Ubuntu boot hangs on splash screen

market_garden

I have recently dual booted Ubuntu 9.10 with XP on a Dell laptop. This went without any problems and I was happily working away on Ubuntu.
I was able to boot into Ubuntu a few times at first.
I then encountered a problem booting into Ubuntu where after selecting to boot into it got as far as the splash screen and then hung.
The machine needs to be manually reset and any further attempts to boot into Ubuntu fail at the same point.
Anyone got any ideas what is causing the problem or more importantly how to work around this?

BopNiblets

Edit the boot line, take out "quiet splash" part to see if there's any errors coming up, or alternativly just press Esc key as soon as you see the Ubuntu logo.

Eliot Rosewater

I had the same problem myself. Its had to do with the jkernel "root" argument in menu.lst. My root was set to the UUID of partition containing the Ubuntu installation. I changed this to /dev/sda* and it started working again.

market_garden

Thanks BopNiblets,
Hitting Esc when the Ubuntu logo appeared didn't work but removing "quiet splash" in the boot line did the trick. This only worked however when working on battery power. When the laptop was plugged in the boot always hangs. At least I can now get started though. Thanks for the assistance.

market_garden

Hi Eliot,
I can't find menu.lst on my system. Could this file name have changed in the most recent Ubuntu version?

larryone

AFAIK Karmic is using grub2 by default these days, so you may not find a menu.lst.
I think in grub2 you have to run `update-grub` command instead or something....

bman

market_garden wrote: »

Thanks BopNiblets,
Hitting Esc when the Ubuntu logo appeared didn't work but removing "quiet splash" in the boot line did the trick. This only worked however when working on battery power. When the laptop was plugged in the boot always hangs. At least I can now get started though. Thanks for the assistance.

Removing the quiet splash options only gives you more debug info so you can determine what the issue may be. It didn't rectify the problem.

What has rectified the problem is running on battery power only. That's a strange one. I don't know what the answer is but modifying menu.lst will very likely not be the solution to this.

Plug in your laptop. Try booting again without the quiet splash options. Do you get text output to the screen? Do any errors show up?

Stuxnet

menu.lst is now grub.cfg in Karmic
also my grub is 1.97beta not grub2 as some say ??, in my ubuntu set up anyhow

larryone

yea, it also tells you not to edit grub.cfg, but to use the command instead.
will editing directly work?

BopNiblets

startupmanager (in synaptic) edits grub2 easier than messing around in the now mega complicated setup files I think.