Re: debugging grub.cfg

[Jordan Uggla]

On Fri, May 17, 2013 at 5:32 PM, David H. Durgee <address@hidden> wrote:
> sh:grub> configfile /boot/grub/grub.cfg
> <screen cleared>
> error: Invalid mode: auto
> <blank line>
> Syntax error
> Incorrect command
> sh:grub>

I would worry much more about the syntax error than the invalid mode error.

> This is of course annoying, but I can boot maya manually by specifying:
>
> sh:grub>linux /boot/vmlinux.... root=/dev/sda14 ro
> sh:grub>initrd /boot/init....
> sh:grub>boot
>
> Any suggestions what I need to do to get my menu back? Any idea why it
> disappeared? Any further diagnostics I can run?

Please post your grub.cfg, as we can't easily tell you what's wrong
with it without being able to see it.

My guess would be that one of your modifications added a syntax error
early in the grub.cfg (like an unmatched quote or '{'), preventing the
rest of the grub.cfg from being properly read. You can check for
syntax errors in your grub.cfg by running "grub-script-check
/boot/grub/grub.cfg" which will print out the line number of the
syntax error (though, like in most languages, an unmatched quote or
'{' will result in a syntax error on a line you might not expect).

>
> If it were another system I would likely simply try to regenerate/reinstall
> grub, but given all the "fun" I had getting grub to work here at all I would
> prefer another approach.  The top line identifes this as "GNU GRUB version
> 1.97~beta4" I am running.

grub 1.97 is very old, and you're not even using grub 1.97 final,
you're using beta4. As far as I know, only Ubuntu 9.10, and
derivatives, used 1.97 beta4 and Ubuntu 9.10 has been End Of Life for
two years. If you're really using Ubuntu 9.10 then I highly recommend
that you upgrade to a supported release of Ubuntu, which will also
upgrade you to a supported release of grub. If you are using a
supported version of Ubuntu then for some reason its grub has not been
installed properly and instead you're being left with an old
installation from when you did have Ubuntu 9.10, and so we need to
figure out how to fix that.

-- 
Jordan Uggla (Jordan_U on irc.freenode.net)