[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by zee, Daniel Stott. Daniel Stott said: @jakejw93 ah yes, good plan liveCDs ftw! also http://zeeis.me/ubuntu-boot-error-simple-fix-gave-up-waiting-for-root-device/ tried that? [...]

it doesnt work for me from livecd saus ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo chroot /media/fix su
bash: groups: command not found
root@ubuntu:/# apt-get update
bash: apt-get: command not found
root@ubuntu:/# apt-get upgrade
bash: apt-get: command not found
root@ubuntu:/# apt-get dist-upgrade
bash: apt-get: command not found
root@ubuntu:/#

by the way im or was already using lucid till now

The method is 100% working Drexx.
livecd saus ? i didn’t get you there.

Probably issue with your live cd. missing files in the bash shell.
OR
Did you directly start from sudo chroot /media/fix su command? did you mount the fix(or whatever name you gave) drive? sudo mkdir /media/fix & sudo mount /dev/sda2 /media/fix ?

Sehr gut gemacht!
[Translation- German: "Very well done!"]

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo chroot /media/fix su
chroot: failed to run command `su’: No such file or directory

How can I fix this?

probably chroot is giving the problem. Instead of sudo chroot /media/fix su enter the command “sudo su” firstthen enter “chroot /media/fix”try and tell me if it works. so we can help others too.

Thanks for the reply.

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo su
root@ubuntu:/home/ubuntu# chroot /media/fix
chroot: failed to run command `/bin/bash’: No such file or directory

I’m a total newbie. Sorry if I’m asking dumb questions Thanks in advance.

try this
Enter the below commands
sudo mount –bind /dev /media/fix/dev
sudo mount –bind /proc /media/fix/proc
sudo mount –bind /sys /media/fix/sys
then run “sudo chroot /media/fix su” or the other way i told you before.
Waiting for reply…

Blogs Search Engine…

Blogs Search Engine…

Hi again. I couldn’t reply because I was on road.
There is a weird thing about this problem. I installed Ubuntu on my external hard drive using Wubi. This problem only happens if I connect the external hard drive to a different USB hub. It only works correctly on the same USB hole that I was using during the installation. Right now I’m booted successfully on my system.

lol.. thats strange! but the problem is solved right?

I to got the
chroot: failed to run command `/bin/bash’: No such file or directory

I then tried to the list of bind commands, but they would not mount unless I did just media/fix as opposed to media/fix/dev
after mounted them all to media/fix I still got the

chroot: failed to run command `/bin/bash’: No such file or directory

hmm..now i have many mails requests with this same problem too.
I booted into a live cd (ubuntu 10.4) run the commands to test. all worked without error.
Please answer the Questions below so that i can track the problem.
1-which live cd or which version of ubuntu live cd are you using?
2-open ubuntu file browser, goto File system->bin folder,does a file called bash exist?
3-Is the installed (not working) ubuntu 32 bit or 64 bit. Live cd is 32 bit or 64 bit? you are using live cd of a different architecture than the installed system, this can be a possibility.
You can check your architecture by opening a terminal and typing “uname -a” or “uname -m” [i386/i686 mean 32 bit _64 means 64 bit]

I am now running dektop 10.10 (i think its the new one) 32 bit, and it doesn’t give me the bash dosent exist message anymore (that was when i was trying to use netbook remix), I am able to get through the entire process, but when I try to log back in afger the restart I still get the same error message.

okay the chroot problem was indeed because of the architecture difference .

Now, while running these commands on the live cd, on this command-> sudo mount /dev/sda2 /media/fix did you choose the right device name(sda1/sda2/sdb1 etc. this is the device on which ubuntu is installed on your system ) you can check your drive names with the command “fdisk -l” or “df -h” with df -h you will be able to see the drive sizes so you can identify easily.

I did use the correct drive, and I also tried with the bind commands…

You said that you managed to run the update(apt-get update command) .. and then too after restart you got the gave up waiting for root device error right? .. if yes then 2 possibilities, either the drive device name was wrong or else the update wasn’t successful.
i didn’t understand why you used bind command.there is no use of bind command when you got into chroot jail and you were through with all of the steps.

You said that you managed to run the update(apt-get update command) .. and then too after restart you got the gave up waiting for root device error right? .. if yes then 2 possibilities, either the drive device name was wrong or else the update wasn’t successful.
i didn’t understand why you used bind command.there is no use of bind command when you got into chroot jail and you were through with all of the steps.

UBUNTU : GAVE UP WAITING FOR ROOT DEVICE | LINUX RADAR

hi, please help…

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo mkdir/fix
sudo: mkdir/fix: command not found

how ? thanks

Hit the space bar between mkdir and /fix .

