Mint v18.2 suddenly fails to boot

[baj]

I've been running Mint v18.2 for a little over a year now and I do updates a couple times per month. I use this laptop for work and so I don't color outside the lines, I try to stick to the basics and aside from the Mint updates haven't made a change to the system in months.

I just rebooted my computer this morning only it didn't finish booting. I got past the boot options screen and the LM logo stayed on the screen much longer than usual, then was dumped to a terminal screen with this:

"Welcome to emergency mode! After logging in, type "journalctl -xb" to view
system logs, "systemctl reboot" to reboot, "systemctl default" or ^D to
try again to boot into default mode.
Press Enter for Maintenance
(or press Control-D to continue):"

I reboot and select recovery mode, tried a few options there including reinitializing Grub, which then gets me into my system in recovery mode. I can get to all my drives, things look good, reboot - same problem. Did some reading which pointed to a corruption of Grub, made sense, so I then booted a Live USB stick and reinstalled grub. Problem remained only I could no longer get into my system in recovery mode.

I booted Windows 10 (I have dual boot), could see all my EXT partitions fine with DiskInternals util, was able to browse and view the files on them so was pretty sure drives are okay. This was the first time I'd booted Windows 10 in at least 6 months, so that wasn't the cause of the original issue.

Did some more reading suggesting fstab file could be the cuprit. So I commented out my home folder mount (home is a separate RAID0) in fstab, saved, reboot, and then the system did boot to the login screen. But I could not login (because I had no home folder, presumably). So I jumped out to a terminal, mounted the RAID0 as the home folder, back to the GUI the login works and I'm good to go, everything is working as it normally does. Back to fstab, remove comments from home folder, save, reboot, problem returns.

I'm able to edit and save my fstab file so that's not corrupt, and nothing else in my system has changed, so WTH? Any ideas?

Thanks,
-Brad

[karlchen]

Hello, Brad.

You have tried a few things in order to trouble-shoot, sadly without the success, which you had hoped for.
One thing which you have not mentioned is that you have inspected the system logfiles, using the command journalctl -xb as had been suggested by the system itself.

How to use journalctl -xb:
It is a terminal command. journalctl -xb without any number will display the system logfile of the current system session, starting at boot time.
journalctl -xb -1 will display the system logfile written during the previous session (current session minus 1)
journalctl -xb -2 will display the system logfile written during the session before the previous session (current session minus 2)
and so on.

It is pretty likely that the system logs some errors in the system logfiles which explain why the system does not boot correctly.

So what you could do is:
Boot up the system as you had done once, where you booted without /home first, then mounted /home manually and could use the system.
In this situation the previous (failed) session logfile might be interesting: journalctl -xb -1

But be aware that the screen output of the journalctl command will be very long. Too long to simply copy it and paste it into your next reply.

What you can do, however, is this:
Display the system logfile by executing journal -xb -1. Copy the screen output into an empty text file (use xed editor). Save the file.
Then zip the file and upload the zipped file as an attachment into your next reply. This should work. And would permit interested users to inspect your system logfile.

In addition, execute inxi -Fxz Mark the complete screen output and paste it into your next reply.

Hope this will give us something to analyze.

Best regards,
Karl

[baj]

Thanks Karl,

Sadly I've been working on this most of the day, I like to try to solve my own problems or at least dig in to better understand what might be causing it. I did do the journalctl -xb, which is where I got the idea to look at fstab. Unfortunately using journalctl -xb -1 doesn't appear to work, it says "Specifying boot ID has no effect, no persistent journal was found" so perhaps my system is set up differently than yours.

I do get these errors regardless of my fstab config:

Code: Select all

Oct 13 17:42:55 BAJ-HPzBookG3 kernel: efi: EFI v2.40 by HP
Oct 13 17:42:55 BAJ-HPzBookG3 kernel: efi:  ACPI=0x39efe000  ACPI 2.0=0x39efe014  SMBIOS=0x398db000  MPS=0x3991c000  ESRT=0x3906b660
Oct 13 17:42:55 BAJ-HPzBookG3 kernel: efi: requested map not found.
Oct 13 17:42:55 BAJ-HPzBookG3 kernel: esrt: ESRT header is not in the memory map."

I'll look for others.

