Upgrade to ubuntu 10.10 - a nightmare

You can read about the grub_xputs not found error  which I encountered during my upgrade from Ubuntu 10.04 to Ubuntu 10.10 in my previous blog entry.

My Ubuntu Story

I began using ubuntu with 7.04. For upto ubuntu 9.04 and part of 9.10 I was running Ubuntu on a dual boot desktop machine with XP. I bought a laptop in jan 2010 and decide to drop windows as by that time I was comfortable with Linux alone. I started on my laptop with 9.10 which worked pretty decently and did not cause me much problem.

Then Ubuntu 10.04 LTS came. Seeing the great positive feed back I upgraded my system to Lucid and my most productive machine was born. I installed kubuntu and edubuntu together with ubuntu and every single program was working like a charm.I could easily run a windows 7 using Virtualbox along with the Linux in full swing. Kubuntu was working alongside Ubuntu perfectly with almost no error at all.

My Ubuntu Horror Story 
 
Then the disaster upgrade came in the shape of Ubuntu 10.10. I upgraded using the inbuilt tools and had no live cd with me. When I finally boot the system up using the method I described in my previous post I found my system almost normal.The problem began when I started playing an HD media file.

How to solve grub_xputs not found error in Ubuntu 10.10 without live CD

grub_xputs not found error occurs when grub is installed in any partition other than the MBR. This blog post targets those who upgraded to Ubuntu 10.10 from Ubuntu 10.04 using the software upgrade option and who does not have a live cd with them.

Solve grub-xputs not found error without a live CD 

1 Go to Supergrubdisk website and download SuperGrub2 Disk (1.44MB) 

2 Burn It to a CD or a USB and boot from that medium. 

3 Select default from the options menu that is displayed you will be booted using the misplaced grub. 

Now if you want to know about how I got the error in the first place and how the solution came to me please read on……. 

My Story 

About 2 weeks after the release of ubuntu 10.10, I decided to upgrade my laptop from Ubuntu 10.04 to 10.10. Even though lifehacker said there were not much ‘must have’ feature in Ubuntu 10.10 I decided to give it a shot. I have free net access on my 2 Mbps connection from 2 am to 8 am hence I started upgrade at about 4 am when I got up.  It downloaded a total of 1.3GB files and took about 2 hrs for installing alone. 

The upgrade was completed at 9 am. The long 5 hr installation was contributed by my delay in answering questions put to me by the system ( coz I slept in between). 

During the installation I made a foolish mistake, I selected the Linux file system partition as the grub installation point instead of the MBR. The next thing that popped up when I pressed the return key was that “This is a bad Idea”. In fact the whole decision of upgrade was ‘bad idea’ but more on that later. Still the installation completed successfully. 

On the reboot my sytem got stuck at a new command prompt which was named grub rescue, after displaying an erro saying that grub_xputs is not found. As I was upgrading from Ubuntu 10.04 to 10.10 from within the OS I had no live CD with me. So boot up from live CD and reinstalling the grub was out of question at that moment. I tried to download a new Linux installation image from Ubuntu site but it was being downloaded at a staggering rate of 20Kbps at the moment. 

I calculated that it will take about 11 hrs to complete the download and reinstall grub. So I began searching for other solutions, wandered lot in ubuntuforums but most of the options I got was using the live CD to rescue the system. 

Then the solution came to me. Supergrubdisk website. This website offers solutions to boot problems in systems using grub. I had three options there 

Option 1. Rescatux 

Download size 334 MB (= 5 hrs download). This file is able to repair all boot problems. It can repair, find missing grub and do just about anything on the grub.

Option 2 SuperGrub2 Disk Download size 1.44MB(Floppy???). This would search and find any missing grub in the system and boot using that grub to an already installed OS. A good option for me as I accidentally misplaced my grub. This option work for Grub2 which is the commonest boot loader now a days

Option 3 Super Grub Disk Download size 4 MB. This would fix grub(also called legacy grub not used much now) but not grub 2(My grub). but can boot to any system. 

I opted for the second one. Downloaded the 1.44 MB file burned it to a CD and booted from it. An option screen popped up on how to boot, I selected the default boot option. The program searched for the missing grub and booted from it.

After Logging into my system I reinstalled the Grub and on reboot my system was booting up like nothing happened…….ever.