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo mkdir /fix
mkdir: cannot create directory `/fix’: File exists

how ?… pls help me…

you must have entered the command twice or maybe you already have a directory called fix.. by the way, you don’t necessarily have to name it fix

tried all of the above, not each one worked.

sudo mount –bind /dev /media/fix/dev
mount: mount point /media/fix/dev does not exist

thanks and appreciate the support…

Hey loclin .. this comment was for yusuf and i was trying to figure out the problem. Its was cause of architecture difference .You just have to run the following commands
1)sudo mkdir /media/fix
2) sudo mount /dev/sda2 /media/fix(replace /dev/sda2 by your drive name.)
3)sudo chroot /media/fix su
4)apt-get update
5) apt-get upgrade
6) apt-get dist-upgrade

perhaps this ubuntu fix which promises to solve almost everything. 

[...] you might face this problem- missing windows borders, title, close minimize maximize buttons. to fix this: Open a terminal type “gconf-editor” navigate to [...]

apt get update gave me several

Err … something wicked happened … (-5 – No address associated with hostname)

and

W: failed to fetch … something wicked happened … (-5 – No address associated with hostname)

apt get upgrade gives me

E: Could not open lock file /var/lib/dpkg/lock – open (2: No such file or directory’
E: Unable to lock administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/), are you root?

did you login as su? (sudo su ?)

I used sudo chroot /media/fix su

I had ubuntu 10.10 and had problems booting up so I tried to reinstall and it failed, now I have to use the preview version to try and fix it. The usb flash drive wont work =/ pls help

I had ubuntu 10.10 and had problems booting up so I tried to reinstall and it failed, now I have to use the preview version to try and fix it. The usb flash drive wont work =/ pls help

Thank you so much for this! I have 11.04 now and it got messed up so I ran the 10.10 live CD and this fixed her right up in no time!

I did sudo su first then chroot like you said above or somewhere in the comments, I forgot. Well thanks again this saved me!!!

Awesome!

Ugraded from 10.10 to ll.04. Boot stops at about “Checking Battery”
If I boot to Previous Linux versions its fine.
In Grub.config 1st boot is using – Linux 2.6.38.8-generic-pae
Previous version uses – Linux.2.6.38.8-generic
Why?

I recieved error when upgrade to ubunt 11.04 from 10.10.
“Could not calculate the upgrade

An unresolvable problem occurred while calculating the upgrade:
E:Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be caused by held packages.

This can be caused by:
* Upgrading to a pre-release version of Ubuntu
* Running the current pre-release version of Ubuntu
* Unofficial software packages not provided by Ubuntu

If none of this applies, then please report this bug against the ‘update-manager’ package and include the files in /var/log/dist-upgrade/ in the bug report.”

Can you solved this error?

you are trying to ‘downgrade’ . Ubuntu package manager does not support downgrading, you will have to reinstall

Ubuntu worked fine for 3 days until the upgrade to 11.04. Is this some sort of plan to get me to purchase some additional software, or what. WHAT GIVES?????
Now I can’t even reinstall with the same CD I used originally, even after wiping the hard drive. I thought this was supposed to be continually improved and fixed. Where is the fix? This is CRAP! Worth every penny I paid for it but not all the wasted time trying to reinstall and running all these fixes that do not work. I will stick with Windows Thank You.

What did you pay for?? ubuntu is 100% free! .
btw i recommend everyone not to upgrade to ubuntu 11 untill ubuntu 11.10 is released

Nice post. It helped me.
My issue was more of a graphic deactivated by update but it got me started.

11.04 my ubuntu, the problem is not able to restart normally, that is stopped in the middle and something that the error is :

“*stopping automatic crash report generation [fail]”

”
*pulse audio configured for per -user sessions sared disabled ;edit

but if typing sudo reboot, success, and leave the problem as above…

can you fix this?

11.04 my ubuntu, the problem is not able to restart normally, that is stopped in the middle and something that the error is :

“*stopping automatic crash report generation [fail]”

“*pulse audio configured for per -user sessions sared disabled ;edit

/etc/default/sared

but if typing sudo reboot, success, and leave the problem as above…

can you fix this?

I just tried this, and came up with the same error message again.
(apt-get upgrade took almost an hour!)
Using 10.04 on a drive cloned from a drive using the original distro installed from the CD.
Used the CD to make the changes given above.
Disappointed.  I had high hopes.
(That’ll teach me.)

I had the same problem of not being able to run fsck because the partition is mounted.  This happened when trying to fix Ultimate Edition 2.8 on a mates notebook when booted with Linux Mint 10 DVD.  Booting from the Ubuntu 11.04 disc on the other hand worked perfectly fine for me.  Errors were found, corrected and the notebook was back on it’s feet.

I’m new to Ubuntu and the whole Linux. I’m trying to install ubuntu 11.04 but after the initial dialogue system gets rebooted and this goes on indefinetely.
himanshu
p.s. I’ve tried both methods ie via cd and usb bootup.

