Boot Failure (Solved)

Questions about Grub, UEFI,the liveCD and the installer
Forum rules
Before you post read how to get help. Topics in this forum are automatically closed 6 months after creation.
Locked
User avatar
theoneghost
Level 1
Level 1
Posts: 31
Joined: Thu Feb 01, 2007 5:28 pm
Location: San Antonio, Texas
Contact:

Boot Failure (Solved)

Post by 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?
Last edited by LockBot on Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:16 am, edited 2 times in total.
Reason: Topic automatically closed 6 months after creation. New replies are no longer allowed.
User avatar
theoneghost
Level 1
Level 1
Posts: 31
Joined: Thu Feb 01, 2007 5:28 pm
Location: San Antonio, Texas
Contact:

Post by 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
Level 8
Level 8
Posts: 2272
Joined: Sat Dec 02, 2006 4:19 pm
Location: Switzerland

Re: Boot Failure

Post by scorp123 »

theoneghost wrote: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? :D

:D Just joking :D Relax :wink:

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? :shock:

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 :wink:
User avatar
theoneghost
Level 1
Level 1
Posts: 31
Joined: Thu Feb 01, 2007 5:28 pm
Location: San Antonio, Texas
Contact:

Post by 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
Level 8
Level 8
Posts: 2272
Joined: Sat Dec 02, 2006 4:19 pm
Location: Switzerland

Post by 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:

Code: Select all

df -ah
User avatar
theoneghost
Level 1
Level 1
Posts: 31
Joined: Thu Feb 01, 2007 5:28 pm
Location: San Antonio, Texas
Contact:

Post by 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.
User avatar
theoneghost
Level 1
Level 1
Posts: 31
Joined: Thu Feb 01, 2007 5:28 pm
Location: San Antonio, Texas
Contact:

Post by theoneghost »

I haven't fixed it yet, I'm still trying to get my hands on a disk.
User avatar
theoneghost
Level 1
Level 1
Posts: 31
Joined: Thu Feb 01, 2007 5:28 pm
Location: San Antonio, Texas
Contact:

Post by 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
User avatar
theoneghost
Level 1
Level 1
Posts: 31
Joined: Thu Feb 01, 2007 5:28 pm
Location: San Antonio, Texas
Contact:

Post by 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.
User avatar
theoneghost
Level 1
Level 1
Posts: 31
Joined: Thu Feb 01, 2007 5:28 pm
Location: San Antonio, Texas
Contact:

Post by theoneghost »

And here is the "df -sh" output.

/dev/sda6____(total)7.3GB____(Used)3.3GB____(Avail)3.7GB____Mounted on /
scorp123
Level 8
Level 8
Posts: 2272
Joined: Sat Dec 02, 2006 4:19 pm
Location: Switzerland

Post by 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:

Code: Select all

# /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 :twisted:

Just kidding :D 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.
User avatar
theoneghost
Level 1
Level 1
Posts: 31
Joined: Thu Feb 01, 2007 5:28 pm
Location: San Antonio, Texas
Contact:

Post by 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?
User avatar
theoneghost
Level 1
Level 1
Posts: 31
Joined: Thu Feb 01, 2007 5:28 pm
Location: San Antonio, Texas
Contact:

Post by 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?
User avatar
theoneghost
Level 1
Level 1
Posts: 31
Joined: Thu Feb 01, 2007 5:28 pm
Location: San Antonio, Texas
Contact:

Post by 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.
Locked

Return to “Installation & Boot”