Laptop install fail - Dell Inspiron 6000 (need GRUB-fu?)

[NoOp]

On 12/05/2009 12:13 PM, Alan McKay wrote:
> Hey folks,
> 
> Well, things did not go so well for my wife's laptop.
> 
> I booted the 9.10 CD and chose the install option without trying the
> Live CD first.  It seemed to install fine but when I removed the CD
> and rebooted, it just comes up and says there is and unknown device
> and some big long HEX number.
> 
> So I boot the Live CD and get it to mount the HD, and sure enough it
> mounts at /media/same-big-hex-number
> 
> Hmmm.  So I look on the disk at /etc/fstab and it is also using that
> number, so i changed it over to the raw device /dev/sda1 for / and
> /dev/sda5 for swap.

It the partition/drive UUID. See:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UsingUUID

Also, the standard install is sda1 for the primary partition & sda5 for
the swap.

These might be helpful:
http://www.ubuntu.com/getubuntu/releasenotes/910
https://help.ubuntu.com/
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowtoPartition
<https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HowtoPartition/OperatingSystemsAndPartitions>
<snips>

> 
> Oh, I also at boot time went into the GRUB edit mode and that number
> was in there too - so clearly this is my remaining issue - but GRUB
> seems to have advanced a lot since I was last really into it about 4
> or 5 years ago.  I also went into /etc/grub.d from the live CD and saw
> a whole bunch of greek in there instead of the old grub file I used to
> be familiar with.

It's grub2. See:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2