Grub 2 problem, error: no such device

I managed to solve this problem. I edited /usr/lib/grub/grub-mkconfig_lib file . On line 147 I took out ALL the info from inside the quotes. I had previously read that taking out the "--no-floppy" was sufficient, not in my case. Simply uncommenting the line will not work either.
So, line 147 should read: echo ""
After making those changes, "dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc" (without quotes) needs to be run in terminal as root (sudo)
i.e. $ sudo dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc
I hope this helps!

Same here with karmic 2 aug 2009.

Just before the grub2 menu flashes by I can see the "error: no such device" flashing by. Strangely the grub2 menu still comes up. After selecting a kernel the boot process stops with the "error: no such device $UUID", where $UUID is the UUID of my root-partition. The UUID in grub2 is correct.

After removing the search line karmic boots correctly.

Additional info: this is with a fresh install of karmic alpha3, HD completely wiped, no other OS on the harddisk.

Previously an older version of karmic (alpha1 I think) was on this harddisk.

Hi there, I also would like to confirm the presence of this bug.

My hardware : IBM T40, 1.3Ghz, 40GB hardrive, 1.25GB RAM.

I did a fresh install of Karmic 9.10 RC on the entire disk. The install proceded without problem.

On booting a grub1.97 beta menu flashes, and I can see "error: no such device" as heinjan writes.

Then GNU Grub 1.97 beta then appears, where I can boot from the kernel, but then the exact same error as above appears "error: no such device #" with a long number.

I've tried reinstalling, and the disk has been checked for errors - there are none.

No sure if this is significant but this thinkpad has a secret partition on it.

I will try doing the above.

Duncan.

No Joy, removing that line doesn't work for me...
Looks like I need to reinstall 9.04.

Confirmed - I also see this on a Thinkpad T41p.

Also happens on my T40, karmic 9.10 release install. After removing search-line I can boot again.

I also see this. My hardware : IBM x31, 1.7Ghz, 40GB hardrive, 1GB RAM.

Can someone provide explicit instruction on how to edit?

I see this comment below that was made previously but the problem I have is how to actually edit the file.

"I edited /usr/lib/grub/grub-mkconfig_lib file . On line 147 I took out ALL the info from inside the quotes. I had previously read that taking out the "--no-floppy" was sufficient, not in my case. Simply uncommenting the line will not work either.
So, line 147 should read: echo ""
After making those changes, "dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc" (without quotes) needs to be run in terminal as root (sudo)
i.e. $ sudo dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc"

If I can get into this directory and file, I can do what is suggested but a list of the commands I should perform would really help since I am good at repetition and following direction. :)

Another approach but not full resolution:

I have been able to manually load the speciifc kernel following these steps:

Boot to a Specific Kernel Manually (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2)

However, when I re-start, I have to do the same thing again.

Am Freitag, den 30.10.2009, 18:59 +0000 schrieb John in SF:
> If I can get into this directory and file, I can do what is suggested
> but a list of the commands I should perform would really help since I
> am
> good at repetition and following direction. :)

sudo gedit /usr/lib/grub/grub-mkconfig_lib
You can also choose a different editor then gedit, but I think it's not
a bad choice in this case.

And then remove the following inside the function
`prepare_grub_to_access_device ()'

  if fs_uuid="`${grub_probe} --device ${device} --target=fs_uuid 2> /dev/null`" ; then
    echo "search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set ${fs_uuid}"
  fi

Then just `sudo update-grub'
reconfiguring the whole grub-pc package isn't at all needed for this.

Note that this change gets lost when the grub-common package gets upgraded.

--
Felix Zielcke
Proud Debian Maintainer and GNU GRUB developer

Felix:

You rock!

Everybody at Launchpad rocks!

This worked.

John

Managed to fix it on my T40 using the alternate installer and 'vi' editor.

see this post...

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1301144

and 4listers helpful reply.

Problem is the problem recurs on updating...

All best,

Duncan.

This is serious...hope it gets fixed soon. It was not good surprise right after clean install you get can't find device!!!

I have had a similar problem with a fresh ubuntu 9.10 install on a Thinkpad R40e.

On my system I was just getting "error: no such device" and "press any key to continue" immediately without even seeing the grub menu. Pressing a key just repeated the same message. Whats more, when booting from the CD there is no "Rescue a broken system" option.

I was able to comment out the three lines Felix mentioned in post #10 above, by booting the live CD, mounting my hard disk from there, and then editing the grub-mkconfig_lib file within. However I'm not sure of how to run the "update-grub" command without the rescue option, since presumably it needs to be run on the installed system itself.

Editing the grub-mkconfig_lib file alone has changed the behaviour slightly. Now I at least get the grub menu, but selecting one of the options returns me to the familiar "press any key to continue" message. So I still can't boot my system.

Can anyone advise how to run the update-grub command in my situation where the rescue option is missing?

From the grub bootmenu, press e to get to edit mode.
Erase the line starting with "search --nofloppy ..." and then press Ctrl+X to boot.
When up and running you should run the command sudo update-grub.

@jon, "Rescue a broken system" is available in the "Alternate install CD". If you have that ISO then you can boot using that also.

Just for the record, for people who get the repeated "no such device" message and no boot menu:

If you turn on your computer and hold down the shift key, you will get the Grub menu and can then use the instructions in comment #15 to boot your system.

I can confirm this bug on a Fresh 9.10 install.

THIS FIX IS NOT RECOMMENDED --> editing: /usr/lib/grub/grub-mkconfig_lib

Some notes about the install.
500gb ide hd
Bios reports 136gb hd on bios boot screens. (Older PC)

Install goes fine, Reboot fails on "error: no such device"
Hold [shift] on boot and editing/removing "search" line enables boot to continue.

However, If you somehow bork your system you may find single user unable to boot.
At which point it starts to become tedious to recover your system from something
as simple as a X config causing lockup before you can get into a text console. (Sigh).

The Alternate solution (Although not a fix as such) is to MANUALY create a
nominal size ext2 /boot partition at the start of your hard disk on install.

On boot, You still see the error flash up. But the boot continues. And there
is no need to edit the grub-mkconfig_lib file. The single user mode also works.
But memtest failed to run from the Grub2 menu.

i've got this very problem as well, using 9.10
i have not much experience in (installing) linux
guess i'm unlucky

i understand all the above pretty good i guess, but how do i get a terminal / prompt after i get the error?
if i boot from the livecd all files are locked on the harddrive that contains the installation
i cannot edit any file on there

and where do i find my harddisk in a terminal ?
i'm not very familiar with the folder structure of this system

sjogro - what I did was to boot from the 'alternate cd' and that way I could run a command prompt on the broken system and fix it.

