Need Help with Grub

[Matt Graham]

From: Mark Phillips <mark at phillipsmarketing.biz>
> kernel        /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.26-2-686 root=/dev/hda5 ro
> will not boot. I get the dreaded "Error 24 Attempt to access block outside
> partition". But I can boot the rest of the entries.

> I forced a fsck on a reboot, and that I get the same error 24 when I try to
> boot the first two entries in menu.lst

> Should I apt-get reinstall linux-image-2.6.26-2-686 (assumption: the
> vmlinuz file is corrupted), or do something else more basic to repair
> the drive (assumption: there is bad sector)?

The GRUB error sounds like a filesystem problem to me.  fsck on /boot
should've found filesystem problems if they were there, though.  If you don't
have a /boot partition, then you may have something wrong on / , which is
typically more serious and annoying.  umount and fsck -f /boot , or boot from
a LiveCD and fsck -f / .  Deleting and reinstalling the kernel may help, or
not--it depends on what exactly is wrong.

Bad sectors on the disk typically show up in dmesg if you try to read them. 
You could run badblocks -n on the partition if you umount it (or from a
LiveCD), though, to figure out exactly if they're there and/or where they are.
 When bad sectors show up on a modern disk, it's time to replace that disk, or
if you're lucky, put as many extra fans as you can right next to that disk.

And with 1T SATA disks available for $65 or so, it's a great time to think
about softRAID-1, which makes single-disk failure "annoying" instead of
"OMGWTFBBQPANIC!!1!"

-- 
Matt G / Dances With Crows
The Crow202 Blog:  http://crow202.org/wordpress/
There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see