I can't boot except in root [SOLVED}

[WharfRat]

I don't know what else I can do from here - it's not easy trying to troubleshoot things like this from afar

UPDATE: Can you reinstall

[wutsinterweb]

Indeed, I've tried helping older family and they lose their cool no matter how nice I am.

[wutsinterweb]

Wait, don't go yet, PLEASE, I just did something that might help us, I got it to start to my accounts, and it seems something I did to mount those 3 large hard drives is what is the problem!

[wutsinterweb]

I think some sort of mount efforts I took messed things up last night.

[wutsinterweb]

In dolphine, trying to look in the /dev folder doesn't yield anything?

[wutsinterweb]

In this thread, I did what was discussed and thought it was working, thought I'd rebooted with it done, could swear I had done so:

viewtopic.php?f=90&t=240665

Maybe my fstab is messed up, can we try fixing it?

Maybe something about trying to mount/automount those three large hard drives (3 drives WD Blacks 3 terrabyte). Those darned drives wouldn't be seen by gparted or the partition tool with KDE and when they ARE seen, show as being some part type that is weird.

Man, I almost gave up.

[WharfRat]

I've never seen such a messed up thread

Mount the linux partition again from the live media and grep -v ^# /mnt/etc/fstab

[wutsinterweb]

Just changed fstab back to it was before those lines added.

It rebooted fine, but now I still want to make it to where I can automount and see those three ntfs drives in Mint when I run it.

[wutsinterweb]

The drives show to be "zfs" file system in gparted, but I know for sure that I partitioned them ntfs and put all my critical data on them, it took days to set them up. Do I need to disk wipe them using a secure wipe program, do they have some sort of exotic hidden formatting? They were given to me after being taken out of some sort of server or something. I failed to secure wipe them, stupid me. I just repartitioned them in Windows before putting Linux on and put all my data from old drives on them. What is ZFS and why is it showing if I repartitioned them and formatted them?

[wutsinterweb]

Let me give you a break you've been at this with me for how long now.

Can I come back to you tomorrow or later to try and figure out how to mount those drives?

[WharfRat]

So it boots now to your original user account

If you add this to fstab and make a mountpoint /media/win2 it will mount sda2

Code: Select all

# /dev/sda2
UUID=D6868E2E868E0F65   /media/win2	ntfs-3g	 noatime,nls=utf8,windows_names,dmask=002,fmask=111,uid=1000,gid=1000 0  0

[wutsinterweb]

Yup, boots good! I'm sorry for the goose chase, I didn't know man, now I know. It's all about learning! I'll try that, thank you!

[wutsinterweb]

so to make those mount points, I do "mkdir"?

[WharfRat]

so to make those mount points, I do "mkdir"?

Code: Select all

sudo mkdir /media/win2

[wutsinterweb]

I'm so hurr durr, i just posted replies but in the other thread. Doh!

So this is the blkid result, it seems that when I tried my approximation of your instructions, it didn't work and didn't boot so I recovered the same way and put fstab back to normal.

I think I need to back up my fstab and this is the blkid so you can see that something is weird:

