10.10 - cannot install bootloader

[Dobroslav]

Error message is:

Sorry, an error occurred and it was not possible to install the bootloader at the specified location.

It appears during fresh installation of Ubi 10.10. I have three options: to continue without it, to try again(unsuccessful) and to stop installation. I have continued without it and i have tried to install grub from livecd, but it seems not working....

What to do now? i'm stuck at the installation, please help...

[lemming465]

When you tried to install the boot loader from the live CD, what specifically did you do? Also, what is your partition layout? My best results with boot problems come when I use chroot to transition to the disk based filesytem. E.g. if your ubuntu install was a single root partition on /dev/sda3, something like:

sudo bash
mount /dev/sda3 /mnt
cd /mnt
for f in sys dev proc; do mount -o bind /$f $f; done
chroot .
grub-install /dev/sda

[bsampson]

I hate to hijack a thread, but this appears abandoned, and I'm having the exact same problem.

I install 10.10 to an older MSI Pentium D Celeron based system, using a 200 GB IDE drive. I've also tried a 1.5TB SATA drive, with the exact same results. I let the system use the entire disk and partition the drive using default settings.

The install seems to go fine, until the very end where it appears to create the bootloader. The error is the same as the original post described. The drive seems to have the full install loaded to it, I just can't boot to it.

It's almost as if the boot sector is protected. I've also tried 10.04 with the same result - although the error is presented slightly differently.

Can anybody give me any tips?

[Rubi1200]

Hi and welcome to the forums
it might be better to start your own thread as each situation is different.

In any event, use a LiveCD to boot the computer and choose to try Ubuntu in live mode.

Follow the instructions in the link at the bottom of my post and post the results back here.

Please wrap the text with the # tag which can be found on the menu bar.

Thanks.

[bsampson]

Thanks for your reply Rubi - here are the contents of the RESULTS.txt file:

                Boot Info Script 0.55    dated February 15th, 2010                    

============================= Boot Info Summary: ==============================

 => No boot loader is installed in the MBR of /dev/sda

sda1: _________________________________________________________________________

    File system:       ext4
    Boot sector type:  -
    Boot sector info:  
    Operating System:  Ubuntu 10.10
    Boot files/dirs:   /boot/grub/grub.cfg /etc/fstab

sda2: _________________________________________________________________________

    File system:       Extended Partition
    Boot sector type:  -
    Boot sector info:  

sda5: _________________________________________________________________________

    File system:       swap
    Boot sector type:  -
    Boot sector info:  

=========================== Drive/Partition Info: =============================

Drive: sda ___________________ _____________________________________________________

Disk /dev/sda: 200.0 GB, 200049647616 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 24321 cylinders, total 390721968 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

Partition  Boot         Start           End          Size  Id System

/dev/sda1               2,048   374,792,191   374,790,144  83 Linux
/dev/sda2         374,794,238   390,721,535    15,927,298   5 Extended
/dev/sda5         374,794,240   390,721,535    15,927,296  82 Linux swap / Solaris


blkid -c /dev/null: ____________________________________________________________

Device           UUID                                   TYPE       LABEL                         

/dev/loop0                                              squashfs                                 
/dev/sda1        95123108-a3d4-49b6-8f5f-f7d8668f0991   ext4                                     
/dev/sda2: PTTYPE="dos" 
/dev/sda5        e5ba74c4-5fcc-424c-86cc-73722c322170   swap                                     
/dev/sda: PTTYPE="dos" 

============================ "mount | grep ^/dev  output: ===========================

Device           Mount_Point              Type       Options

aufs             /                        aufs       (rw)
/dev/sr0         /cdrom                   iso9660    (ro,noatime)
/dev/loop0       /rofs                    squashfs   (ro,noatime)


=========================== sda1/boot/grub/grub.cfg: ===========================

#
# DO NOT EDIT THIS FILE
#
# It is automatically generated by grub-mkconfig using templates
# from /etc/grub.d and settings from /etc/default/grub
#

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/00_header ###
if [ -s $prefix/grubenv ]; then
  set have_grubenv=true
  load_env
fi
set default="0"
if [ "${prev_saved_entry}" ]; then
  set saved_entry="${prev_saved_entry}"
  save_env saved_entry
  set prev_saved_entry=
  save_env prev_saved_entry
  set boot_once=true
fi

function savedefault {
  if [ -z "${boot_once}" ]; then
    saved_entry="${chosen}"
    save_env saved_entry
  fi
}

function recordfail {
  set recordfail=1
  if [ -n "${have_grubenv}" ]; then if [ -z "${boot_once}" ]; then save_env recordfail; fi; fi
}

function load_video {
}

if [ "${recordfail}" = 1 ]; then
  set timeout=-1
else
  set timeout=10
fi
### END /etc/grub.d/00_header ###

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme ###
set menu_color_normal=white/black
set menu_color_highlight=black/light-gray
### END /etc/grub.d/05_debian_theme ###

