From: stormreaver
Written: 2009-12-02 14:03:34.633515
Subject: GRUB 2
Written: 2009-12-02 14:03:34.633515
Subject: GRUB 2
I upgraded my 9.04 system to 9.10 a few days ago. More accurately, I tried to upgrade my 9.04 system to 9.10 a few days ago. When I clicked on the system tray icon that told me about the availability of the upgrade, I went through the normal series of steps that I've gone through several times in the past when performing upgrades. Everything upgraded smoothly, and I rebooted into a mess of a system. The video driver corrupted the hell out of my display, and the usability of my system went downhill fast. I decided that a fresh install was in order. I've gone through rolling system upgrades since Kubuntu 6.06 (or whatever the version number was back then), so I was due for a fresh install anyway. I have my home directory on a separate drive, so everything should have been fine. I did a fresh install, and rebooted my computer.
When GRUB got control of the system, it immediately died with a cryptic "Error 2". Nothing else; just "Error 2". A little Googling revealed that Error 2 indicates a drive that does not exist. I'm going to spare you the two days of agony that followed, and skip right to the point: do NOT mix IDE and SATA drives in the same system if you want anything resembling a painless installation of anything using GRUB.
Since the IDE hard drive was what I wanted to use to host the new install of 9.10, I physically disconnected all the other drives (all SATA) before starting the 9.10 installer for the billionth time. After the billionth successful installation, I rebooted my computer.
This time, the installation worked. I changed /etc/fstab to mount my /home hard disk on boot, and got all my old files back. Fortunately, all of my backups were on that drive, so I restored my web server and other backed up system files.
Let me reiterate: GRUB 2 does not play well with mixed drive systems. Have either everything IDE, or everything SATA. Do not use both, or you're going to run into some very unpleasant realities.
When GRUB got control of the system, it immediately died with a cryptic "Error 2". Nothing else; just "Error 2". A little Googling revealed that Error 2 indicates a drive that does not exist. I'm going to spare you the two days of agony that followed, and skip right to the point: do NOT mix IDE and SATA drives in the same system if you want anything resembling a painless installation of anything using GRUB.
Since the IDE hard drive was what I wanted to use to host the new install of 9.10, I physically disconnected all the other drives (all SATA) before starting the 9.10 installer for the billionth time. After the billionth successful installation, I rebooted my computer.
This time, the installation worked. I changed /etc/fstab to mount my /home hard disk on boot, and got all my old files back. Fortunately, all of my backups were on that drive, so I restored my web server and other backed up system files.
Let me reiterate: GRUB 2 does not play well with mixed drive systems. Have either everything IDE, or everything SATA. Do not use both, or you're going to run into some very unpleasant realities.