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error: no such device:

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rj98942
rj98942 Posts: 11
in Getting Started with Linux

this is about the 4th time i've tried to reinstall linux ubuntu with no results. i am attempting to have a dual boot system with ubuntu and windows 7. i have a gateway lx series with an intel core 2 quad Q8200 processor, nvidia gt120 with 1gig of dedicated ram, 8 gigs of ram. after going through the entire installation process, after it tells me to restart and kicks out the CD, before i get to select os or anything, i get this message:

error: no such device: 14150b0a-9486-4824-94c3-8d93cfa1afa4.

grub rescue>

What do i do? i want to have a decent computer to at least work with. i can load from the live cd again, but that's kind of a pain because none of my settings stay.

Thanks in advance for your time guys.

Comments

  • mfillpot
    mfillpot Posts: 2,177
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    It sounds like the bootloader automatically makes a references to the partition ID, but is unable to load he partition ID's to figure out which partition to boot. I recommend booting into the live-cd, mounting your ubuntu partition and modifying the ubuntu entry in /boot/grub/gurb.conf (or whatever the grub2 configuration file is) then modifying the entry with that string to make a clean partition reference such as /dev/sda3 (insert the partition number that ubuntu is installed on).
  • marc
    marc Posts: 647
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    cd /dev/disk/by-uuid
ls -l

    You'll see there which partition your linux system is in :)

    In /boo/grub/menu.lst you'll see something like this: 
    # (0) Arch Linux
title  Arch Linux
root   (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/18e90de5-eb68-4e20-8b25-a90759cbec71 fbpercrtc=1 ro
initrd /kernel26.img

    Change it to look like:
    # (0) Arch Linux
title  Arch Linux
root   (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sdxX fbpercrtc=1 ro
initrd /kernel26.img

    Where sdxX is the partition we found out before :)

    Although I must warn you that I do not know for sure if Ubuntu 10.04 comes with Grub2 and therefore I'm not sure these instructions are gonna work. They are worth a try though ;)
  • mfillpot
    mfillpot Posts: 2,177
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    Ubuntu 9.10 and up all use grub2, that is one of my general annoyances.

    Marc is correct about the steps and how to track infromation, you can find an example of a grub2 custom menu entry on https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2#Custom Menu Entries, if you can piece together the infromation from Mac and the link I provided then you should be able to fix the issue.
  • rj98942
    rj98942 Posts: 11
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    wow guys. ok. i'm sorry. can you dumb that down a bit? if it's too much of a pain i understand but i'm kind of looking for a step by step deal here.
    1. turn on pc
    2. wait for pc to mess up
    3. bang head against desk repeatedly until you can no longer read error: no such device: ######
    4. take half a bottle of asprin with a handle of irish whiskey.

    see what i'm getting at? again, thanks guys.

    is there a way to do instant messaging on linux.com? i think that would make life a bit easier.

    i found using sudo fdisk -l gives me a whole bunch of info that i dont know what to do with.

    Disk /dev/sda: 640.1 GB 640135028736 bytes
    255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 77825 cylinders
    Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512=8225280 bytes
    sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes/ 512 bytes
    I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes/ 512 bytes
    disk identifier: 0xf4dcae3e

    Device Boot start end blocks id system
    /dev/sda1 1 1913 15366141 27 unknown
    /dev/sda2 * 1914 77826 609763324 7 HPFS/NTFS

    i hope one of you guys can make sense of this. it's kind of jibberish to me at this point. i'm gonna go back to step 3 i think.
  • marc
    marc Posts: 647
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    Sent you a PM to talk on IM :)
  • mfillpot
    mfillpot Posts: 2,177
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    If possible please post the important parts from the IM conversation on this thread so the process can help others.
  • marc
    marc Posts: 647
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    Well, finally he got to install linux :)

    It seems the problem was due to he installed linux on an external hard drive and not in the regular hard drive. That seems to be the reason why the bootloader couldn't find the device.

    We used our IM talk to give him some basic instructions on linux command line and we finally got to install fedora 12 on his system. It seems there was a problem with the ubuntu installer as it couldn't find his hard drive (strange because Gparted did :S). We chose to go for fedora as it seemed to work right out of the box ;)

    He also had some trouble with his Windows installation. Nothing a reinstall could not solve, you know the deal with Windows ;)

