[ale] Ubuntu upgrade

[Jim Philips]

It sounds to me like you have a mixture of old and new Grub config files.
This could have come from the way you upgraded Ubuntu. When I am upgrading
to a new version, as I did for Ubuntu 10.04, I back up my home directory and
do a "nuke and pave". That is, I completely reformat the partition and
install Linux anew. This was an especially good idea for 10.04, because they
moved to a new version of Grub. If I go to /boot/grub, I don't even have a
menu.lst file, since Grub doesn't rely on that file for configuration in
version 1.98. And version 1.98 is standard for Ubuntu 10.04. The config file
for that version is grub.cfg. Open Synaptic (or other package manager) and
see what version of Grub you have installed. So, if you didn't do a nuke and
pave when you upgraded, I would recommend that. Yes, you will have to
reinstall some programs. But it's worth it.

On Sun, Jul 4, 2010 at 9:19 PM, drifter <drifter at oppositelock.org> wrote:

> Still fighting this and having problems as my Linux background (shallow as
> it is) is Red Hat, not Debian.
>
> This netbook upgraded to Ubuntu 10.04 LTS.
> It starts up in runlevel 3 -- at least that's what I think it is.
> All I get is a (root) prompt. if I type "startx" [Ent] after logging in,
> the hard drive churns for a few seconds and my desktop appears.
> There is no /etc/inittab file.
>
> Ubuntu is >supposed< to be the "easy to use" Linux distro that doesn't
> do STUPID things like this.  Anyone coming from Windoze would have no
> clue what was wrong or how to fix it.
>
> I, at least, know that somewhere I have to add the command "startx."
> I just do not know what file I need to edit, or where it might be hidden.
> It doesn't seem to be in /boot or /boot/grub.
>
> Sean
>
> PS  The file /boot/grub/menu.lst has the following after the list
> of default options:
>
> title       Ubuntu 10.04 LTS, kernel 2.6.32-23-generic
> uuid       1866e268-96e3-4aaf-b727-b66140d931a3
> kernel   /vmlinuz-2.6.32-23-generic root=UUID=99b3c22....ro
> quiet splash
> initrd     /initrd.img-2.6.32.23-generic
> quiet
>
> This is followed by the same kernel (recovery mode) followed by four more
> pairs of kernel entries ending up with 2.6.28-15.
> Should the last line in the block above be "startx"?
>
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> On Sunday 04 July 2010 19:53:38 Brian Pitts wrote:
> > On 07/04/2010 06:43 PM, drifter wrote:
> > > Okay; I upgraded the Ubuntu install on my netbook from 9.whatever
> > > to 10.whatever.
> > > Apparently I now need to edit the grub boot menu as the OS now boots
> > > into runlevel 3. On Fedora/RedHat the runlevel used to be set in
> > > /etc/inittab  but there doesn't seem to be any such file on this box.
> > >
> > > So how do I get to the grub boot file to edit it to start in Runlevel
> > > 5 and, if necessary, tell it to startX?
> >
> > Runlevels 2-5 are the same in Ubuntu and probably most other
> > Debian-derived distributions. I just checked a working Ubuntu 10.04
> > desktop and it is at runlevel 2.
> >
> > So, I don't think the runlevel is your problem.
> >
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