See this post here:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1301144

There are other ways to get round this depicted above - maybe try them first?

Duncan.

Ditto on this problem, using a Toshiba Tecra M2, and that removing the search line allows the system to boot. Thanks to everyone who gave details about this and how to execute it.

Contact me if there's a proposed fix you'd like tested, or if you want more details about the machine config.

The steps in comment 10 worked for me, though I have to comment that I was helping install Ubuntu on a friend's machine, and this bug came very close to turning him away from Ubuntu.

We've got to get this fixed, stat.

it didnt work for me.. windows 7 loads and installs fine tho.. even boots

Good for ihatelinux going to Win7! Best of luck and keep going. ;)

thanks John in SF... i didnt even need to type a string as long as my arm to change resolutions or get a right mouse button to work... two clicks and i was there... wow .. im there dude... windows 7 is a great alternative.. ;)

I can confirm that I also get the error message however i have no problem booting. I have installed grub2 on a separate /boot partition on the beginning of my disk. No problem booting win7 with grub2, just linux. My partitions are ext3.

I also confirm that the error appears after a clean install, no OS on the disk. This is a awful experience for newcomers. I have three windows machines, and two macs, and was hoping (and excited) about using Ubuntu, specially 9.10 Karmic Koala. This bug/error is terribly frustrating and even though Google is my friend, none of the solutions that I found could resolve my "error: no such device" issue... karmic koala fail?

I'm new to Launchpad - does anyone how we can get this bug fixed, short of taking a year out to learn programming and doing it ourselves?

Are the relevant people informed, and have it prioritised? I think it is a critical bug as it renders your laptop completely useless!

I used the fix above and my laptop is running great, but I think most people will just give up.

All best,

Duncan.

This should really be bumped to High importance, at the very least. People are still running into this on fresh installs, and it's causing a lot of frustration for new users. People who want to try Ubuntu are being turned away.

It just happened to me. ACER Ferrari 3400 laptop, an old one running 8.04 before. I decided to install everything anew, just Ubuntu, no other OS on the hard drive. I ended up editing /usr/lib/grub/grub-mkconfig_lib as suggested in this thread to fix the problem.

This is a really annoying bug with karmic. And I agree, why not give this bug a high priority? In fact, I just noticed that it hasn't even been assigned to anyone yet!

Anyone have any ideas how to do that?

I worry for all the people who might otherwise be so happy with ubuntu!!!!

Duncan.

Is anything happening with this bug? I'm seeing more and more people on the forums lately who have just decided to try 9.10 and are unable to boot after installation due to this issue.

I encountered the same problem on a Dell laptop (I can't remember what model, I guess from around 2005).
I edited /usr/lib/grub/grub-mkconfig_lib and commented out 3 lines as follows:

Before:
  if fs_uuid="`${grub_probe} --device ${device} --target=fs_uuid 2> /dev/null`" ; then
    echo "search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set ${fs_uuid}"
  fi

After:
  # if fs_uuid="`${grub_probe} --device ${device} --target=fs_uuid 2> /dev/null`" ; then
    # echo "search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set ${fs_uuid}"
  # fi

Saved the file, then upon reboot it worked, but after that reboot it didn't work.
So, I made the change to /usr/lib/grub/grub-mkconfig_lib again,
Changed the permissions of the file to read only (chmod 444)
Then ran dpkg-reconfigure grub-pc (or sudo update-grub might do the trick too).

I can't be sure exactly why the error re-occured after my first attempt, but there's a chance changing the permissions on the file did the trick.

I actually found it quite fun learning more about grub2 :)

This is my 4th clean install of Karmic, and I got bit. The bad part is that this one was at a client, with a time crunch. The workaround in the grub2 boot works, but I can't have a client do that. And I am afraid to use the fix in post #10, as an upgrade means a service call with "an emergency." I too vote to bump the priority, as it has been around a while. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1301144

Wow, thank you so much for the info on fixing the boot problem no floppy etc.

I followed the instructions exactly EXCEPT, my lines were 173, 174 and 175. The edit of file grub-mkconfig_lib using the terminal command: sudo gedit /usr/lib/grub/grub-mkconfig_lib worked flawlessly. I found it easier to comment out the lines with "#" instead of just deleting them. Immediately after saving the file with the changes I used the next and final terminal command: sudo update-grub

I then did a little dance around the laptop on the floor, closed my eyes and rebooted. However I did save all my saved docs to a flash drive...just in case.

The result was a perfect boot right on through.

Thanks to everyone who contributed that information. Ubuntu is "The Key to Being Free" and thank you to the developers and everyone else that had anything to do with it. I've been looking for a way out of windows for as long as I can remember. Ubuntu's most recent release made it easy to do.

Thanks again,

Dennis

I just tried to help somebody new to linux get through this bug. In the end, we couldn't get it working and he's switching back to windows.

I doubt he'll be back anytime soon.

It's clear to me that grub2 was NOT ready for prime time.

Update, I installed xubuntu 9.10 on my ancient IBM thinkpad 600E and got the "no such device" error. Removing the search line solved the problem for this one

Ubuntu-devs, can you please put a HIGH priority on this one and NOT release any more kernel or grub updates till this is fixed?
I just got the problem on someones machine where I've worked around it recently. The new kernel update regeerated the grub config and the problem was back again.

Hanno Böck wrote:
> Ubuntu-devs, can you please put a HIGH priority on this one and NOT release any more kernel or grub updates till this is fixed?
> I just got the problem on someones machine where I've worked around it recently. The new kernel update regeerated the grub config and the problem was back again.

Since many kernel updates are security fixes, I don't see that happening
any time soon. (Nor would I want it to.) However, if you do the fix in
post #10
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub2/+bug/403408/comments/10
it will survive kernel updates, just not grub updates. You can also pin
grub (or kernel) updates so they are not a problem for you.

Tried what was recommended in post #15. Success. I sure hope this ubuntu was worth the time it took to sort this out.

same problem on Thinkpad T41 Felix (Comment #10) solved problem thank-you

Since the upstream bug report mentions that this happens on BIOSs that can only read the first portion of large drives, can someone having this problem and willing to risk possibly making the situation worse ( i.e. not bootable even without the search line ) try "sudo grub-install --disk-module=ata /dev/sda" ( where /dev/sda is the drive you want to install to ). This should either be run from the booted system or if you are using a LiveCD then in a chroot as explained here: http://grub.enbug.org/Grub2LiveCdInstallGuide

If it doesn't work you should be able to undo the change by just running grub-install again without the "--disk-module=ata" parameter.