Here's the output you requested:

Code: Select all

$ inxi -Fxz
System:    Host: BAJ-HPzBookG3 Kernel: 4.8.0-53-generic x86_64 (64 bit gcc: 5.4.0)
           Desktop: MATE 1.18.0 (Gtk 3.18.9-1ubuntu3.3) Distro: Linux Mint 18.2 Sonya
Machine:   System: HP (portable) product: HP ZBook 17 G3
           Mobo: HP model: 80D6 v: KBC Version 10.70 Bios: HP v: N81 Ver. 01.17 date: 09/27/2017
CPU:       Quad core Intel Xeon E3-1575M v5 (-HT-MCP-) cache: 8192 KB
           flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3 vmx) bmips: 24000
           clock speeds: max: 3900 MHz 1: 855 MHz 2: 871 MHz 3: 809 MHz 4: 876 MHz 5: 869 MHz 6: 844 MHz
           7: 838 MHz 8: 867 MHz
Graphics:  Card: Intel Device 193d bus-ID: 00:02.0
           Display Server: X.Org 1.18.4 drivers: (unloaded: fbdev,vesa)
           Resolution: 1600x900@60.07hz, 1920x1080@60.00hz
           GLX Renderer: Mesa DRI Intel Iris Pro Graphics P580 (Skylake GT4e)
           GLX Version: 3.0 Mesa 17.0.7 Direct Rendering: Yes
Audio:     Card Intel Sunrise Point-H HD Audio driver: snd_hda_intel bus-ID: 00:1f.3
           Sound: Advanced Linux Sound Architecture v: k4.8.0-53-generic
Network:   Card-1: Intel Ethernet Connection (2) I219-LM driver: e1000e v: 3.2.6-k bus-ID: 00:1f.6
           IF: eth0 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>
           Card-2: Intel Wireless 8260 driver: iwlwifi bus-ID: 02:00.0
           IF: wlan0 state: up mac: <filter>
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 4004.8GB (84.5% used) ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 model: N/A size: 512.1GB
           ID-2: /dev/sda model: ST2000LX001 size: 2000.4GB ID-3: /dev/sdb model: ST2000LX001 size: 2000.4GB
           ID-4: USB /dev/sdc model: Cruzer_Edge size: 4.0GB
Partition: ID-1: / size: 246G used: 12G (5%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/nvme0n1p7
           ID-2: /home size: 3.6T used: 3.1T (89%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/md126p1
RAID:      Device-1: /dev/md126 - active components: online: sda[1] sdb[0]
           Info: raid: 0 report: N/A blocks: 3907023872 chunk size: 16k
           Device-2: /dev/md127 - inactive components: online: none spare: sda[1] sdb[0]
Sensors:   System Temperatures: cpu: 31.0C mobo: 0.0C
           Fan Speeds (in rpm): cpu: N/A
Info:      Processes: 265 Uptime: 11 min Memory: 2293.4/32055.4MB Init: systemd runlevel: 5 Gcc sys: 5.4.0
           Client: Shell (bash 4.3.481) inxi: 2.2.35 

[baj]

Another 1000 lines in, I found this, but assumed it was WIFI related because of the iwlwifi before the two systemd messages:

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Oct 13 17:42:55 BAJ-HPzBookG3 kernel: iwlwifi 0000:02:00.0: loaded firmware version 21.302800.0 op_mode iwlmvm
Oct 13 17:42:55 BAJ-HPzBookG3 systemd[1]: dev-disk-by\x2dpartlabel-Basic\x5cx20data\x5cx20partition.device: Dev dev-disk-by\x2dpartlabel-Basic\x5cx20data\x5cx20partition.device appeared twice with different sysfs paths /sys/
Oct 13 17:42:55 BAJ-HPzBookG3 systemd[1]: dev-disk-by\x2dpartlabel-Basic\x5cx20data\x5cx20partition.device: Dev dev-disk-by\x2dpartlabel-Basic\x5cx20data\x5cx20partition.device appeared twice with different sysfs paths /sys/
Oct 13 17:42:55 BAJ-HPzBookG3 mtp-probe[713]: checking bus 1, device 6: "/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-7"
Oct 13 17:42:55 BAJ-HPzBookG3 mtp-probe[713]: bus: 1, device: 6 was not an MTP device

[trytip]

have you tried restoring the last snapshot in Timeshift ?

[baj]

I would first need to build a time machine to go back in time to a known-good condition to make a snapshot with Timeshift.

[baj]

No fix yet, but I did find a hack-around. If I comment out my home folder entry in fstab it will boot to the GUI login prompt. At that point I can CTRL-ALT-F1 to a terminal, login and mount my home folder, then CTRL-ALT-F7 back to the GUI and login under my normal user and everything loads as it did previously.

Not pretty but I can at least use my puter again.