linux booting "no symbol table"

= linux booting, "no symbol table" displayed on GRUB loading process.

Well, that was just the first issue I was having.

After some reading, it seems that it was GRUB having a bad time and the solution was pretty simple

# sudo grub-install /dev/sda    (change sda as needed)

then

# sudo update-grub 

Those two commands are the same whether your system is 32 or 64 bit.

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Then, there was another issue:

= System loaded on maintenance mode ...  Press Ctrl+D ....   (I don't remember the whole thing).

I thought the 2 symptoms were part of the same problem, but not.

After some reading I noticed a pattern, issues pointing to /etc/fstab

In my case, what was happening is that I was booting a recently cloned VM (virtual machine) and it seems that the "shared folder" is disabled automatically on the clones' vm settings. The clone was trying to mount the shared folder, couldn't do it because the VM settings had it disabled and decided to go into maintenance mode.

The solution was easy, go to the VM settings and enable the shared folder OR edit /etc/fstab and comment out the line mounting the shared folder.

VM on vmware workstation version 10.

Hope it helps someone.