eDirectories - Weblog » Quick Fixes

Fix Ubuntu 9.10 upgrade mountall errors

TK — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 01:27:26 +0000

Apparently I wasn’t the only user affected by the recent Ubuntu 9.10 upgrade ‘mishap’. Some of us have experienced unbootable machines after upgrading through the system’s Update Manager, receiving errors like: ‘init: mountall main process (random number) terminated with status 1‘. First off, make sure your menu.lst (/boot/grub/menu.lst) is edited to point to the new kernel version (2.6.31-14-generic). Make sure to backup your Menu.lst, just in case… # sudo cp /boot/grub/menu.lst /boot/grub/menu.lst2 Okay, now edit your menu.lst to point to the correct kernel as shown below… # sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst On a side note, while attempting to edit my Menu.lst, I edited incorrectly and was greeted with the error message; Error 15: File Not Found - This was because I had an extra character (typo) in the path to the kernel, hence the File Not Found. Make sure it’s not something stupid like that However, if you’re still stumped try looking here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1321149 ** Edit Menu.lst at your own risk **

Ubuntu Live Chat Technical Support

TK — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 16:08:31 +0000

If you need a problem with Ubuntu fixed right away, you should go to the official IRC chat room on the Freenode servers. There is tons of people that are more than willing to help if you have a legitimate question to ask. Here is a list of their servers taken from Freenode.net:

Asia/Pacific Rim Taoyuan, TW	chat.ap.freenode.net tolkien.freenode.net
Australia Brisbane, AU	chat.au.freenode.net asimov.freenode.net
Europe Frankfurt, DE Helsinki, FI Hoofddorp, NL Milano, IT Oslo, NO Umeå, SE Moscow, RU London, UK Vilnius, LT	chat.eu.freenode.net kornbluth.freenode.net orwell.freenode.net sterling.freenode.net calvino.freenode.net adams.freenode.net gibson.freenode.net leguin.freenode.net lem.freenode.net pratchett.freenode.net sendak.freenode.net	ipv6.chat.eu.freenode.net goethe.freenode.net calkins.freenode.net crichton.freenode.net
United States Corvallis, OR Madison, WI Irvine, CA Los Angeles, CA Missoula, MT	chat.us.freenode.net niven.freenode.net zelazny.freenode.net brown.freenode.net anthony.freenode.net kubrick.freenode.net heinlein.freenode.net

After you are successfully connected to the IRC server of your choosing, type /nick YourName and then /join #ubuntu – You may have to register your nickname on the Freenode servers (#ubuntu requires this), so type /msg NickServ Register YourPassword – If the name isn’t already taken you will have successfully registered your name and will be able to start chatting and asking for help with your problem. Please read the rules and follow proper chat etiquette.

Firefox users should look into ChatZilla. Or to connect to the Freenode IRC servers through your browser, use their web based Java Client.

Fix Undefined video mode number in Ubuntu

TK — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 15:14:34 +0000

If you’re getting the error message; "Undefined video mode number – Press Enter to see more or space to continue" when you boot up, I just found a quick fix for it while trying to patch the same problem on my machine. Apparently this will also work with the lilo bootloader (check article comments).

It’s a good idea to make a copy of the original "menu.lst" in case you do something wrong by accident. Type:

sudo cp /boot/grub/menu.lst /boot/grub/menu.lst.old

Ubuntu users, open up a Terminal window and type:

gksudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst

Scroll down the file and you will find something that says vga=791 or some other number. Replace all instances of vga=791 (or whatever it says) to vga=normal

Make sure you change all of them or it may not work.

Save the file and reboot. This should hopefully fix the problem!