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So, while programming today I got the terminal error saying that ls was not available and to type in some sudo command to get it. I typed in said sudo command and it told me that it didn't work. I am new to linux and so I can't give more information than that. Now, when I attempt to boot linux I get "file not found. grub rescue>" prompt. I have no idea what that means or what to do. I have tried putting commands into the grub prompt that Fedora likes but to no avail. I am using Ubuntu on a virtual disk with VirtualBox.

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“Told me that it didn't work” is not a useful diagnostic; always copy-paste error messages. Ok, so you didn't save it and it's too late for this time, but remember this in the future. From the other symptoms, your (virtual) disk is clearly damaged. Pop an Ubuntu live CD into the machine and see whether it can make anything of your disk. You won't see the same commands on the Grub prompt as in Fedora because what you've seen on Fedora is Grub 1, and Ubuntu has been using Grub 2 for a while now. – Gilles Feb 20 '12 at 20:29
I know that my post is not very helpful. I apologize! I work as a "helpdesk" person so I understand a little bit. But in my defense I was not expecting my system to crash 2 minutes later! I put the disk in and went into the partitioning part of the installation because I think that is what you meant by "see if it can make anything of your disk". I came up with three options, dev/sda (which I think just means the computer but like I said, this is all gibberish to me) and dev/sda1 ext 4 and dev/sda 5 swap. Can someone please tell me what this means in English? – ad3l1n3 Feb 21 '12 at 1:10
/dev/sda is the disk, /dev/sda1 is the disk partition that contains your files (sort of like c: under Windows; ext4 is the name of the filesystem, sort of like NTFS), and /dev/sda5 is the disk partition that contains swap space. Try to mount /dev/sda1. Can you access files there? It would help if you posted a screenshot of where you're at. – Gilles Feb 21 '12 at 1:20
I went backwards and found that my ubuntu disk did not read that I even had an operating system installed. So I gave up and reinstalled the thing. Do you think that reinstalling the os will fix everything? Or is my disk totally corrupted and I should start over and create a new virtual disk? – ad3l1n3 Feb 21 '12 at 15:44
Thank you so much for your help by the way! – ad3l1n3 Feb 21 '12 at 15:44
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closed as too localized by jrg♦ Dec 26 '12 at 1:07

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