Ubuntu
grub package

"error 15: file not found" after grub option is chosen

Asked by Xavi

SHORT error description:
--------------------------------------
I've just upgraded to Ubuntu 9.04 beta (from Ubuntu 8.10), and after finishing the upgrade from the network, with not error message shown at all, I rebooted the computer as requested, and then I cannot successfully boot the computer again. After the grub (1.5) menu is shown (showing the right 9.04 options and kernels), I get:

"Error 15: file not found."

on any of the GNU/Linux options provided at the grub menu.

LONG error description:
--------------------------------------
I had in my desktop computer a dual installation of Windows 2000 Professional and Ubuntu 8.04 (and several other old partitions with old deleted GNU/Linux distros on them: fedora, pclinux, ...). I attempted to connect to a new phone to the computer in order to manage all my contacts in that phone, etc. and the "Nokia Pc Suite" provided to do it didn't work under GNU/Linux, not even using Wine. And the GNU/linux alternatives (gnokii, wammu, etc.) didn't work for that phone model.
Unluckily, that "Nokia Pc Suite" didn't work on Win2kpro, only on Win XP onwards (and not through virtualbox OSE, because no usb drives are supported, etc), so I decided to install Win XP also on the computer.

That was by February'09. After I installed Win XP, and successfully connected the computer to the mobile phone through that "Nokia Pc Suite" software, there electricity was gone for some time while the desktop computer was working. When the electricity was recovered, I saw some "error 15: file not found" at boot time, as far as I remember.

It took me a while to recover that grub boot working again, much more time that in previous years (when just win 2k had taken away the grub boot menu at the MBR): I mean, that there are several partitions with /boot/grub/ folder on them, but only on partition is the right one with the valid ubuntu.
So finally I managed to recover the right boot grub menu and options, etc. (as far as I remember, bu installing the Ubuntu 8.10 on top of the partition where I used to have the Ubuntu 8.04, and re-fixing the boot through grub by hand: there was soe change in the way the menu-list syntax is written between 8.04 and 8.10, as far as I remember).

The thing is that I ended up again with a working Ubuntu 8.10, with a win xp and win2k os next to it. And everything was fine again.

Well, yesterday I decided to upgrade the system again to use Ubuntu 9.04 while still in beta, and I ended up again with an unusable system. All the "upgrade from network" process went fine. REbooted at the end, as requested, and then: "Error 15: file not found".

Attempting to see the partitions with gparted long ago (the other time it happened to me) showed as if the whole sda disk is not formated (where Ubuntu GNU/Linux is installed in one the their logical partitions).

Nowadays I'm writing this report through a spare Kubuntu 9.04 beta on a Live (RW) CD. After reporting this, I'll do my best to recover that grub menu.lst somehow, but if you have any hint on how to do it properly, I would greatly appreciate it.

Please, tell me if I can provide any further information from files from this broken system (Whenever I can access to those partitions), please tell me so.

Thanks for your help, and for improving Free Software.

Question information

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Solved
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Ubuntu grub Edit question
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Solved by:
Jeruvy
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Revision history for this message
Xavi (xavidp) said : 		#1

Installed gparted through the Kubuntu 9.04 beta Live CD, and it doesn't recognize any hard disk partitions!!! :-(
When closing gparted, I see in the console:

  ======================
  libparted : 1.8.8
  ======================
  Can't have overlapping partitions.

In case it helps...
It seems that something went wrong with the partition table at upgrade time?

Revision history for this message
Xavi (xavidp) said : 		#2

Oh well, after googling a bit and reading quite a lot, I got inspired by this other message (https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/32860). So that I post here the result of "fdisk -l"
(still from the kubuntu 9.04 beta live CD)

-----------------------------
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l
omitting empty partition (5)

Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x0001424b

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 3824 30716248+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda2 3825 14593 86501992+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda3 14302 14593 2345458+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda5 3825 5099 10241374+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 5100 5736 5116671 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 5737 7648 15358108+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda8 7649 8692 8385898+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda9 8693 9345 5245191 83 Linux
/dev/sda10 9346 14300 39801006 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)

-----------------------------

And don't see any overlapping myself between start and end numbers on my partition table.
Where could the problem be?

