Boot Failure (Solved)

[theoneghost]

I recently deleted a small FAT32 partition from within linux, which was not connected in any way to the linux filesystem, and now the boot process hangs at startup. I was able to get into recovery mode, and run fsck after unmounting everything, and it told me it was clean. I restarted, and it still wouldn't boot. So I went back into recovery mode, ran fsck again using "fsck -fv /dev/sda1-7" I ran it on all except my ntfs partition, and of course the swap partition. It came up with some errors, which said wrong inode something or other, then asked me to fix. I pressed y for yes. It moved all of the inodes apparently to "/lost+found". It then finished, and told me to reboot again. I did, and it still wouldn't boot. Now, I thought sda6 was my home directory, but it could be sda7. I dont have anything that isnt backed up, but I dont want to have to reinstall mint. Is there anything I can do? I don't know if I can go that far back into the logs to post exactly what it said, because of the numerous times. But I'll try my best to get them if anyone thinks it'll help. This is not that urgent for me, as I still have windows xp installed, but I like using linux more. So does anyone know whats just happened?

[theoneghost]

The partition I deleted was /dev/sda3. I forgot to mention. It didnt have any flags, and was just an empty partition I was using in windows. I was going to turn it into ext3.

[scorp123]

So does anyone know whats just happened?

Sorry, my crystal ball is down for maintenance. But I still got my telescope so I could give you a horoscope reading if you want?

Just joking Relax

As a matter of fact it's pretty hard to say what happened there. Could be a physical error on your disk. Could be you screwed up your partition tables?

My suggestion would be that you try and boot the Live CD and make a backup of your /home before you do anything else.

And it would be nice to have a short overview over your HD's partitioning scheme, e.g. which partition is what? And can you try and access your old /etc directory and get us the file /etc/fstab and post that here? That would be helpful

[theoneghost]

The partition table should be ok. I checked fstab, the only weird thing I saw was that /dev/sda3 is still in there. I'll try to get it posted asap. Also, I was "cd-ing" around, and it seems there isnt anything in /home anymore. I don't know whats up with that, maybe it just wasn't mounted. I dont have a boot disk on me, but Ill get fstab, and post the contents. Is there anything else that might help? Maybe my partition table?

[scorp123]

Please post the /etc/fstab file here ... and it would really help if you had a live CD somewhere somehow What I need is the output of this command:

Code: Select all

sudo fdisk -l /dev/sda

It appears you can still get into your system despite the errors? So while you are in there can you please do the commands above plus this one too:

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df -ah

[theoneghost]

I can get in under the recovery mode. I dont have the disk I usually use. I have a fedora core 5 disk, and mandriva 2007.1 on me. I don't know why i didnt think of those sooner. I usually carry them on me. Hindsight is always great.

[theoneghost]

I haven't fixed it yet, I'm still trying to get my hands on a disk.

[theoneghost]

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# /dev/sda6
UUID=5a89835d-a82a-4279-b702-656feb881dc8 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /dev/sda7
UUID=6214ef47-b0d3-47f6-9c67-6b46a7e47390 /home ext3 defaults 0 2
# /dev/sda1
UUID=07D6-0908 /media/sda1 vfat defaults,utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0 1
/dev/sda3 /media/sda3 vfat defaults,utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0 1
# /dev/sda2
UUID=B4FCC4C0FCC47DDC /media/windows ntfs defaults,nls=utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0 1
# /dev/sda5
UUID=b85937ee-237a-4f50-aef2-2d962eff897b none swap sw 0 0
/dev/sdb1 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom1 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0

[theoneghost]

/dev/sda1__1_____6_____de
/dev/sda2__7_____4159__7
/dev/sda4__4160__6654__f
/dev/sda5__4160__4351__82
/dev/sda6__4352__5312__83
/dev/sda7__5313__6654__83

This is the "fdisk -l /dev/sda" output.

[theoneghost]

And here is the "df -sh" output.

/dev/sda6____(total)7.3GB____(Used)3.3GB____(Avail)3.7GB____Mounted on /

[scorp123]

When you say you deleted /dev/sda3 ... what exactly do you mean with this? Did you just format it? Or really remove it from your harddisks's partition table?

For starter's comment out the line in /etc/fstab about /dev/sda3, e.g. put a hash "#" (without the quotation marks) on the beginning of that line so that it looks like this:

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# /dev/sda3 /media/sda3 vfat defaults,utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0 1


Best thing and probably the easiest way for you to do this is to learn vi and it's archaic commands real quick now

Just kidding You should probably use a GUI-based editor on a live CD; e.g. boot the live CD, mount the root partition according to those /etc/fstab entries, and edit the file as I suggested; then try to run the system again without live CD and see what happens.

[theoneghost]

I formatted it through fdisk. So what your saying is that it wont boot because it cant find the partition? If I make a new partition there, would I have to un comment that line in fstab with the new parameters for that partition type?

[theoneghost]

Um, now fsck runs at startup, and dies with an error code of 3. It says it must restart, It's doing that now. It's now booting up to a blinking cursor. I can't type anything there. Is there anything else we can try?

[theoneghost]

I am just going to reinstall mint. Maybe I'll try out KDE for mint, and see how it is. Worst case I'll Just install GNOME Mint again.