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signmeuptoo@signmeuptoo-All-SeriesMint ~ $ blkid
/dev/sda1: LABEL="System Reserved" UUID="7ECE760DCE75BE49" TYPE="ntfs" PARTUUID="b8b896aa-01"
/dev/sda2: UUID="D6868E2E868E0F65" TYPE="ntfs" PARTUUID="b8b896aa-02"
/dev/sda3: UUID="0EE4FE08E4FDF1B7" TYPE="ntfs" PARTUUID="b8b896aa-03"
/dev/sda5: UUID="b26dfdb5-5486-4b4b-bce1-7c1a3f8a6d72" TYPE="swap" PARTUUID="b8b896aa-05"
/dev/sda6: UUID="e0f9ffc8-0099-472d-a5ff-b773cf90fc36" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="b8b896aa-06"
/dev/sdb1: LABEL="System Reserved" UUID="386C85686C85222C" TYPE="ntfs" PARTUUID="a45c0796-01"
/dev/sdb2: LABEL="WindowPrograms" UUID="B2202B34202AFF4B" TYPE="ntfs" PARTUUID="a45c0796-02"
/dev/sdb4: UUID="88A20806A207F788" TYPE="ntfs" PARTUUID="a45c0796-04"
/dev/sdb5: LABEL="LinuxMediaStore" UUID="66EC8773EC873BF5" TYPE="ntfs" PARTUUID="a45c0796-05"
/dev/sdc1: TYPE="zfs_member" PARTLABEL="Basic data partition" PARTUUID="e0180d80-cc52-4194-a1a8-cb1f046c5a24"
/dev/sdd1: TYPE="zfs_member" PARTLABEL="Basic data partition" PARTUUID="4d1ca83c-9f36-4439-a358-6676a06b0fae"
/dev/sde1: TYPE="zfs_member" PARTLABEL="Basic data partition" PARTUUID="cc2176c0-3e99-4909-b11b-64ce72f57608"
signmeuptoo@signmeuptoo-All-SeriesMint ~ $ 

The last 3 drives are not seen by Dophin and are what I need to have mount/automount so I can access them. I had partitioned them in Windows before installing LInux and put my data on them. I did my normal partitioning, but what's weird is there was a very tiny partition there that I didn't see to remove in Windows.

Do I have to wipe those drives? They work fine in Windows, and wiping them I'd have to spend a few days getting the data back on them.

Also, do I used "PARTUUID" rather than "UUID" in fstab? And what type, what other settings in it?

[wutsinterweb]

These 3 drives, each 3 TB in size, were given to me and came from a business as they were replaced. I didn't use a complete disk wiping bootup disk and I am kicking myself now. I just partitioned them in Windows 10, formatted them normal ntfs, and moved my data to them in Windows. Then, after verifying they worked, I installed Mint on my SSD and hooked them back up. Mint doesn't see them in Dolphin. Dolphine sees the SSD (sdb) and the first HDD (sda) and their partitions, though.

It took a couple days to get the data moved onto them, I hope I don't have to wipe them, I'd have to do one at a time. They are NOT in RAID. 2 of the drives are copies of each other and the 3rd one has it's own stuff.

[WharfRat]

What I gave you should have mounted /dev/sda2 to /media/win2 and I don't know what you mean by your approximation of my instructions

The last three partitions are not ntfs. They are zfs types so you might want to look into the zfs-fuse or the zfs-dkms package to access them.

I'm not at all familiar with this filesystem so I can't be of any help with them.

I'm shocked that you are able to access them in Windows

[wutsinterweb]

BELIEVE ME, I formatted them in Windows and they show to be ntfs in it.

[WharfRat]

BELIEVE ME, I formatted them in Windows and they show to be ntfs in it.

Well try this then

Code: Select all

sudo mount -t ntfs-3g -o uid=1000,gid=1000,dmask=002,fmask=111 /dev/sdc1 /mnt

then list it with ls -lh /mnt

[wutsinterweb]

Hi Warfrat, guys:

Got some sleep and did some chores and I'm back for a second to let you know where I am at:

This system boots fine but haven't tried what you said because I went right into Windows on my dual boot system that has the problems/drives in question and checked the 3 partitions, and yes, they say ntfs and show now other partitions, but after a little searching, since I couldn't get my killdisk or my UBCD that are both on burned CDs to load in the system, I searched and found out about EASEUS and installed it in Windows, and after some attempts and some coming up to speed, could see the hidden partitions. EASEUS also doesn't see them as ZFS, but I knew they were, so I wipe one of the drives and rebooted to Windows and let it run, then, I reformatted in NTFS and booted into Linux Mint on the system and it sees it, so that WAS the issue.

So now I'm working on the second of the three drives, copying the data over and I will rinse and then repeat, then I will do the third drive and rinse and repeat. This may take a day or two.

If the mods would like, I can mark this thread [solved] and move on and let you know how it goes and then try modifying fstab if I need to at that point, but I think I might not have to.

Thank you all so much, you are all so kind and patient and understanding, what a great forum!