Hi

I'm new to linux and have had a mini disaster. I (stupidly!!) decided to reinstall debian, to "start over", assuming it'd just wipe the disk and start from scratch. As you can probably guess, it didn't work and aborted half way through

It now won't boot with a GRUB error.

I can get to a unix prompt, via restore mode or something and that's about it. I'm hoping there's a unix command I can use to wipe/format the disc and then start again from the DVD.

Any suggestions?

Thanks.

Ian

I wasn't sure where to post this. Would it be better in the beginners section? Or Debian? I'll leave it to someone who actualy knows what they're doing.

Any help would be much appreciated. It was all going so well, it installed and ran beautifully and then I screwed it up!

It's on a x21 thinkpad btw.

Assuming you're installing the current version of Debian, Debian 4.0, the GRUB install occurs pretty late in the process. If the install is failing somewhere in the middle, it's presumably before GRUB is installed.

Therefore, the GRUB which is loading up is just the leftoever Stage 1 bootloader from the previous install. It's trying to find /boot/grub/menu.lst to get to the next stage, but since that hasn't been installed yet, it bombs out.

If you're having difficulty completing an install, you may have to start off with a minimal install and then manually add software suites or packages later on. However, whatever issues are causing difficulties for you completing the install (like a flakey DVD disc or drive) will still plague you sooner or later.

Any idea what's causing the install to fail? A flakey DVD disc or drive is a common problem, and will be frustrating to deal with. If you have access to a good internet connection, I'd recommend doing a netinstall (downloads software packages over the internet). However, if you have a flakey internet connection then a netinstall is a frustrating experience.