[Discuss] Crashed computer on Xubuntu install

[Patrick]

Hi Gordon.

Okay, so...  This was a basic install, direct from the CD, no old
data on your hard-drive that you wanted to keep?  At least,
nothing that wasn't backed-up beforehand?

If so, the good news is that you don't have to treat your
hard-drive gently this time.  You can try booting from the
installer CD again, reformat the whole thing when the opportunity
presents itself, and install a clean new system onto a blank disk.

If it crashed while installing, the system may only be
half-installed, the filesystem damaged in the process, and that
might be why you're not getting the thing to boot.  There might
not *be* a working system there to boot in the first place.

Have you tried booting a live CD, not to install, but just to see
what's on the drive?  If it's already fried you have little to
lose.

Also, was this the desktop installer, or the alternate install?
Is this an older laptop?  I wonder if you simply ran out of RAM
toward the end.  The text-based alternate install CD requires a
lot less memory to run, so that might be an option.

I know you're not too fond of the terminal, but this is very much
a guided, step-by-step process.  Essentially, you'd still point-
-and-click your way through it, except you'd be using the arrow
keys, [Tab], [Esc] and [Enter] to do all your pointing and
clicking.  ;-)  Once it's installed, you'd still have the full
graphical desktop.  The DOS-like textual interface of the
installer is *not* what you'd be using on a regular basis.

It's strange that you'd get as far as installing Grub, though.
Grub is usually one of the final steps, after the kernel is in
place, so the installer will know what sort of kernel / boot
options to put in your /boot/grub/menu.lst file.

If you had Linux on there before, and the installer crashed
*before* Grub was re-installed, then you've probably got an old
Grub with a new kernel, and the old Grub is still still trying to
boot your old kernel, which isn't there anymore.

But I'm just guessing at this point.  *Don't* take my advice if
there's anything on the drive that you want to keep.

If you do try any of this, well, yes there's a lot of suggestions
here, but no need to try all of them at once.  Be cool, one thing
at a time.  If you run the desktop installer and it crashes again,
okay, guess that won't work.  Try the alternate.  And so on.



On Fri, 28 Dec 2007 16:40:57 -0800
Gordon wrote:

> I'll bring it along on Jan. 8th (that should be our regular meeting, plus 
> the disk I used for install. Maybe you or someone at the meeting can fix it 
> for me!

Good idea.  I have Xubuntu 7.10 ISOs, desktop and alternate, and
a few other live CDs, including RIPLinuX [Recovery Is Possible;
kind of like a Norton Utilities rescue disk, with penguins].

But you know, I still don't know what the topic for 2008/Jan/08
is.  Still `To Be Announced' on http://vlug.org/vlug/meetings/ ...

If there's a presenter lined up, I'd hate to interrupt that
[especially if it's me...  Is it me?  This close to the meeting I
kind of hope not, although I probably *can* throw together some
Asus EEE babble on short notice].

How about we puzzle over this, over pizza, at Boston Pizza, after
the meeting?  At this point I'm not sure who `we' are either,
except I'll probably be one of them, and the pitiful wails of a
laptop in distress should draw a few knights in shining
polychrome.

I just hope the other knights are smarter than me...


> 
> TIA
> 
> Old  railfans never die, they just lose track. . .Gordon 

Cheers,

Patrick.

-- 
Madison's Inquiry:
	If you have to travel on the Titanic, why not go first
	class?