Jordan wrote:
> Since the upstream bug report mentions that this happens on BIOSs that
> can only read the first portion of large drives,...

I doubt this is the case. I am having this problem on a BIOSTAR K8M800
motherboard, and I have only a single data partition on an 80 gig IDE
drive. (Swap is in the extended partition) Unfortunately, the system
is remote, so I can not test it now...

http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/grub-devel/2009-12/msg00095.html

Has a possible fix for this bug. If I understand the patch correctly it doesn't actually get search by UUID to succeed but makes it no longer a "fatal" error. So rather than the menu entry failing, the search --fs-uuid --set command will fail but allow the other commands to run. Since root was set first by drive and partition number if those are still correct then boot will succeed. There are two problems with this:

1: If you move your drives around then the hard coded device will be incorrect and booting will fail
2: Since this is caused by grub not being able to read the entire drive due to BIOS limitations, if you don't have a separate small /boot at the beginning of the drive you could run into problems later on even if things are work initially. For instance if you ever have a kernel update where the new kernel happens to be stored past what the BIOS can read that kernel will fail to boot. Similarly with a grub upgrade, with important files like the grub.cfg or modules being written past what the BIOS can read, grub could fail to load entirely.

But it's still better than the current situation. It is basically the same as removing the search line for those with this BIOS limitation while allowing search by UUID for those without. This is all only true if I am understanding what the patch does correctly though :)

I can also confirm that I have this bug. Editing out the --search part of the boot line gives me a working system. However... I just did some updates and part of the update was a new kernel linux-2.6.31-16-generic. After the updates my system reboots and instead of encountering the error listed above I now end up with just a "sh:grub>" line. If I manually type in my boot parameters I can get the system to boot.

After playing around trying to fix that issue somehow my whole boot record or something got hosed because eventually my system started booting to just a "initramfs>" prompt. I tried using the Super Grub Boot Disk to recover the MBR but it was unable to do anything to the disk (not sure why it couldn't. Even Puppy Linux from a USB flash drive was unable to mount the hard disk any more). I eventually gave up and formatted the disk. Of course now that I have re-installed Mythbuntu and grabbed all of the updates I am back to the "sh:grub>" error.

The annoying thing is Grub2 will NOT give me a menu to go to with this error that I could simply edit to fix the offending lines. Instead I have to manually type everything in. Not fun when you have to do it 20 times over the course of an hour trying to figure out how to fix this issue.

I am not sure if these two issues are related or completely different but I thought I would add it just in case. This is on two clean installs of Mythbuntu 9.10 by the way... The first time my Mythbox was all configured and set so you can imagine the frustration when I lost all of that work.

I decided to upgrade my old PVR to mythbuntu 9.10 and discovered the hard way that this machine has the "no such device" problem. fwiw, it has an AthlonXP-vintage MSI motherboard using ATA hard drives. After much frustration I found this thread, and have been able to get the machine to boot by removing the --search line.

I currently have the system configured as a single 250GB (entire drive) partition (not really what I want, but figured it was the simplest scenario for debugging)

Since I need to reinstall anyway, I have tried out the suggestion from Jordan in #42 and it appears to work, but there's a catch. It's VERY slow. Machine POSTs, then I get the "GRUB Loading" message. Sits there for about 31 seconds, then the hard drive starts to thrash. This goes on for another 95 seconds, then I get the mythbuntu bootsplash and the system boots as normal. Total time from GRUB loading to bootsplash is just over 2 minutes. This strikes me as kind of a long time, considering the same machine can manage the same operation with old grub in a second or two.

I suspect (hope) that at least some of the slowness is attributable to the big partition. I plan to try again with a small boot partition and see if this improves things any.

I don't yet know if this workaround will survive an update (had the system up-to-date before I tried it out) but I'll see if I can test that out on the next attempt and report back.

On a fresh install Karmic 64-bit this still occurs. Removing the lines in comment #10 made the system unbootable:

ubuntu karmic 2.6.31.16
Get the error now:
error: you need to load the kernel first
press any key to continue

and for the XP partition on a seperate harddisk
error: invalid signature
press any key to continue

I has this problem after installing Ubuntu on an older Gateway laptop that I had installed a new 160gb hard drive. I installed Ubuntu after restoring Windows XP. I did the fix by editing the config file which worked for a little while until, after a few reboots, I could not get a login from Grub. After re-installing and updating Grub endlessly with no ability to get into the computer, including booting Windows XP, I deleted Grub using SuperGrub CD and erased the Ubuntu partitions from XP and started over.

This time, I carefully looked in the BIOS because it was an older computer and the 160gb drive reported at 137gb! (as with comment #18). So, after re-installing Ubuntu, I used the LiveCD and Gparted to re-partition the hard drive with free unused space at the end to make the total partitioned space, including the Windows partition under 137gb. When I re-booted Ubuntu, the "no such device" error was gone.

It seems to me much better to lose a few gb from the hard drive than have an un-bootable computer. I had no idea until installing Ubuntu that there was a size limit (this is a pretty old laptop). I guess I forgot that there was a time when 160gb hard drive was a new exceptional thing... BTW the old hard drive on the Gateway was a 20gb!!

@claudeheintz: my emachine (gateway) laptop also has a size limit (learned this the hard way with winxp) but there is an easier solution which doesnt have to waste any harddisk space. ALWAYS make your first partition a boot partition. Make 1gb partition to host all the linux kernels. And you could put ur system partition beyond the 137gb and your linux will always boot. So you could have /boot(grub) /winxp /linux. As long as winxp is in the 137gb limit all your systems would always boot. You still get the error message (as you should) but you will boot fine. See once the linux kernel is loaded it knows how to handle the bios 28bit limitation. It uses its internal drivers instead of going trough the bios. Unfortunately, sometimes, winxp moves it boot files beyond the 137gb limit so you might get unbootable winxp if your winxp partition extends beyond the 128GiB. Using a /boot partition you dont have to have unusable space on your disk, you would be able to utilize the whole disk as it was meant to be.

I have some useful info to contribute I think.

I just got myself a 340Gb IDE drive. The bios claims it is only on a 139Gb drive but the Karmic installer recognized the full
drive and the installer seemed to work fine. However when trying to boot into my freshly installed sytem I got the error described above.

Reinstalling with a small root partition of 30Gb and allocating the rest of the drive as a /home partition solved the problem.