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/10_linux ###
menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 2.6.35-22-generic-pae' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os {
    recordfail
    insmod part_msdos
    insmod ext2
    set root='(hd0,msdos1)'
    search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set 95123108-a3d4-49b6-8f5f-f7d8668f0991
    linux    /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-22-generic-pae root=UUID=95123108-a3d4-49b6-8f5f-f7d8668f0991 ro   quiet splash
    initrd    /boot/initrd.img-2.6.35-22-generic-pae
}
menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 2.6.35-22-generic-pae (recovery mode)' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os {
    recordfail
    insmod part_msdos
    insmod ext2
    set root='(hd0,msdos1)'
    search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set 95123108-a3d4-49b6-8f5f-f7d8668f0991
    echo    'Loading Linux 2.6.35-22-generic-pae ...'
    linux    /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-22-generic-pae root=UUID=95123108-a3d4-49b6-8f5f-f7d8668f0991 ro single 
    echo    'Loading initial ramdisk ...'
    initrd    /boot/initrd.img-2.6.35-22-generic-pae
}
menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 2.6.35-22-generic' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os {
    recordfail
    insmod part_msdos
    insmod ext2
    set root='(hd0,msdos1)'
    search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set 95123108-a3d4-49b6-8f5f-f7d8668f0991
    linux    /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-22-generic root=/dev/sda1 ro   quiet splash
}
menuentry 'Ubuntu, with Linux 2.6.35-22-generic (recovery mode)' --class ubuntu --class gnu-linux --class gnu --class os {
    recordfail
    insmod part_msdos
    insmod ext2
    set root='(hd0,msdos1)'
    search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set 95123108-a3d4-49b6-8f5f-f7d8668f0991
    echo    'Loading Linux 2.6.35-22-generic ...'
    linux    /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-22-generic root=/dev/sda1 ro single 
    echo    'Loading initial ramdisk ...'
}
### END /etc/grub.d/10_linux ###

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/20_linux_xen ###
### END /etc/grub.d/20_linux_xen ###

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+ ###
menuentry "Memory test (memtest86+)" {
    insmod part_msdos
    insmod ext2
    set root='(hd0,msdos1)'
    search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set 95123108-a3d4-49b6-8f5f-f7d8668f0991
    linux16    /boot/memtest86+.bin
}
menuentry "Memory test (memtest86+, serial console 115200)" {
    insmod part_msdos
    insmod ext2
    set root='(hd0,msdos1)'
    search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set 95123108-a3d4-49b6-8f5f-f7d8668f0991
    linux16    /boot/memtest86+.bin console=ttyS0,115200n8
}
### END /etc/grub.d/20_memtest86+ ###

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ###
if [ "x${timeout}" != "x-1" ]; then
  if keystatus; then
    if keystatus --shift; then
      set timeout=-1
    else
      set timeout=0
    fi
  else
    if sleep --interruptible 3 ; then
      set timeout=0
    fi
  fi
fi
### END /etc/grub.d/30_os-prober ###

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/40_custom ###
# This file provides an easy way to add custom menu entries.  Simply type the
# menu entries you want to add after this comment.  Be careful not to change
# the 'exec tail' line above.
### END /etc/grub.d/40_custom ###

### BEGIN /etc/grub.d/41_custom ###
if [ -f  $prefix/custom.cfg ]; then
  source $prefix/custom.cfg;
fi
### END /etc/grub.d/41_custom ###

=============================== sda1/etc/fstab: ===============================

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid -o value -s UUID' to print the universally unique identifier
# for a device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name
# devices that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
proc            /proc           proc    nodev,noexec,nosuid 0       0
# / was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=95123108-a3d4-49b6-8f5f-f7d8668f0991 /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1
# swap was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=e5ba74c4-5fcc-424c-86cc-73722c322170 none            swap    sw              0       0
/dev/fd0        /media/floppy0  auto    rw,user,noauto,exec,utf8 0       0

=================== sda1: Location of files loaded by Grub: ===================


  64.5GB: boot/grub/grub.cfg
    .7GB: boot/initrd.img-2.6.35-22-generic-pae
    .4GB: boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-22-generic
  17.3GB: boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-22-generic-pae
    .7GB: initrd.img
  17.3GB: vmlinuz
ubuntu@ubuntu:~/Downloads$

[ronparent]

Have you tried the grub 2 reinstall. From a live cd session oppen a terminal. Then mount your install partition

sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt

Then the reinstall:

sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/ /dev/sda

If it doesn't boot now then something might be blocking the MBR - but I doubt it.

[bsampson]

Thanks ronparent, that did the trick!

[Rubi1200]

Don't forget to run

sudo update-grub

as well.

Glad you got things sorted out

Please mark this thread Solved using te Thread Tools near the top of the page.

[bsampson]

Thanks Rubi - Apparently another reason I should have started my own thread - so I can mark it 'solved'... I don't see the option under thread tools.

[Rubi1200]

Thanks Rubi - Apparently another reason I should have started my own thread - so I can mark it 'solved'... I don't see the option under thread tools.

Oops! Yes, you are right of course