Help!

Revision history for this message
Xavi (xavidp) said : 		#3

And at last, the /boot/grub/menu.lst from the drive where ubuntu is:

------------------------------
# menu.lst - See: grub(8), info grub, update-grub(8)
# grub-install(8), grub-floppy(8),
# grub-md5-crypt, /usr/share/doc/grub
# and /usr/share/doc/grub-doc/.

default 0

timeout 10

# I skip the commented default lines from this part of the file

title Ubuntu 9.04, kernel 2.6.28-11-generic
root (hd0,8)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-11-generic root=UUID=6bfc8aa3-3362-40e1-93ea-6cae984d4af5 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.28-11-generic
quiet

title Ubuntu 9.04, kernel 2.6.28-11-generic (recovery mode)
root (hd0,8)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-11-generic root=UUID=6bfc8aa3-3362-40e1-93ea-6cae984d4af5 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.28-11-generic

title Ubuntu 9.04, kernel 2.6.27-11-generic
root (hd0,8)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-11-generic root=UUID=6bfc8aa3-3362-40e1-93ea-6cae984d4af5 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-11-generic
quiet

title Ubuntu 9.04, kernel 2.6.27-11-generic (recovery mode)
root (hd0,8)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.27-11-generic root=UUID=6bfc8aa3-3362-40e1-93ea-6cae984d4af5 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.27-11-generic

title Ubuntu 9.04, kernel 2.6.24-23-generic
root (hd0,8)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-23-generic root=UUID=6bfc8aa3-3362-40e1-93ea-6cae984d4af5 ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-23-generic
quiet

title Ubuntu 9.04, kernel 2.6.24-23-generic (recovery mode)
root (hd0,8)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.24-23-generic root=UUID=6bfc8aa3-3362-40e1-93ea-6cae984d4af5 ro single
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.24-23-generic

title Ubuntu 9.04, memtest86+
root (hd0,8)
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
quiet

### END DEBIAN AUTOMAGIC KERNELS LIST

# This is a divider, added to separate the menu items below from the Debian
# ones.
title Other operating systems:
root

# This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for a non-linux OS
# on /dev/sda1
title Microxof Windows XP o 2k Pofesional
root (hd0,0)
savedefault
makeactive
chainloader +1

## This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for an existing
## linux installation on /dev/sda6.
#title LINKAT 2 (on /dev/sda6)
#root (hd0,5)
#kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.16.54-0.2.3-default root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3120022A_4JT0NMJ5-part6 vga=0x317 resume=/dev/hda5 splash=silent showopts
#initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.16.54-0.2.3-default
#savedefault
#boot
#
#
## This entry automatically added by the Debian installer for an existing
## linux installation on /dev/sda6.
#title A prova de fallades -- LINKAT 2 (on /dev/sda6)
#root (hd0,5)
#kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.16.54-0.2.3-default root=/dev/disk/by-id/ata-ST3120022A_4JT0NMJ5-part6 vga=normal showopts ide=nodma apm=off acpi=off noresume nosmp noapic maxcpus=0 edd=off 3
#initrd /boot/initrd-2.6.16.54-0.2.3-default
#savedefault
#boot

------------------------------

Revision history for this message
Andreas Moog (ampelbein) said : 		#4

Thank you for taking the time to report this issue and helping to make Ubuntu better. Examining the information you have given us, this does not appear to be a bug report so we are closing it and converting it to a question in the support tracker. We appreciate the difficulties you are facing, but it would make more sense to raise problems you are having in the support tracker at https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu if you are uncertain if they are bugs.

