grub not finding my debian OS

[keak]

Hi there,
I had a server that had both Ubuntu and Debian installed.
Most of our production files was on Debian but when I rebooted the server, GRUB is not finding my debian partion.

I looked into /boot/grub/menu.lst and I can't seem to find my entry for debian.

Is it possible that GRUB updated itself ? and if so, is there any possible way I can restore my deian ?

Is there a way to find out where my kernel and initrd entries fro my debian installation is now, and if there is a backed up version of menu.list?

Any help will be so greatful on this issue ......

 

[geirendre]

A backup menu.lst-file should be in the same directory as menu.lst That is: /boot/grub/

If you don't find a backup file, you can use the grub-shell
to locate the kernel, root filesystem and initramdisk,
and with this info get it to boot. Explained here:

http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/grub/grub.htm#_What_You_Absolutely_Need_to_Know

More on how grub works here:

http://users.bigpond.net.au/hermanzone/SuperGrubDiskPage.html

And here's the manual:

http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/

Grub can be a bit daunting at first, but I hope this
can get you started...

 

[keak]

Hi there,
I think I am closer to fixing the problem now.

I found that my Debian installation (the one that gone missing from grub) was on /dev/sda1

What I did was I logged into my other working ubuntu (on /dev/sdb/) and edited fstab to mount this /dev/sda1 to /mnt/sda1)

Now I went to /mnt/sda1/boot/ and I finally found my Debias Kernal (vmlinuz-2.6.18-4-686)
I then entered a new line for this kernel in my menu.lst in
"both" /mnt/sda1/boot/grub/menu.lst and /boot/grub/menu.st

I rebooted and now I see my debian option, but when I selected this entry, it hangs on a message where it says

waiting for root file system ....

any feedback will be greatly appreciated.