[mdlug] Linux box won't boot

[David Lee Lambert]

Thanks to all for the advice.  I did get it working.  Was a failed GRUB 
problem (at least in part).

One other thing I forgot to mention ... this system uses a PS/2 
keyboard.  Fortunately I have a supply of four or five of those, but at 
least two (the one I had been using and the first other one I tried) 
have keys that don't work, including left "Shift" (on two of them!).  
First step was to find a 100% good keyboard.

Then I let it do its thing running GRUB and loading the first kernel.  
It dropped to the GRUB menu unable to mount the boot device.  I was 
worried,  but after poking around a bit, I ran "lvm", gave "vgchange -a 
y" at the "lvm>" prompt, and double "Ctrl+D" to drop back to GRUB and 
the boot process.  With that, it came right up; I made sure to run 
"update-grub" afterward.

(There was some error about a missing partition during the last 
"update-grub" invocation before the failed reboot; I didn't catch the 
exact wording.)

Since then, I'm able to reboot with no problem.

Still disconcerting that I don't see the BIOS options screen during the 
boot process.  I suspect that's the monitor's power-save mode kicking 
in, however, not a lack of output from the computer.

On 09/20/2014 03:31 PM, Harry Burleson wrote:
> You said that after the upgrade from Debian 6 to Debian 7 (Did you perform an
> in-place upgrade?) you had these problems.
>
> You saw the the Compaq logo and the GRUB menu briefly. That suggests that:
> - your BIOS is ok
> - your hardware might be ok
> - your MBR is ok - at least the part with the bootloader code
> - also, your GRUB is probably ok
>
> Maybe the reason you are unable to boot from the live CD is that the boot
> order in your BIOS does not have the CD drive listed as the first boot device.
>
> I presume you have GRUB 2 and not GRUB legacy. One possible reason for failure
> to load Debian is the upgrade process incorrectly set up the
> /boot/grub/grub.cfg file incorrectly - specifically, it did not assign the
> correct values to UUID (universally unique identifier) for the boot and root
> partitions. You would normally get an error message when GRUB fails to load the
> kernel but maybe it could fail silently.
>
> Also, when you poke around in grub.cfg
> you may want to turn off the quiet option for the kernel:
> ... vmlinuz ...ro quiet ....
>
> I'm not sure about the blank screen. Does your monitor have two inputs? Does
> your BIOS have a setting to select internal or external video device?
>
> Some GRUB references:
>
> http://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/grub-2.html
>
> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2
>
> https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Features/Grub2
>
> http://www.aboutlinux.info/2005/11/how-to-repair-corrupt-mbr-and-boot.html
>
> http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/
>
>
> - harry
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