SOLVED - Almost Scrapped My Linux Mint Cinnamon OS

[PlutoPup]

Let me explain and you are going to want to read this:

To the best of my knowledge, this problem came after updates. I updated my system with the required updates. It was late afternoon. I continued to use the system until night without rebooting. That night I turned off the computer.

The next day I turned on the computer but it would not boot-up. The boot-up process stopped and hung at, "Reached target sound card". I tried the recovery mode. Same results, several times. Several kernels. Searched the web for a similar problem and solution. Nothing. I tried 2 boot-Up repair programs including SuperGrub 2. They failed and they both Hung and never finished running, even after several hours and several attempts.

Wanting to save the files on the hard drive, I pulled the HDD out of the computer to see if I could read the files and save them on another system I have. Almost deleted the file partition with the OS and Swap partition. Then I thought, I didn't give this Linux Forum a chance to see if someone could solve my boot-up problem.

I put the HDD back in the computer, turned it on, after 3 days. Viol'a, it booted-up. My system seemed to have fixed itself. I have Linux Mint Cinnamon 18.2 running with kernel 4.4.0-116 like nothing had happened. But something did happen..!

Okay, are there any experts out there that can tell me what happened.?

Confused and bewildered
Pup

[Moem]

Sorry, did you mean 'scrapped'?
I've changed 'whipped' to 'wiped' and 'closed' to 'cloned' in people's posts but in this case I'm just not certain.

[Spearmint2]

I suspect the copying process helped the failing HDD to recover some data or enabled a bad spot to be refreshed enough it boots again, but I suspect you will eventually have a future problem with it. You should run fsck on the drive soon as possible if you intend to keep using it as a boot drive. That may move the data to a better area on the HDD, giving it a bit longer life.

https://www.thegeekstuff.com/2012/08/fs ... feedburner

[PlutoPup]

Thanks, on both fixes. I will run fsck now. I tried running fsck after the boot-up hang but it didn't work.

[trytip]

i had a similar story with my arch linux. i was away from home for 3 months early last year and upon booting it it hung and received a kernel panic. i did my usual troubleshooting like boot into my mint/mate/17.3 (i have triple boot win7/mint/arch) and tried to see maybe the grub.cfg got deleted somehow or fstab was bad but could not find anything different.

after using mint exclusively for a few days one morning i decided to give the arch partition a boot and YUP it booted the other day i was experimenting with things AGAIN and pooched my arch to the point where there were small processes running constantly could not figure out why there were things in the background like systemd systemctl ibus sleep that would just keep running at around 20-30% cpu. i did a timeshift restore on that arch and to my surprise things did not change and oh did i get pissy.

i don't remember what i did or how i fixed it but found an ODD file in my user folder .local/share/accounts? deleted it and things settled down

there are times linux gets on my last nerve

[Spearmint2]

Thanks, on both fixes. I will run fsck now. I tried running fsck after the boot-up hang but it didn't work.

You can boot to a LIVE DVD and use that to run fsck on the problem drive.

[PlutoPup]

I ran fsck from HDD on boot. It brought the problem back and it hung again, same spot as before. The system would not boot after that. I pulled out the HDD and put it into the other system to read again. Then I put it back in the original system. It Booted-Up. But I can see it sticks for a second on Boot-Up.

What do you suggest.? Should I still try to run fsck from a live DVD.? Where is fsck on live DVD if I do that.? Is it in the menu.?

[Spearmint2]

What do you suggest.? Should I still try to run fsck from a live DVD.? Where is fsck on live DVD if I do that.? Is it in the menu.?

Did you read the link I gave? It shows how to do what you ask. Yes, boot a LIVE DVD and then run the proper command on the affected drive. If you are unsure of the drive name, then can run several commands to discover that.

Code: Select all

fdisk -l
parted -l
blkid

may need to use sudo in front of those commands first.

[PlutoPup]

I read the link. I am not Linux savvy. My HDD - sda - is divided into 3 section, swap, file, home (/), yet I have 4 partitions. The one I don't understand is the file part which is divided into - a Top Part (partition 2) and a Bottom Part (partition 5).

I ran
sudo fsck /dev/sda2 - (which asked if the partition was empty)
sudo fsck /dev/sda5 - (which said partition was clean)

Bottom line, I am not sure what either of those mean. Reading the link again and again doesn't clear things up at all to me.

[Spearmint2]

sounds like you did it correctly on those partitions, but unless we can see what partitions are for what functions such as root partition, I would be guessing. Did you open Terminal or Console/Konsole and run those three commands I listed? If so, pasting the result would help diagnosis.

Then I put it back in the original system. It Booted-Up. But I can see it sticks for a second on Boot-Up.

"sticks" or seems to pause for awhile doesn't necessarily mean there's a problem. It could just be waiting for network connection to be established during that time prior to boot. I had such a long pause in 17.3 and I changed it to limit attempt to connect network to short period and just do it manually AFTER boot now.

The one I don't understand is the file part which is divided into - a Top Part (partition 2) and a Bottom Part (partition 5).

Without seeing your partition setup from those commands, I can only guess it's a Logical Extended Partition with a sub partition inside it.

[PlutoPup]

I did run those commands. I don't know how to copy and then past them here.

I do know that Partition 1 is my Swap section at 4GB,
Partition 2 (is on top of my Filesystem) at 26GB and is called Extended,
Partition 5 is the bottom half of 26GB called Filesystem ext.4.
Partition 3 is the rest of 2 TB and is called Filesystem ext. 4.
There is no Partition 4.