I had the same issue and I was able to solve it by partitioning it manually and putting /boot as first partition. I could not use the 'search' deletion trick because with lvm+encryption it doesn't even reach the grub menu (but I had the same error message as in this bug report when installing without lvm or encryption).

Note that on my old 80GB disk everything was fine. Problems only arose when I tried installing on a new 320GB disk.

My PPA has upstreams' bugfix for that included:
https://launchpad.net/~fzielcke/+archive/grub-ppa/
Note that this is the experimental branch and could have other bugs.

I also attach the fix which is in Bazaar revision 1924 in trunk.
Should apply cleanly to the karmic package.

Hi guys, meant to post earlier, the issue was more basic, the Oct was older
than I thought and was a 32bit machine, got it reconfigured to 64 and do far
all seems to be working well. Thanks

Sent from my Magic

On 17 Dec 2009 00:36, "vdbergh" <email address hidden> wrote:

I have some useful info to contribute I think.

I just got myself a 340Gb IDE drive. The bios claims it is only on a 139Gb
drive but the Karmic installer recognized the full
drive and the installer seemed to work fine. However when trying to boot
into my freshly installed sytem I got the error described above.

Reinstalling with a small root partition of 30Gb and allocating the rest
of the drive as a /home partition solved the problem.

-- Grub 2 problem, error: no such device
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/403408 You received this ...

I am also having this problem. I have installed Ubunto on 4 computers. 2 worked fine right away.
#1) 160 gb toshiba only problem is having to figure out how to address the built in wireless wireless. If i use the live edition it works but the installed does not
#2) works fine but having a problem getting mail. my knowledge not a bug
#3) crashed at 63% but it apears to be a hard drive problem as same crash 4 tines at same % of install
#4) 140 GB toshiba installs fine at second operating system but always crashes with error message error: no such device 2a806816-4610-48ec-8cb9-0010887ccc51
this error also blinks on and off just before the system goes into the select operating system screen
it does not display untoll you select which system you wish to use. Mine is dualboot XP and ubunto 9.1 downloaded 4 days ago 12-20-2009

I had a working system with the fix in post #10. Then after running updates today, (including a grub update that removed the fix) it failed with "Out of Disk" and the fix in post 10 did not help. Also no access to grub menu. I am trying a reinstall with a 10GB /boot partition. Perhaps the "fix" is to check for this possibility at install. Setting up a boot partition is non-trivial for the new linux user.

I think that the information management in this thread is even worse than the user experience caused by the above bug. Although I appreciate the numerous hints to circumvent the problem, but only very little information is provided about the nature and the cause of the bug. Is the problem caused by IDE drives, by large partitions, maybe an IDE boot drive as a slave (in my case). If I knew more, I could vary more parameters instead changing lines in files I do not understand.

I am also reading with mixed feelings Debian bugs watcher's statement, that the problem was fixed. Even if it is, it does not make a difference to me, because Ubuntu 9.10 would work after an install on a clean disk for me. I would have exptected more insight and help from this source.

Recently I installed 9.10 on a different system. This particular problem did not occur (small master IDE drive), but DVDs would not play due to an unfixed problem in the video subsystem. Two mainstream problems make me think that I'd better install the LTS version - stale.

I also had the same issue on a T41 laptop. Atm i have installed xp on a 3gb partition and am installing linux as typing this hopefully that helps, we shall see.

Newest grub from lucid ( 1.98~20100101-1ubuntu1 ) fixed this bug for me.

I just did apt-get update today and its broken again! Argh!

Now I know what to do it was easy to fix although now I have a grub splash screen which is a dark image with black writing it was quite hard to temporarily edit the the boot options so as to get in and fix it (I just used post #1 above - still works but line number is wrong - it's line 174 now.)

Here's an idea: How about this bug get fixed prior to the next upgrade of grub2 in 9.10?!? This is the third time I've had to do this! (Sorry please excuse the sarcasm its just late at night and I was trying to do some work but ended up fixing my computer instead).

Sorry I should have included this in my initial bug report.

Hardware: Dell Inspirion 600m (Pentium M 1.6Ghz, 512MB RAM - only modification is new 140GB HDD).

OS environment: Dual boot - Win XP (original OS) & Ubuntu 9.10 (32 bit)

I upgraded the following grub2 packages:
grub-common (1.97~beta4-1ubuntu4.1) to 1.97~beta4-1ubuntu5
grub-pc (1.97~beta4-1ubuntu4.1) to 1.97~beta4-1ubuntu5

Was having the same problem my girlfriend's Acer TravelMate 2301LC.
I had replaced the 40GB harddrive with a new 250GB one.
The larger harddrive seems to be a recurring factor in this bug.

So far I've been editing grub.cfg to remove the search line each time.

Anyway, I solved the problem by installing the following PPA:
https://launchpad.net/~fzielcke/+archive/grub-ppa

This includes the 1.98 grub version which seems to have fixed the bug.
I make no claims that this will work for you, you've been warned ;)

Still happens in the latest alpha version (alpha-2, lucid). The fix from comment #42 resolves it (adding --disk-module=ata to the grub-install command).

My suggestion is to add this module as default since it shouldn't impact the ones who have working bioses, and it should make the life of the guys with broken bioses (like me) a lot easier.

Starting the live cd, chroot-ing and reinstalling grub with parameters it's no walk in the park.

Setting to fix released in lucid as this was fixed in 1.98~20100101-1ubuntu1
or to be exact

grub2 (1.98~20091221-1) unstable; urgency=low

  * New Bazaar snapshot.
    - Fix search command failing on some broken BIOSes. (Closes: #530357)

  [ Felix Zielcke ]
  * Add Replaces:/Conflicts: grub-linuxbios to grub-coreboot. (Closes: #561811)
  * Delete obsolete /etc/grub.d/10_freebsd if it has not been modified,
    else disable it. (Closes: #560346)

 -- Robert Millan <email address hidden> Mon, 21 Dec 2009 22:04:17 +0100

I subscribed the ubuntu-sru team in case this is qualifies for an karmic SRU.

@Bogdan: the bug that was fixed here was the issue identified in http://savannah.gnu.org/bugs/?26834#comment1
Are you sure the issue you're having is the same as the one described there? This bug was confirmed to be fixed on debian and was confirmed to be fixed in lucid.

@Philip
I've downloaded lucid alpha-2 iso yesterday and played around with it, so I can tell for a fact that in the alpha-2 iso it's not fixed, or the fix doesn't catches all corner cases.