Probably you have an incompatible hardware or there’s an architecture difference.

Search for Ubuntu HCL (hardware compatibility list) to make sure your hardware is compatible with ubuntu . Mostly it will be!

And If you are installing 64 bit version of ubuntu try 32 bit (vice versa) .

Are you being certain to remove the CD/usb after the install?

Hi, people. I have this problem and I am unable to fix it. In fact, I can’t even identify which one is the name of my drive to mount it in the very first step of this guide:

“Mount your drive using the following command
sudo mount /dev/sda2 /media/fix

(replace /dev/sda2 with name of drive, e.g. sda1 etc.)[type mount | tail -l to find your drive name]”

How could I identify the name of my drive?

Thanks in advance.

Sam.

type  fdisk -l
——————————————–
u will see some thing like this.
the one with a * is the one u use.in this case it will be sudo mount /dev/sda1 /media/fix
   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        1945    15617810    7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2            1946        5099    25333654+   f  W95 Ext’d (LBA)
/dev/sda3            5099        5224     1000000   82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda4            5224        9730    36198400   83  Linux
/dev/sda5            1946        5099    25333653+   7  HPFS/NTFS

super, you saved my day (almost literally). Still got some problems, but at least I can boot up in safe mode now!

Thanks a lot for wonderful information.. just saved me from a lot of trouble..

Just one note:
apt-get upgrade and dist-upgrade both gave me a lot of errors related to /dev/pts not being mounted, and because of this, cups and few other packages were not being configured and hence both upgrade failed. I mounted critical virtual filesystems (Found in step #6 on http://askubuntu.com/questions/41068/ubuntu-11-04-stops-booting-at-grub-console) and then re-ran apt-get upgrade and it worked and configured cups and other packages properly.

The same happened to me… disappointing…

Solved – for me at least, just dont use the proprietary drives

Hi,
I am trying to upgrade Ubuntu 11.04 to 11.10, but I get an error –
‘E:Encountered a section with no Package: header, E:Problem with MergeList /var/lib/apt/lists/us.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_natty_main_binary-i386_Packages, E:The package lists or status file could not be parsed or opened.’

Any help is appreciated…

Thanks
Rajesh

hi….

This worked like a charm.
I was trying to upgrade my 10.04 to 10.1 but the upgrade got interrupted.
Later, I was not able to log to the machine and was getting the error “configuration defaults for “gnome power manager have not been installed correctly”.

googled around and then tried the steps and it worked.

I did upto sudo chroot /media/fix su and then
sudo dpkg –configure -a
…
then…restarted the machine and every thing was back to normal…

Thanks a lot.

ohh and by the way i did this with the live cd.

First booted up with the live cd . once inside guest , took the terminal from application>accessories > terminal
then
>>/bin/bash
>>mount | tail -l
>>sudo mkdir /media/fix>>sudo mount /dev/sda /media/fix

DOes not work
Magicaly looks for a  machine named UBUNTU    all fails ….

THanks a lot
I LOST MORE TIME WITH GRUB  then unix was ever usefull to me

GRUB sucks, it is a stupid , overcomplicated program to do something very simple , that says even more about people that use it

thanks for the post…. I’ll follow the 6 steps aqnd I’ll tell you later how did it go. 

Great tut
but when I tried to ‘apt-get upgrade’ gave the error:
” Setting up openjdk-6-jre-headless (6b23~pre11-0ubuntu1.11.10) …
the java command requires a mounted proc fs (/proc).”

So I googled around and found:
‘mount -t proc proc /proc’and it then worked to upgrade properly without errors.(Haven’t rebooted yet so I don’t know if it works, but at least I got it to update properly, I hope this helps someone)

didn’t work for me

People across various websites keep saying “boot-up with the ubuntu CD”.
@59de701ae2640d2f58a9380de2d22f33:disqus 
HOW DO YOU DO THAT????

it just means you have to start your system from a ubuntu live cd, live cd’s are operating systems which don’t need to be installed, they run from cd directly .

change bios setting[boot order] to boot your system from a cd

I dont hav a cd. i downloaded it from the site from the option ‘Run it with Windows”. Pl. help.

http://www.ubuntu.com/download

none of the above commands working

 I have the same problem
root@ubuntu:/# apt-get update
bash: apt-get: command not found
root@ubuntu:/# apt-get upgrade
bash: apt-get: command not found
root@ubuntu:/# apt-get dist-upgrade
bash: apt-get: command not found

 A Comment i found somewhere on net :
I have root, usr and var on separate partitions each. That’s where the
need to mount them separately came from. Just mounting the root gave
apt-get: command not found -messages and an error about missing groups
when chrooting.

Can you help me on this line??

Thanks a lot ! worked for me. Putting these as notes on my blog (of course with reference to this page !)