[SOLVED] 19.2 won't boot

[dvd8n]

My Mint 19.2 Cinnamon installation froze while browsing.

I restarted the computer and the installation would not boot. I tried recovery mode and it said that my root filesystem /dev/sdc2 directory was corrupted - block 0 offset 0 and that I had to run fsck manually. A few questions:

- when I run fsck are there any particular parameters that I should use?
- when I run it should it be in the recovery console, booted from a usb stick, or from my 19.1 install (which still boots fine)?

Any other hints?

Thanks, David

[rene]

When you simply (try to) boot the 19.2 install, "recovery mode" or the normal entry, it should land you in the initramfs, i.e., at a textmode (initramfs) prompt from where you can run the fsck. Use fsck -fy /dev/sdc2. Use exit to continue the boot when it's done.

Block 0 offset 0 is a little suspicious; sounds like you overwrote the start of the partition and the fsck might as such not be succesful at repairing things...

[dvd8n]

Thanks, that seems to have fixed things.

Is it something that I did to corrupt the file system or was I just unlucky?

[rene]

Unlucky I suppose. Generally speaking, any filesystem caches writes in memory and if the system freezes/crashes when data and/or metadata isn't fully synced to disk yet corruption is expected. I'd check the content of any files I had open at the time but as a rule it'll be fine now; likely only some e.g. browser cache entries that were damaged and are now "fixed".

[dvd8n]

Yes, I seem to have lost all my entire firefox set up.

It could be a lot worse...

[dvd8n]

Actually I'm more inclined to think that that's more to do with flipping between 19.1 and 19.2 and firefox helpfully tidying up my profile.

[dvd8n]

Anyway, thanks for the help - David