Am Sonntag, den 17.01.2010, 12:10 +0000 schrieb Bogdan Mustiata:
> My suggestion is to add this module as default since it shouldn't impact
> the ones who have working bioses, and it should make the life of the
> guys with broken bioses (like me) a lot easier.

It can impact users with working a BIOS. The ata module hasn't been much
tested yet, it can have bugs and it doestn't detect at all devices
behind these motherboard based RAIDs in the nForce and ICH etc.
chipsets.
So it's at least currently not an option to make this the default.

If it works it can make life easier and that's why I added the
--disk-module=ata option to grub-install. To make testing easier of it.

--
Felix Zielcke
Proud Debian Maintainer and GNU GRUB developer

Same bug hit me too, trying to install 9.10 after 10 Gb partition on 40 Gb disk. Fiddling w/ partitions
showed critical point at 8 Gb, resulting in rescue mode if last install was above that, or just an
unbootable menuitem (UUID mismatch) for an earlier install above 8 Gb.

8 Gb is one of many breakpoints at which BIOSes needed fixes to the cyl-head-sector mapping to
address disks exceeding that size. My MB is new enough to use the latest "permanent" fix, LBA mode,
so I didn't expect such a bug. However, configuring the BIOS to use AUTO mode (which chooses CHS
mapping) instead of LBA mode and reinstalling (grub-install at a minimum) fixes the problem.

This makes sense. If grub always used the latest, best BIOS call then it wouldn't work on old MBs.
If it used the oldest BIOS call that was supposed to be able to handle the particular disk size then
it would work with all MBs but require that BIOS be set to the same mode grub chooses. Hopefully
BIOS AUTO chooses a mode by the exact same algorithm.

It seems to me that I have a similar problem. When I was installing Ubuntu 9.10 Server I answered to "Automatickly part the disk and configure LVM". Installation finished succsessfully, but when I'm trying to boot the system it says:"no such partition". I typed "set" at a gnome resque panel and saw that root is set to hd0,5. But if I type "ls" there are "hd0", "hd0,1", "fd0"... But there's no hd0,5! Please, help me to solve this problem, because I really need to boot into that OS. Thanks.

Cowboy, see http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=8716254 for some stuff that may well help you.

Running an IBM T40, and after fresh install I got the problem described above. Tried the solution in the first post, but when i try the sudo update-grub i get" grub-probe: error: cannot find a device for /. And i don't know what to do about it. any help would be appreciated.

I have an HP Compact 8710p notebook with Vista. I did the plunge in Ubuntu 9.10 with the free CD but this "Grub loading error no such disk, grub rescue" is preventing me from using my computer. I have spent at least 4-5 hours so far trying to understand the instructions on how to install and how to solve this problem but no success. I wish someone could solve the problem and let us know, the new comers to Ubunta like i are very frustrated but this, especially if know just enough to get by with all this jargon!
On my laptop there is only one hard disk but I have other usb hard disks attached.
When i ran ls at the grub rescue i got the following (hd0) (hd0,2) (hd0,1) (hd1) (hd1,1).
device boot has sda, sdb and sdc but i do not know what that all means.
Denis

I can confirm this bug. I Just installed Karmic with the 'use entire disk' option, on a 250GB hdd and got the error:
...no such device. I did'nt try any of the fixes above. I reinstalled with smaller /, /home, data partition, /swap. Other installs of Ubuntu on the same 250GB hdd went fine.

Post #35 worked for me using ThinkPad R31 with Ubuntu v9.10 (Karmic Koala) fresh install.

Somehow this seems to be fixed now?

I updated/upgraded the kernel a couple of days ago and I didn't need to fix it this time! I'm not sure how they managed that because AFAIK grub2 wasn't updated (just the kernel) so perhaps I will still need to do it again after a grub2 update? I hope not!

It affected my old emachine that has a replaced drive that was running XP before the partition and installation attempt. This is the first emachine, a 900 Mhz screamer. I tried to install over and it wanted to add an additional ubuntu 9.1 installation. Another oddity is that when it allocated itself hard disk space, it left 20% or so as free space, not belonging to either the previously installed XP or the new Ubuntu 9.1 . So then I had XP, Ubuntu, Swap space, and free space on the partitioning screen, and it said that I had several OS's ? I don't know if it was counting the free space or the swap space as an operating system. I chose the manual (advanced) partition and played around and deleted the ubuntu and swap partitions turning them into free space so that I could repeat the installation without creating multiple installations of ubuntu 9.1 but then it said I had not indicated some sort of boot info. Also, it told me to create a swap partition which I figured out how to do. I chose the ubuntu partition and made it primary. That solved the boot objection. Then I had to choose a mount point for the drives. I guessed dos for the windows and / for the ubuntu. It did not work. I am surprised that this error occurs. The file systems are well known and rather simple. However, the windows is booting now, it did not at first. Imagine, after all the hype, after sending to England to get authentic ubuntu 9.1 disks, it comes with a bug, and not only does not install, it disables the working XP operating system. What a time waster. They should change the name from Ubuntu to . Of the many attempts and hours spent trying to install it, including hardware upgrades, I've rarely had success with it.

I miskeyed above, I was saying, they should change the name from Ubuntu to TIME THIEF.

I wonder if they will send replacement disks to replace these defective ones they've sent out.

Claude Heintz identified my problem. Thankyou Claude. I had noticed the descrepancy between the size posted on the drive itself and the reported size but I thought I was misinterpreting the HD label or that there was high overhead.

I think I will try Claude's approach because I installed with a preexisting XP operating system and it is first and I don't think I can move it to insert a /boot directory at the beginning, before the XP without losing my XP work.

I saw where a fix was announced and I clicked on it but it led to 14 pages of launchpad description and no bug fix. It must be hidden in there somewhere.

My bios allows a user definition of the drive, I am tempted to open the drive and record the description and put that in the bios instead of the choice of auto, but I figure if that would work, the auto choice would also work.

How does a block differ from a cluster?

Thanks to Claude and others.

JIm

Glad you got your problems sorted Jim, but here is probably not the ideal place to be fixing generic issues.

This is a list for discussion of a specific grub2 bug. I know you said you have experienced this particular bug but a lot of your other posting is irrelevant to this list. If you have other specific bugs then post details on the list for the relevant bug or if after searching you do not find the same bug, list a new one.

The forums (http://ubuntuforums.org/) would be a better place for discussing and trying to solve problems of a more generic nature.

Cheers,
JedMeister

Thanks JedMeister, I'll be more careful to stay on topic.