From your fdisk -l:

/dev/sda2 3825 14593 86501992+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda3 14302 14593 2345458+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

So there are overlapping partitions.

Revision history for this message
Xavi (xavidp) said : 		#5

Ok, regardless the question whether this comes from a bug or not, how can I fix it?

My GNU/Linux system became unusable...
(well, I can boot on windows for the time being, but, eeerrrr, I kind of stopped using windows for production years ago... I would like to avoid going to back to M$)...

Revision history for this message
Stone age (stein-somers) said : 		#6

No idea what is meant with that "omitting empty partition (5)", but to get rid of the overlap you'd have to either make sda2 a little shorter, or remove sda3.

Making sda2 shorter with fdisk is difficult: you have to recreate it and all the logical partitions inside, and be sure to note sector numbers instead of coarse cylinder numbers.

But deleting a swap partition like sda3 is safe and easy. Open the fdisk command line with "sudo fdisk /dev/sda", execute "d", select partition "3", try "v", commit changes with "w".

Hopefully gparted works again and you can recreate a swap partition.

Revision history for this message
Best Jeruvy (jeruvy) said : 		#7

I don't know how you cannot see the overlapping partitions, they are all over the place.

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 1 3824 30716248+ c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sda2 3825 14593 86501992+ f W95 Ext'd (LBA)
/dev/sda3 14302 14593 2345458+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda5 3825 5099 10241374+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 5100 5736 5116671 83 Linux
/dev/sda7 5737 7648 15358108+ b W95 FAT32
/dev/sda8 7649 8692 8385898+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda9 8693 9345 5245191 83 Linux
/dev/sda10 9346 14300 39801006 c W95 FAT32 (LBA)

dev/sda1 overlaps /dev/sda2 additionally overlaps next partition, etc. etc.

Since it's really messed up, I'd suggest formatting the entire disk and starting over, it's quite likely the overlap has corrupted many files.

Or you could try to follow the instruction from previous posters and the documentation to remove the overlapping partitions. IMHO that is such a chore I'd just start over, be faster and simpler.

Revision history for this message
Xavi (xavidp) said : 		#8

Thanks Andreas, you are right. That was my first time looking for overlappings, and I didn't know that the extended partition didn't have to cover the whole set of logical partitions after itself. That's why I didn't see the overlapping. thanks for the report.

Thanks, Stone age, I thought in doing so, but since I was not sure that just removing partition 3 would do the trick, I didn't do it myself alone before asking.
I tried aslo with the "testdisk" application, but (after making a whole backup of my important files from all partitions, using windows and the Ubuntu Live CD for the ext3 partitions), it didn't solve it.

So I finally opted for starting from scratch, which was kind of needed, as you Jeruvy very well suggested.
It took only 3-4 hours resetting the whole computer, partitions in a more tidy and logical way.
And everything is now back working.

My only doubt is: why the upgrade to Ubuntu 9.04 release candidate did that overlapping?
Anyways, thanks for your help and hints: I have ubuntu back again working fine.

Cheers

Revision history for this message
Xavi (xavidp) said : 		#9

Thanks Jeruvy, that solved my question.

Revision history for this message
Xavi (xavidp) said : 		#10

mmm, that previous auutomatic post "Thanks Jeruvy, that solved my question." was not written by me, but by launchpad. :-/
I thanked to all of you, not just Jeruvy.... and Stone age probably would also solved the question... but sorry, launchpad doesn't allow me to click also on the button on yours reply ("this solved the question", etc.

Revision history for this message
Xavi (xavidp) said : 		#11

Hi again:

Ubuntu 9.04 seems to have some trouble handling fat32 partitions...
After I started from scratch again, and some days working with the new 9.04 systen, the first problems arose...
See this other question:
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub/+question/68787
"after fresh reinstall of (1) Win XP, and (2) Ubuntu 9.04, differences arose between fat32 bootsector and its backup (dosfsck)"

Maybe some bug still around with dosfsck, grub or somewhere related?