    In the end, everything seems to be working fine

    Correct me if I'm wrong in something rj98942! :)
  • rj98942
    rj98942 Posts: 11
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    the only thing i noticed about the post was the fact that reinstalling windows 7 is a pain in the butt. other than that, i do not have the slightest idea why it tried to install to my external hard drive. either way, i need to figure out how to fix it. i partitioned the hell out of it trying to get Ubuntu on there. i am finished with the install of windows though so now i will reinstall Fedora 12 and pray that the two operating systems will play nice together. So for the moment, i'm back to square one but with a little more information than what i had before. i will still probably go with fedora because it worked last time. if you have any suggestions or ideas (especially on how to unpartition a drive) let me know and thanks again for all the help guys.
  • Goineasy9
    Goineasy9 Posts: 1,114
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    Fedora 13 was released today. Save yourself the upgrade and install F13 instead.
  • rj98942
    rj98942 Posts: 11
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    sweet deal on f13. i hope it will install for me. i tried again with fedora 12 before i knew of the new release and it was giving me an error for installing. not sure what that was about. i'll keep you guys posted as how things are going with fedora 13 64 bit dual booting with windows 7 home premium 64 bit.
  • rj98942
    rj98942 Posts: 11
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    Fedora 13 is alive and well on my computer!!!! Yay!!!. i have not checked windows yet though. i'm kind of scared to do that. either way i like the install process in general as this being my second successful install of fedora, this one had it's scarey moments. i did have to choose the advance option on where to install fedora and under that, it listed my hard drive as the BIOS drive or something like that. but after some math, i figured the BIOS drive should not be roughly 500Gb. so seeing as how that was my only option, i went with it. other than that, every thing worked out nicely so far. even after the restart Fedora gave me a warning that was the install checklist kind of thing and it said everything was ok. so life is good for the moment. now to download the 9 updates (really? this just got released today and there are already updates?) and then a restart to test windows. wish me luck.
  • rj98942
    rj98942 Posts: 11
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    maybe those 9 updates were something else, just got 104 more. i guess i didnt get all of fedora 12's updates installed. oops....lol
  • marc
    marc Posts: 647
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    To partition the external hard drive, you could use the app "gparted"...
  • rj98942
    rj98942 Posts: 11
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    after the 113 updates to Fedora 13 i restarted so the updates would take effect and then restarted again to make sure i can get back into win7. so kind of on a good note, win7 lives. why did fedora change my clock? either way life is good. with my external hard drive, i think i'm going to try to keep it in 2 partitions. one for windows and one for Fedora as backups. any ideas on how to get music from my windows side and copy it over to my fedora side? i was thinking on using an mp3 (not iPod) as a USB storage device. grabbing from windows. disconnecting it, then after the start into fedora hooking it back up to see if it works. ooh, i also really need to know the best way to make the os selection screen appear on it's own and preferably stop there until there is input from the user. i would like it to not automatically boot into one or the other on it's own. so while window's does it's huge backup (9 hours so far....) i am going to start to educate myself on fedora and maybe even *nix in general? let's not get carried away. i'll start with fedora. thanks guys.
  • marc
    marc Posts: 647
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    Maybe we should start a new topic? :)

    Don't worry about the music, you can access your files from fedora (probably not the other way around! from windows you won't see the linux files).

    That is:

    1-partition in ntfs
    2-partition in ext3/ext4/xfs/reiser3/reiser4/whatever (suggest ext4)

    Plugging that in to windows will let you access the ntfs partition and in Fedora you'll have access to both partitions(reading for sure to the ntfs partition, writting...it depends ).

    To the bootscreen:

    You need to edit the line "Timeout 0" and set it to a proper value in /boot/grub/grub.conf
  • Goineasy9
    Goineasy9 Posts: 1,114
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    Heh, a new topic at this point would be nice.
    why did fedora change my clock?

    System-->Administration-->Date & Time-->Time Zone and uncheck the box that says System clock uses UTC.

    This a known problem when dual booting Linux & Windows.
  • riefad
    riefad Posts: 2
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    im using windows 7 n ubuntuin dirrerent hardisk...
    when i open ubuntu after 3 days.. it say nedd to update n i press the update button .. and it say need toe reboot n i reboot..
    after reboot it say error: no such device: 72809b11-c3be-44f1-8c72-68944a0cdba8.....
    i have try all ypur commands which u have post earlier n many more from other website.. its still can boot..
    n it effect my window 7 hardisk too..
    wat can i do.. please help.. im newbie in linux.. i wanna try to learn it cause it fun n nicer then window.. n im 19 years old from malaysia.
    please help me... :(
  • riefad
    riefad Posts: 2
    Options
    im using windows 7 n ubuntuin dirrerent hardisk...
    when i open ubuntu after 3 days.. it say nedd to update n i press the update button .. and it say need toe reboot n i reboot..
    after reboot it say error: no such device: 72809b11-c3be-44f1-8c72-68944a0cdba8.....
    i have try all ypur commands which u have post earlier n many more from other website.. its still can boot..
    n it effect my window 7 hardisk too..
    wat can i do.. please help.. im newbie in linux.. i wanna try to learn it cause it fun n nicer then window.. n im 19 years old from malaysia.
    please help me...
  • Janed
    Janed Posts: 8
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    rj98942 wrote:
    wow guys. ok. i'm sorry. can you dumb that down a bit?
    ...
    4. take half a bottle of asprin with a handle of irish whiskey.
    /quote]
    Ok, for about the price of a bottle of asprin and bottle of good irish whiskey you could buy another HD and a couple disk-drawers and install linux on the fresh HD without comingling enemy operating systems...
  • mfillpot
    mfillpot Posts: 2,177
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    The issue is that when you ran the update it updated grub which re-wrote your bootloader. You will need to use the ubntu installation disk to rewrite the bootloader with the correct disk locations. Most likely it changed the HDD priority to make the ubuntu disk the primary and the former first disk secondary.

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