Regarding Blocks vs Clusters? A user above mentioned that he expected his LBA, large block addressing, might overcome the drive size problem. It works by increasing the number of sectors that are grouped into one disk writing unit so that there are less units, few enough that the number does not exceed the maximum number that the bios is capable of counting. I'm a little confused because this group of sectors was called a cluster in the past, but LBA uses the term "block".

My bios has a large disk access choice of dos vs. other. Under "other" it advises that unix, novell and other operating systems may have a different way of handling large drives. It was set for dos, but ubuntu lists the xp partition as ntfs. I was tempted to change this as a fix but I am worried about affecting the xp reading ability. furthermore, how would it read the disk in order to boot? Does anyone know how this works?

If I place a boot partition at the beginning of the first partition on the drive, as mentioned above, what will happen to the pre-existing xp installation? Will it move the xp installation or will it overwrite it?

When I went to reinstall ubuntu, the partitioner screen showed a duplicate copy so I deleted and formatted but I still have 2 choices for ubuntu on the grub operating system choices. How did you all avoid this when you reinstalled? I have xp already on the disk, did any of you have a dual boot situation and encounter the same problem?

Thanks,
Jim

I have just experienced this issue again (among others) trying to set up XP/Ubuntu 9.10 dual boot on a desktop (DFI mobo with nForce4 chipset, skt939 AMD X2 4400+, 320GB sda, 500GB sdb).

After sorting out my other issues, I again came to this bug, however the behaviour is quite different to my laptop (which is the system I've been referring to in my other posts). On the laptop; XP booted fine, but Ubuntu had the "error: device not found...". This time Ubuntu boots fine from Grub but Windows has the "error: device not found...".

The same fix applies though: #1 above (https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub2/+bug/403408/comments/1) works fine (except as noted previously, the line that needs editing is 174 in the latest version of the Grub mkconfig file). As I stated above, this workaround/fix survived my most recent kernel update (on the laptop), lets hope its fixed in the next Grub update.

Sorry for the long post everyone! I pondered whether to write this all here or not - but decided it may be relevant to this bug for some Ubuntu beginners.

@JimUSA - I know it can be frustrating but that is the nature of the beast. All things considered (the breadth of different hardware, the limited support from hardware vendors, etc) I think it is a huge accomplishment that a free OS (mailed to your door free too!) manages to run as trouble free on as many different hardware platforms as it does. Having said that, I know its a pain when it doesn't work and I really hope a proper fix is released very soon (and new ISOs distributed).

To be honest, I don't know whether I'd even be installing Ubuntu on hardware of that vintage. I would imagine it would have limited RAM as well? Don't get me wrong, Ubuntu is a great OS from a user standpoint and I think it achieves a nice balance between cutting edge software/features and legacy hardware support, but for older systems I think an OS that is less resource intensive is better. I'd be inclined towards PuppyLinux or DamnSmallLinux. IMHO Ubuntu is too clunky and unresponsive on older hardware.

Back on topic! - in response to your questions Jim, assuming you may wish to push on with Ubuntu:
1) Not sure about blocks and clusters, but I don't think they're the same thing. Don't think not knowing will stop you from solving your issues here.

2) Have you tried changing the BIOS setting and see if XP still boots? If so how about Ubuntu now? Worst case scenario, change the BIOS setting back.

3) You could move the XP partition and put a boot partition at the start...But: !!!DO NOT DO IT!!! You will open up a whole new world of pain! When you try to boot into XP it will see the boot partition and call that "C:" so in effect Windows will now be installed on "D:" (assuming it was on "C:" initially). Obviously Windows will crash and burn because it won't find any of the files it's looking for on "C:". It can theoretically be repaired (think lots of manual registry editing) but its a much better idea not to put yourself in that position to start with.

4) Don't worry about entries in Grub too much at this point. Make sure WinXP is working properly first. First thing I'd do (if you haven't already) is get a portable hard drive, and back up anything even remotely important (including your Win CD Keyif you don't have the box handy anymore, the sticker has gone AWOL or its a laptop with an OEM factory install - use RockXP, MagicJellybean or similar).

Personally I would just use the fix in #1/#10 but if that doesn't work or you choose not to, try this: If you can fit a small / (root) partition (say 30GB - as suggested above #50) AFTER the XP partition but completely within the 136GB limit (followed by /home and swap in the remaining space) then that should prepare you for a trouble free install.

If it will not fit, then you'll need to break your XP partition into 2 (basically the same as what your doing with the Ubuntu Install). In the past I've used Paragon Partition Manager and found it good for moving/resizing NTFS partitions. I notice they have a free version (http://www.paragon-software.com/home/pm-express/d...

Upgrading your Computer's BIOS most probably solves this problem as well:

I had the same problem with an HP compaq nc4400 notebook which had been upgraded to a 320 Gig HDD.
I was able to solve the problem by upgrading the BIOS.
This cured the BIOS' 128 GB HDD Bug and made the grub-Problem simply go away.
HP offers BIOS updates not only using a windows program, but also as a bootable FreeDOS Image.

The same is true for an old Dell 510 (also only recognizing 128 GB HDD). Since I upgraded the BIOS to ver A04 (that's the version without the 128GB HDD bug), in boots just fine.

Matthias et al: I am sure you are correct that installing a BIOS that addresses the whole HDD is a solution - when those updated BIOS are available.

Frequently I cannot find a sufficiently revised BIOS, which leaves one looking for other solutions, that allow grub2 to cope with old BIOS.

If PC manufacturers were truly green in their orientation then they would reduce recycling of old PC's by ensuring their old BIOS were updated to the system limits - so that maximal RAM and HDD sizes can be utilised (as examples) - that would be the difference of junking or continuing to use existing PC stock, Perhaps they prefer the junking / new purchase model however computer owners might see it differently and prefer to get more mileage out of their existing investments. I know this is off topic, apologies for that, however it should be said somewhere.

This bug has just struck me.

I made an iso of Xubuntu today (latest), and tried installing it on an old computer (P2 850, 256 Ram, etc). Install went fine, but I got exactly the same messages as reported above (error: no such device). This was a complete install on a small hard drive, using the whole HD and erasing the previous OS (Win2K).

In possibly a related note, I tried installing Ubuntu 9.10 on my main desktop computer today (a P4 3.0 Ghz). It has Win XP installed. During the installation, I told it create a partition in the large unused portion of my secondary harddrive (not the hard drive that Windows boots from). When the install completed and the computer rebooted, I got the typical Grub menu, but when I selected to boot from grub, I got a blank screen with a blinking cursor in the upper left corner of the screen and it sounded like the HD was seeking over and over. Nothing ever happened. I had to do a hard reset after about 5 min.

