System boots to initramfs--SOLVED

[bushyiii]

Installed 18.3 cinnamon on a Lenovo Laptop Mdl#120S-14IAP. System worked fine for several weeks and now it starts to boot, I see the Mint logo and then it drops to the CLI displaying BusyBox v1.22.1.

At the Grub menu I now choose recovery mode to get a text boot screen, The text states /dev/mmcb1k0p1 contains a file system with errors. in caps UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY; RUN fsck MANUALLY.

I don't know how to make that happen from the CLI. I appreciate any guidance.

[gm10]

Either boot from the install medium if you still got it at hand, open Disks or GParted and run a file system check/repair on every partition (not just /dev/mmcb1k0p1).

Or run fsck /dev/mmcb1k0p1 from the initramfs prompt.

[KBD47]

I had to do this awhile back, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe I ran:
fsck /dev/sda1
and kept hitting y for yes as it checked different sections of the disk and repaired any issues. That is assuming your main partition is at sda1, if not, insert whatever partition your install is on in place of sda1.

[KBD47]

Either boot from the install medium if you still got it at hand, open Disks or GParted and run a file system check/repair on every partition (not just /dev/mmcb1k0p1).

Or run fsck /dev/mmcb1k0p1 from the initramfs prompt.

You beat me to it by a few seconds

[gm10]

You beat me to it by a few seconds

And you hated it. (at least I do when it happens to me, in particular when it was a longer post, this here is ok).

and kept hitting y for yes as it checked different sections of the disk and repaired any issues. That is assuming your main partition is at sda1, if not, insert whatever partition your install is on in place of sda1.

Yep. I had thought about giving the parameter for letting it run without user input but I think it's important to see and think about what's actually broken.

[bushyiii]

Didn't work for me, after entering the fsck command, as suggested, I get this reply "fsck:error 2 (No such file or directory) while executing fsck.ext2 for device /dev/mmcb1k0p1 I also tried the command using sda1, same result.

I cannot boot from Live USB and this laptoo does not have a CD/DVD drive.

[gm10]

Didn't work for me, after entering the fsck command, as suggested, I get this reply "fsck:error 2 (No such file or directory)

Well, I copied the path from your OP without verifying, but I think you typed it wrong. Instead of /dev/mmcb1k0p1 I'm quite sure it should be /dev/mmcblk0p1 actually. That's a blk as in block.
You need to type it exactly as the error message says. I guess ls /dev would also list the available devices.

[bushyiii]

You are correct, I did type it incorrectly, substituted a 1 in place of an l, once corrected the typo I was able to run fsck, hit YES a number of times and successfully booted into MINT.

Thanks to everyone.

[Vic20]

Thank you all for sharing. I am also grateful that this forum kept my back up box, where I am writing from cookies and the rest in tact, many months later since I am using it now while my computer, the big box is looking like the matrix screen on steroids trying to do it's thing to recover. I get to add, when a hard drive is failing, you will get more of these messages, and in this case, I got a great deal on a used one, finding out now it was also at the end of it's life so hoping and praying I can get it to be usable enough to recover the data upon at the least, at best it's usable for a little while, while I get a new HD set up with what I need.

There is an option along the billions of yes responses, ie. clicking "y" on your keyboard where it gives you an option of selecting "a" and you no longer need to select "y" each time. I literally had this take a dump and ended up wedging a piece of foam to lodge the Y key down, let it run it's paces and the darn thing booted afterwards, yet froze up a couple of days later, thus I am doing it all over and will be backing up my data, setting up a clean install on a "new" hard drive and move on from there.

Two things to look into and try, plug in your hard drive into different slots/connections if you have that option, including your power supply, since contacts and the rest can degrade over time. I had to do it a few times on the latest. Don't discount that hardware is going to fail, especially for the power users, or people like me who are doing it on the cheap and now regretting it. The second, using this, it may take quite a lot time for it to do it's thing, go for a walk or something, leave it overnight if need be, but it can take quite a while.

[drrummer]

I had to do this awhile back, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe I ran:
fsck /dev/sda1
and kept hitting y for yes as it checked different sections of the disk and repaired any issues. That is assuming your main partition is at sda1, if not, insert whatever partition your install is on in place of sda1.

I've tried this too and get the same 'does not exist' message.

Even tried substituting sda1 for sda3 and others.

[Darkmaster006]

Thank you very much. Booting into recovery mode and executing fsck /dev/sda9 (my partition) fixed it.

[linkchen1982]

I had to do this awhile back, someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe I ran:
fsck /dev/sda1
and kept hitting y for yes as it checked different sections of the disk and repaired any issues. That is assuming your main partition is at sda1, if not, insert whatever partition your install is on in place of sda1.

I don't know why but this works perfectly for me! Actually my situation is at sda5, I tried sda1, sda2, ...and finally sda5. Then it will ask many things to fix, I choose "y" for all of them. And restart again.

I use Virtualbox 6.1 to run Linux Mint 20.3. Hopefully it helps someone else.