installed Workstation 6.0 instead of 6.5 (which was not out yet). In fact, the installation was painless and almost instantaneous. I rebooted into Windows XP and used VMware Converter to make a VMware virtual machine from that existing Windows installation. Unfortunately, when I booted back into Ubuntu, I found that VMware could barely run that VM. Performance was much, much worse than on my other computer -- partly because the VM was 40GB, larger than the 15-20GB VMs I ran on the other machine, but especially, I think, because I had only one hard drive. On the other machine, I had separate drives for Ubuntu program files, for data, and for the virtual machine. To speed things up, I ordered another hard drive. I had never owned a 10,000 RPM drive, but I found one on sale and decided to put my Windows and Ubuntu program files on it. I also revisited the Windows installation, removed some programs and otherwise got its size down to 15GB, used GParted to trim its size down to 25GB, and used VMware Converter to make another virtual machine. The next steps after that are the subject of a later post.