I haven't tried any of the fixes suggested, because that's not really a fix and I'm not comfortable editing those file(s).

I should mention that Win XP still loads fine (thank God for that).

Replaced the 60GB HD drive on an old gateway laptop, then installed 9.10 full disk. Got this error. By deleting the search line in the grub (as explained above) I was able to boot. I considered upgrading the BIOS, but since I don't have windows on this machine it seemed t0o complicated for my simple brain.
I booted on a "gparted" cd, shrunk the root to about 120GB, then created another partition to fill the unallocated area.
When I rebooted everything worked fine. I still have access to the whole drive, but the new partition has to be mounted to use. no big deal. My mom, who is getting this computer, will never fill the first partition anyway

I know that it's not good practice to post emotionally loaded responses. So I will refrain from doing that. BUT, in 14 years of using linux .... I have never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever found an application that sucks so much as grub2!! Why? I'll tell you. Thank you.

1) System has three harddrives. One is IDE, the other two are SATA. There is an IDE cdrom drive, too.
2) I unplug the cd rom drive. No biggie right?
3) GRUB 2 gives me an "error disk not found" error and drops me to some stupid grub rescue console that has NO commands what-so-ever!!!

I needed that cdrom slot for another harddrive. So what do I do? Unplug the IDE harddrive? Nope, Linux's on that. Unplug the cdrom? Then how do I boot a rescue image?

I almost felt like Daffy Duck going crazy, bouncing on his head shouting "cuckoo! cuckoo!"

I installed ubuntu because I didn't want any more of the "omg you must configure everything yourself" kind of bullsh**, that's too damn 90s. I already have too much server management on my hands to be bothered with a simple workstation.

This has FAIL written all over it, so yeah, I was way better off using archlinux. More hassle, but seriously less flaws.

1. From the grub bootmenu, press e to get to edit mode.
2. Erase the line starting with "search --nofloppy ..." and then press Ctrl+X to boot.
3. When up and running you should run the command sudo update-grub.

I was able to perform steps 1 and 2 and boot successfully once but then rebooting gvives me the same problem, iUnrstand because I wasnt able to complete the Step #3 of updating grub

Will someone please explain to me how to perform step 3, I type sudo update-grub in the box from #2 and try to boot but it says that id does not recognize the command sudo - I do not understand what this means by "when up and running", once I hit Cntrl X to boot , having deleted the line, there is no time to type anything before the system boots up. Where do I type
sudo update-grub?

Will someone please explain? Thanks.

You need to wait until Ubuntu has completely finished booting to the desktop, then open the Terminal (Applications>>Accessories>>Terminal)

I would update grub-common before you do anything else (because otherwise you'll have to do it twice - updating will break the repair). So in the terminal window type:

 sudo apt-get update
 sudo apt-get install grub-common

then once thats finished you can follow the instructions from post #10 above. For convenience I will recap it here: Edit the grub config file:

 sudo gedit /usr/lib/grub/grub-mkconfig_lib

(Feel free to use your favourite text editor instead)

Then comment out line 174 (ie add a '#' to the start of the line) and add a newline below 'echo ""'. Once finished, from line 173 the config file should look something like this:

 if fs_uuid="`${grub_probe} --device ${device} --target=fs_uuid 2> /dev/null`" ; then
 # echo "search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set ${fs_uuid}"
  echo ""
 fi

save the file and run

 sudo update-grub

Then reboot and should all work fine now!

Note: As suggested above, this change gets lost when the grub-common package gets upgraded and you'll need to do it again.

This worked! Thanks for the clear explanation.

Tried to install ubuntu 9.10 live cd today with existing Win XP SP3. Asus A7N8X Deluxe, AMD Athlon XP 2800, 2G Ram, 640 GB HD. Hard drives are two 320G drives striped together using Raid 0. Raid shows up as scsi drive on mobo. XP on the first 200 GB. NTFS on the second 200 GB. 200 GB free. Installed ubuntu to the free using all of the disk. On booting obtained Grub error 18.

Now what do I do? I've recovered XP using original CDs then overwrote boot sector. XP shows the remaining hard drive has two partitions, one almost 200 G and one about 5 G with the 5G last in line.

I'm not comfortable trying to reinstall or fix grub2, then having to keep doing so whenever Ubuntu or Windows updates. (I had run fedora core 4 for 10 years without updating, recently my bank stopped working with Firefox 1.0 and I had to update to fedora core 10 to get Firefox to run, but that 16 bit system is still running with no updates). I'ld really like to get away from XP's updates, as today trying to ignore SP3 upgrade killed Avast. I had to delete Avast, update to SP3 anyway, then reinstall Avast. Shouldn't need to update a pc to start it up and go online.

Anyway ubuntu looked good on the web. When will it be fixed so I can install it properly?

I'd suggest posting on the forums (http://ubuntuforums.org/). Especially as your problem may or may not be related to this bug.

OK

I believe I've figured this out. The problem occurs when your computer doesn't recognize the total size of your hard drive. Look at the hard drive information in the BIOS settings. Whatever the computer recognizes is your limit. I replaced an 80 GB hard drive with a 180 GB hard drive. When I enter the BIOS, the computer reports that the size of my hard drive is 137 GB. This is most likely a limitation on the motherboard/hardware support settings and NOT a problem with GRUB 2. Your machine may not be booting properly because when you install Ubuntu, part of the system may be on hard drive space that is not accessible or recognized. The best thing would have been to research what the maximum size hard drive for your machine was and bought that size. BUT don't worry!

You can still use the one you bought even if it surpasses the maximum capacity limit. What you NEED to do is manually size the partitions on your hard drive during the installation process. It sounds hard but it's really not, and I know you'd like to use all of the space on your hard drive but you can't. Tough cookies.

When you get to the partition manager stage of your install make sure the combined amount of space between the root file system where Ubuntu will be installed, and the swap partition are less than or equal to the maximum size reported in the BIOS. Simply create a Primary partition for the file system and select " / " as the mount point on the drop down menu. Next, create a Logical swap partition that is double the size of your total RAM. That's it. Everything should install properly and reboot without issues.

So again, if your BIOS shows your hard drive to be 50 GB but it's really 80 GB and you have 1 GB of RAM you will have to do something like this: Primary partition = 49152 MB (48 GB), Swap partition = 2048MB (2 GB). Just to be safe, though, I would try to make my total go a little under the 50 GB limit. I've installed updates and rebooted several times with no issues. Sorry if I repeated anyone's answer. If you still have the same problem you probably have another issue. I'll check on this posting again within the next few days. Hope it helps.

