Upgrading Mint 13 xfce to 18.3 xfce: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block (0,0)

[.William.]

After upgrading Mint 13 xfce to 18.3 xfce, I get the following message:

Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block (0,0)

I made a screen:



I checked from the live USB, through GParted,
and my partitions are as follows:



Help please?

[Flemur]

After upgrading Mint 13 xfce to 18.3 xfce, I get the following message:
Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block (0,0)

Really 13 to 18.3? I didn't think that was possible!

How'd you do it?

[Mute Ant]

This error-message is from the new Linux (4.10.0) complaining that there is no initrd.img loaded into RAM.

"I didn't think that was possible!" It depends which end you blow down. Some people use 'upgrade' in the 'completely replace' sense... I upgraded my 80GB drive to 250GB.

[.William.]

Perhaps a bit of confusion - yet no Babylon.

What I intended to say is that I used an ISO of LM 18.3 xfce from a LiveUSB to install it on my laptop, which had LM 13 xfce on it.
I opted to re-use the existing partitions, while keeping the /home partition untouched, to save what's on it.
You can call it an upgrade, since a) I went from 13 to 18.3, which is an upgrade of the OS on my PC.
Others may call it a clean install, but in my point of view that would mean that I let the Install Linux Mint
software decide everything, by applying the default settings for the install.
Ofcourse I had no intent to confuse anyone. Just tell me what I should best call it, and I'll do that.

[Mute Ant]

"I did a Something Else install of Mint 18.3 over Mint 13" would do.

If your installed OS has the file /boot/initrd.img-4.10.0-38-generic it's GRUB that needs fixing.... boot-repair-disk or a Live-Session and chroot or a Live-Session and root=/dev/sda1 there's several ways to fix it.

If it doesn't have that file, at least 1 thing went wrong during the installation... try again?

[Flemur]

What I intended to say is that I used an ISO of LM 18.3 xfce from a LiveUSB to install it on my laptop, which had LM 13 xfce on it.
I opted to re-use the existing partitions, while keeping the /home partition untouched, to save what's on it.

I'm not an expert on this but I think that could lead to two problems in two ways -
- If you didn't reformat the "/" partition there are old files there; the installation added more files but didn't remove the old ones unless the names are the same.
- Although probably not the cause of any boot issues, the values in /home might be bogus for newer versions of the desktop and such.

Cure (if they're actually problems):
- reformat the "/" partition when you install.
- copy the old /home to a USB gizmo or somewhere else safe before installing, then copy it back after the new OS works properly - but save the new /home before you copy the old one over.

[.William.]

Thanks for your help.

It took some time, but I got everything working. I took your advice and reformatted the partitions like you suggested. Since I was working on partitions, I decided it might be wise to increase the size of the partitions as well. / was running out of space and /home only had 3 Gig left. Ofcourse not without obstacles. I ended up using Rescatux to get the PC to start up again, using the option in advanced tools to apply the all in one fix. I was aware there was a risk involved with doing that, but it turned out great. It has extended the life of my old PC, which is now about ten years old I think.