Problem starting Karmic using grub from old install

I have updated a second partition on my machine to run Karmic. After installing a fresh 9.04 the update all went fine. The problem is that when I update my menu.lst on my main install to include Karmic I get a grub error 15. The entry is just coppied from the .lst file from the Karmic install, with a little adjustment to point to the new partition as shown

title Karmic Koala - Pre Alpha

root (hd0,4) kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-11-generic root=UUID=ea478011-6b94-49d7-81a0-9ed38809aa6a ro quiet splash initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.28-11-generic savedefault boot

title Karmic Koala - Pre Alpha (recovery mode) root (hd0,4) kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.28-11-generic root=UUID=ea478011-6b94-49d7-81a0-9ed38809aa6a ro single initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.28-11-generic savedefault boot

I have checked all the file names and uuid number and they are all fine, the only other difference is that I am using ext4 on the Karmic install and ext3 on Jaunty. Any ideas.

try commenting out the root (hd0,4) line . also try installing the 2.6.30-2 kernel . I went through a bout with my karmic install doing the same thing , no idea why .

What version is your main install? You need Jaunty or newer to boot to ext4.

that explains why mine corrected itself after I let karmic install its own grub even though the boot stanzas were identical .

My main system is Jaunty, so ext4 should be ok. Icant get access to my software sources to change anything so there are just as a standard install. How would I go about updateing the kernel?

Look in Synaptic for 2.6.30 (do a search)--You have to manual install it right now---make sure you get the headers, image & restricted (if you need it) 30-1 has the restricted, 30-2 needs them still, so if you need a 3rd party driver--don't use 30-2 yet.

the ppa nvidia 185.18.04 driver is working fine for me with 2.6.30-2 .

Upgraded the kernel on Karmic - still the same error 15.

if you are willing to try something a little risky , get a copy of super grub disk for rescue operations if necessary . http://www.supergrubdisk.org/index.php?pid=5 . and then install grub from within karmic , that worked for me . first make a copy of your working menu.lst incase you need to add back your other installs , karmic found my other installs ok but that hasn't always happened in the past which is why I usualy keep my old grub and add new installs to it .

The problem is not that Karmic did not find my other installs, it did and the grub menu.lst works fine. It is just that I would rather use the grub & menu.lst from my main install. At the mo, I can switch between the two using the root & setup commands in grub. It is a small annoyance rather than a problem, I just wondered what was causing it.

at what point did you install jaunty ? I installed pre-alpha as I always do ( on my dedicated test box) and the ability to boot from ext4 wasn't added until later in the cycle ( about a4 I think ) so that is why my jaunty grub wouldn't boot karmic ( my jaunty install was ext3 ) . if you installed jaunty from the release version I am at a loss .

Generally I have no problems with grub but when I installed 9.04 on my P4 it found all my other OSs but a couple of the other Ubuntu systems wouldn't boot - with a grub error 15 - file not found. I couldn't see anything wrong with the menu.lst - the stanzas looked fine - uuids, partition numbers etc. all OK. I got round the problem by changing the main (new) menu.lst to use configfile to point to the menu.lst of the other systems rather than the boot section itself. That fixed it :)