"GRUB Loading, please wait..." Then hangs :(

I don't know if you guys can help but I have discovered turnkey linux (which rules!) and setup a mediawiki one (using VirtualBox) which has worked fine for a few months until VirtualBox asked to update so I told the virtual machine to shutdown, updated VirtualBox and booted the VM back up... It now sits at "GRUB Loading, please wait..." and never goes past it! :O

Anyone know why?

Have I bust it never to see my nice wiki again? OR can I repair and/or recover the wiki?

Replies (4)

Thanks Jeremy

Reply 1 2011-02-24

Thanks Jeremy,

I am normally good at backing up but on this case it was ment to just be a test wiki that was going to be moved onto a work's server when we got it up and running... a month later I am still "Testing" it and it's kinda got to much info in now to lose! LOL

I have already taken a snapshot (as soon as it happened) and also backed up the HDD file. I will give what you surgested a go and hopefully that will be it! :)

Thanks again for the quick help

Zas

Backups before software updates are always a good thing

Reply 2 2011-02-23

But it's a little late for that (for future reference TKLBAM is a winner!)

Even though it's broken, I'd be inclined to do a backup now (obviously you won't be able to use TKLBAM if your appliance won't boot but you could export your VM, or even just copy ther virtual HDD image). At the very least I would strongly recommend at least taking a snapshot.

Then I would try repairing grub. I'm not 100% sure that's your issue but probably a good place to start. I will asume that you are using the v11.x version of TKL (based on Ubuntu 10.04) which uses GRUB2. If you are using the legacy version of TKL (v2009.x - based on Ubuntu 8.04) then you will need to do things differently (as it uses GRUB legacy instead).

To repair GRUB2 you can use a TKL ISO (if you haven't got an ISO just download one, any one should do but I'd suggest Core). Get your virtual appliance to boot from the ISO (rather than the HDD) and when you have loaded the OS you need to mount your virtual HDD.

Have a read here. Just note that you can omit the sudo command when it is mentioned (TKL defaults to the root account so sudo isn't required).

Reinstall GRUB should fix that error :)

Reply 3 2011-03-03

I'm still not sure whether it will fix your original issue but it should fix the new one! The link I gave above takes you through it pretty clearly, but if you need any clarification please ask. The first method given should be fine.

OK progress... if you can call it that!

Reply 4 2011-02-24

OK progress (if you can call it that!) I got the core and tried to boot a live cd from it BUT it just came up with loads of errors so I tried it on a new VM box and that worked! SO I moved the vm hdd for the bust wiki to the working box (without the downloaded core iso attached) and now it boots past the grub thing and came up with this error (Screenshot attached):

Please exscuse my lack of linux skills... but it looks like it is having trouble finding a drive... Is this because I disconnected it from one VM box and connected it to another (I did this in VirtualBox's settings by just adding an existing HDD)?

Thanks

Zas