Repairing Grub
So I messed up and am in the grub rescue prompt. I found what seems to be decent instructions to fix this, but one of the commands seems off and it doesn't work. Could anyone fix the command for me or point me to a way to get the information to fix it?
I am using Trisquel 6 and due to the livecd not having support for my wifi card I cannot simply use grub-repair.
The instructions I am using are here: http://karuppuswamy.com/wordpress/2011/09/09/how-to-fix-grub-rescue-prompt-without-live-cd-for-grub2/
And the particular line that isn't working (likely because its the wrong version of the kernel I think) is the following:
linux /boot/vmlinuz-3.0.0-1-686-pae root=/dev/sdXX ro
Have you tried Boot Repair: https://launchpad.net/~yannubuntu/+archive/ubuntu/boot-repair
I'm not sure if you can run it on your existing system or if you have to do a live CD, install this, and then run it from there.
Oh and this too. It says Ubuntu 12.04 but applies to Trisquel 6/7: http://www.howopensource.com/2012/05/reinstall-recover-grub-from-ubuntu-12-04-live-cd-usb/
Thanks for trying, but as stated in the original question I can't use grub-repair because Trisquel 6 livecd does not support my wifi card out of the box. No internet=no repos to install grub-repair from
My only option is to do what I am trying to accomplish with this instruction set as far as I know, it's just been so long since I've had to do it this way I know I am just missing some key detail not in the instructions I'm using.
There are a number of ways to proceed (I would personally go for the 'chroot'): https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2/Installing#Fixing_a_Broken_System
If you want to install Boot-Repair just plug an Ethernet cable. You can also download the relevant packages from another system and bring them to the Live one (using a USB key for instance).
But, yes, "/boot/vmlinuz-3.0.0-1-686-pae" should be the path to the image kernel you want to boot (it might be "/boot/vmlinuz-3.5.0-54-generic" if we are talking about a generic Trisquel system that was kept up to date) and "/dev/sdXX" should be the root partition (I believe Trisquel's default install make it always be "/dev/sda2"). You can get the correct answers (rather than my guesses) from the Live system.
Buggles,
I ran into the same problem a few days ago when my btrfs partition started flaking out and was reporting that I was out of space when I wasn't. I thankfully had a 2nd hard drive to back up my system files and had to reformat as XFS and reinstall the OS.
I ended up having to put the .deb files on a secondary USB stick and doing "sudo dpkg -i *.deb" in the folder to install Boot Repair. Since you are using Trisquel 6, you can grab them all at https://launchpad.net/~yannubuntu/+archive/ubuntu/boot-repair/+packages?field.series_filter=precise
Also, if wireless is an issue like you said before, what if you also put the .deb files for your firmware from http://packages.trisquel.info/search?keywords=firmware onto a USB stick and then install? Are you also running the 3.13 kernel? If it will help, you can get the files from http://packages.trisquel.info/search?suite=default&keywords=linux-generic-lts-trusty