[Spearmint2]

maybe you had another partition and deleted it? You can hilight text in Terminal, then right clk and choose to copy, which allows to paste the info into forum.

[PlutoPup]

I did have Win 10 on this 6 months ago. Forgot, I did delete it.

I was using the terminal from a live DVD. I didn't think to pull up the browser and get on the forum.

[PlutoPup]

sudo fdisk -1
fdisk: invalid option -- '1'

Usage:
fdisk [options] <disk> change partition table
fdisk [options] -l [<disk>] list partition table(s)

Display or manipulate a disk partition table.

Options:
-b, --sector-size <size> physical and logical sector size
-B, --protect-boot don't erase bootbits when create a new label
-c, --compatibility[=<mode>] mode is 'dos' or 'nondos' (default)
-L, --color[=<when>] colorize output (auto, always or never)
colors are enabled by default
-l, --list display partitions end exit
-o, --output <list> output columns
-t, --type <type> recognize specified partition table type only
-u, --units[=<unit>] display units: 'cylinders' or 'sectors' (default)
-s, --getsz display device size in 512-byte sectors [DEPRECATED]
--bytes print SIZE in bytes rather than in human readable format

-C, --cylinders <number> specify the number of cylinders
-H, --heads <number> specify the number of heads
-S, --sectors <number> specify the number of sectors per track

-h, --help display this help and exit
-V, --version output version information and exit

Available columns (for -o):
gpt: Device Start End Sectors Size Type Type-UUID Attrs Name UUID
dos: Device Start End Sectors Cylinders Size Type Id Attrs Boot End-C/H/S
Start-C/H/S
bsd: Slice Start End Sectors Cylinders Size Type Bsize Cpg Fsize
sgi: Device Start End Sectors Cylinders Size Type Id Attrs
sun: Device Start End Sectors Cylinders Size Type Id Flags

For more details see fdisk(8).


sudo parted -1
parted: invalid option -- '1'
Usage: parted [-hlmsv] [-a<align>] [DEVICE [COMMAND [PARAMETERS]]...]


sudo b1kid
sudo: b1kid: command not found

blkid
/dev/sda3: UUID="c4bfd75c-7946-4762-a270-256ce46705a1" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="ccf101eb-03"
/dev/sda5: UUID="a6f6e7a0-33bd-4bbb-b744-f74ec662aa0a" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="ccf101eb-05"
/dev/sr0: UUID="2017-06-28-15-44-43-00" LABEL="Linux Mint 18.2 Cinnamon 64-bit" TYPE="iso9660" PTUUID="08a2574b" PTTYPE="dos"

[PlutoPup]

what am I doing wrong.?

[Arch_Enemy]

i had a similar story with my arch linux. i was away from home for 3 months early last year and upon booting it it hung and received a kernel panic. i did my usual troubleshooting like boot into my mint/mate/17.3 (i have triple boot win7/mint/arch) and tried to see maybe the grub.cfg got deleted somehow or fstab was bad but could not find anything different.

after using mint exclusively for a few days one morning i decided to give the arch partition a boot and YUP it booted the other day i was experimenting with things AGAIN and pooched my arch to the point where there were small processes running constantly could not figure out why there were things in the background like systemd systemctl ibus sleep that would just keep running at around 20-30% cpu. i did a timeshift restore on that arch and to my surprise things did not change and oh did i get pissy.

i don't remember what i did or how i fixed it but found an ODD file in my user folder .local/share/accounts? deleted it and things settled down

there are times linux gets on my last nerve

Uh huh. Well, look at the distro you're talking about ===============>

[Spearmint2]

little L, not numeral one.

[PlutoPup]

fsck -1
fsck from util-linux 2.27.1

sudo parted -1
parted: invalid option -- '1'
Usage: parted [-hlmsv] [-a<align>] [DEVICE [COMMAND [PARAMETERS]]...]

[Spearmint2]

the switch used with the command is L, but not caps. You keep using numeral one like this 1, but it's not a numeral, but a letter.

[PlutoPup]

that makes more sense, small l

mint@mint ~ $ sudo fsck -l
fsck from util-linux 2.27.1
mint@mint ~ $ sudo parted -l
Model: ATA ST2000DM006-2DM1 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 2000GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/4096B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags:

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 1049kB 4000MB 3999MB primary linux-swap(v1) boot
2 4001MB 29.9GB 25.9GB extended
5 4001MB 29.9GB 25.9GB logical ext4
3 29.9GB 2000GB 1971GB primary ext4


Warning: Unable to open /dev/sr0 read-write (Read-only file system). /dev/sr0
has been opened read-only.
Model: SONY DVD RW DW-Q28A (scsi)
Disk /dev/sr0: 1676MB
Sector size (logical/physical): 2048B/2048B
Partition Table: mac
Disk Flags:

Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 2048B 6143B 4096B Apple
2 1641MB 1643MB 2490kB EFI


mint@mint ~ $ sudo blkid
/dev/sda3: UUID="c4bfd75c-7946-4762-a270-256ce46705a1" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="ccf101eb-03"
/dev/sda5: UUID="a6f6e7a0-33bd-4bbb-b744-f74ec662aa0a" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="ccf101eb-05"
/dev/sr0: UUID="2017-06-28-15-44-43-00" LABEL="Linux Mint 18.2 Cinnamon 64-bit" TYPE="iso9660" PTUUID="08a2574b" PTTYPE="dos"
/dev/loop0: TYPE="squashfs"
/dev/sda1: UUID="eac7396a-0781-4920-a371-311a2a02e7e6" TYPE="swap" PARTUUID="ccf101eb-01"