I would just like to make a correction to the second paragraph of my previous post. You CAN use all of the space on your hard drive (YAY!). However, you still must follow the guidelines set forth in the directions above to avoid the "error: no such device $UUID" problem.

Note: you can use the program ' gparted ' to follow these directions if you've already installed Ubuntu. Just search for it in Synaptic Package Manager or Ubuntu Software Center and install it. It'll show up under System>>Administration.

OK, to make use of the remaining free space on your hard drive just format the ' free space ' to ext4 and create a mount point like " /archive ". I believe you can name the mount point anything you'd like as long as it begins with " / " . Be careful and make sure you're formatting the "free space" and not the root file system that Ubuntu is on.

Last step: Open up a Terminal and type ' sudo chown -R username /mountpoint ' . i.e. If your user name is timothy and your mount point is /extra, you would type:

sudo chown -R timothy /extra

This should ensure you're able to access this disk space and are able to read and write to it. To make this disk space easy to get to, minimize all windows and click on your Desktop, now press ' Alt + Home ' . When ' Nautilus ' file browser opens click on File System and drag the ' archive ' folder to your sidebar under Documents, Music, Pictures etc. OR drag the ' archive ' folder on to your Desktop. Now it'll be more visible to you when you click on ' Places ' or when you just want to click and drag files to it on your Desktop. Hope this helps. I'll check back here in a few days just in case.

As far as I know, it is not necessary to relegate the remainder of the disk space past 137GB to an extra or "archive" position. You can simply create a separate partition for /boot, about 100MB or so should be fine, and ensure that it is the first partition on the drive, or at least within the first 137GB. You can then partition the rest of as you like. I use the following scheme:

(approximate sizes)
1-100MB: /boot
100MB-30GB: /
30GB-495GB: /home
495-500GB: swap

I don't see any of the information required for a SRU request as stated in the wiki page detailing the process. Unsubscribing the SRU team for now.

This problem went away with the latest beta of Lucid (10.04). At least
on my HP nx7400 :)

Interesting thanks jhellen, I was hoping this might be the case, does the nx7400 BIOS recognize the correct size of HDD above ~ 137GB? I presume not however your confirmation would be appreciated.

Same bug is affecting me also, here is the number sequence it gave me :eeaade90-1821-40e9-863a-8313c35b7031. How do i fix this, I'm not a computer expert..

Thanks Jed and PaulO for posts #89 and #90.
I've got an IBM Thinkpad T23, had the same problem and your posts got me up and working on the first try.

I'm not a complete novice, but far from an expert.
Thanks for the concise and well-procedured responses.

Took me a little while to pick through the thread, but it was well worth it!

This bug reappeared to me today after a kernel upgrade (after some weeks of
no problems), right after boot grub2 drops me to its shell. Booting manually
and removing the search line from grub.cfg fixed it. Maybe there is a
regression in grub2 ?

Thanks.

On Thu, May 13, 2010 at 2:38 AM, Adaptive <email address hidden> wrote:

> Thanks Jed and PaulO for posts #89 and #90.
> I've got an IBM Thinkpad T23, had the same problem and your posts got me up
> and working on the first try.
>
> I'm not a complete novice, but far from an expert.
> Thanks for the concise and well-procedured responses.
>
> Took me a little while to pick through the thread, but it was well worth
> it!
>
> --
> Grub 2 problem, error: no such device
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/403408
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in GRand Unified Bootloader: Unknown
> Status in “grub2” package in Ubuntu: Fix Released
> Status in “grub2” package in Debian: Fix Released
>
> Bug description:
> I did the latest upgrade from
> http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/ for July 22nd. I used karmic
> alpha 2 i386 linux kernel 2.31.3-generic and the install went fine. However,
> when I rebooted I got a message that says "error: No such device" and a long
> number with dashes and then another lin stating "Failed to boot default
> entries;" I've reinstalled atleast a dozen times without l luck. I expected
> that I would have gotten a normal boot. I would love a solution to this.
> Another question I have is: Is the download from
> http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/ on July 22 17:49hrs the
> latest Alpha 3 for karmic? Today is the 23rd here in the USA and I can't
> seem to find any labeled websites that have an active link to karmic alpha
> 3. If it turns out that I DID download the latest (being alpha 3), then I
> think the grub 2 issue still remains for me.
> I'm running an SGI 550 dual xeon PC, with 1GB of ram, 250GB HDD.
> Thanks for the help.
>
> To unsubscribe from this bug, go to:
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/grub/+bug/403408/+subscribe
>

This is Not A problem At all.
If you have Installed Ubuntu Along With Windows,

Windows Xp:
boot with windows xp cd,

go to repair screen,

choose your Windows and then Type
fixmbr

and

fixboot

then Reboot

Windows 7 And Vista

boot with windows cd,

After The Language Selection ,Click Repair Your Computer.

Select Command Prompt and enter

bootrec /fixboot

bootrec /fixmbr

and restart..

now You can Use Ubuntu,Windows Etc

@karthik - 2 things: Firstly this problem does seem to have been fixed some time ago, so you are right in some sense. Secondly XP bootloader cannot boot Ubuntu! AFAIK Vista/7 bootloader can't either, so your steps will fix Win boot. But you'll still need to fix GRUB2 so you can boot Ubuntu.

This bug occured for me today with a fresh install of 10.10 x64 on a Thinkpad W700.

I would just like to say that after about a year of having this head ache with installing Ubuntu, I found out that the hard drive I bought off the internet, which was supposed to be brand new, had the bios changed in it, making it look like a 250 GB hdd that I paid for instead of the 125 GB hdd that it actually was. I bought a new hard drive and am no longer having the problem. I wonder if any body else here is have boot problems because of getting ripped off on their hard drives.

I suddenly began experiencing this problem this morning, after applying an update to Ubuntu 10.10. I've reinstalled grub2 to no effect. I did a complete re-install of my / partition. Same result. Error: no such device.

Thanks to yet another complete failure in Ubuntu testing this has occurred when I tried to do a standard network upgrade from 10.10 to 11.04. Now I cannot load Ubuntu, Windows 7 OR the recovery partition. Laptop is essentially useless. Thanks!

On 10/08/2011 06:48 PM, Kristoffer Grundström wrote:

Any way to block this guy who's account was hacked?

The fix may be released, but it doesn't fix the problem, see https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub2/+bug/896391