Unable to boot. (solved)

[austin.texas]

I will grant you that the instructions on dedoimedo's page are a little hard to follow.
I will try to simplify them.
Using the live Mint, you need to mount your / partition, sda6

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sudo mount /dev/sda6 /mnt

Then enter each of these commands:

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for i in /dev /dev/pts /proc /sys /run; do sudo mount -B $i /mnt$i; done

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sudo chroot /mnt

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update-initramfs -u

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grub-install --recheck /dev/sda

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update-grub

Press CTRL-D to exit chroot
Press CTRL-D again to exit the terminal

[Reorx]

Of note: The original problem in the original thread was low disk space on /... and that problem still exists... Somewhere along this adventure, the OP should shrink SDA7 to make room to expand SDA5 - unless of course the plan is to convert the partition labelled DATA to a separate /home partition.

[Wompoo]

I will grant you that the instructions on dedoimedo's page are a little hard to follow.
I will try to simplify them.
Using the live Mint, you need to mount your / partition, sda6

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sudo mount /dev/sda6 /mnt

.....................................l

After this command, the result was:
/dev/sda6 looks like swapspace - not mounted
mount: you must specify the filesystem type

Thanks for coming back to my assistance.

[austin.texas]

After this command, the result was:
/dev/sda6 looks like swapspace - not mounted
mount: you must specify the filesystem type
Thanks for coming back to my assistance.

Sorry, that was my mistake. Your root partition was originally sda6. Now it shows as sda5

[Wompoo]

I ran the commands listed above and after this command:

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 sudo chroot /mnt

I received a mint / header in the colour red.

I continued entering the commands in turn until I got to:

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 grub-install --recheck /dev/sda

Then I received the error notice: failed to get canonical path of ' /dev/sda5'

[austin.texas]

I ran the commands listed above and after this command:

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 sudo chroot /mnt

I received a mint / header in the colour red.

I continued entering the commands in turn until I got to:

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 grub-install --recheck /dev/sda

Then I received the error notice: failed to get canonical path of ' /dev/sda5'

Did you enter sda5 or sda ? It should be sda

[Wompoo]

I entered sda

[austin.texas]

A lot of times some of those "canonical" and "cow" error messages in this process can be ignored.

[Wompoo]

I still get the same error message after the last command.

[austin.texas]

Try it without the "recheck", just

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grub-install /dev/sda

Then exit and see if Mint boots from the hard drive.

[Wompoo]

Still no good doing that. Error notice

[austin.texas]

What happened when you tried to boot the hard drive?

[austin.texas]

Maybe your partition and your fstab are inconsistent after the changes made.
To check, mount your / partition, sda6, again, like before:

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sudo mount /dev/sda6 /mnt

Then post here the results of the commands:

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cat /dev/sda6/etc/fstab

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inxi -pou

[Reorx]

Please advise how I ensure that I have burned the disk correctly. I tried it twice, but with little indication that I could tell that is was burnt correct... I will go back to the .iso and try another burn. I would burn it on this computer, but it is a 64 bit and so not compatible.

You can burn the ISO to a disk on any computer. 64 bit doesn't matter... I D/L-ed the ISO and burned it to a disk on my LM17C64 system (using Brasero) and the disk boots just fine. The utility is text based & menu driven. I poked around a bit - it's not exactly "intuitive".

[Wompoo]

I got it to boot using the chroot system described yesterday by Austin.
I was making a very silly mistake - quite embarrassing.
I was using a Linux Mint 17.3 boot disk to work on the problem computer which is loaded with LM 17.1
I found an older disk, the right one, put it in and the chroot commands flowed smoothly through the process.

I apologise profusely for giving you and Reorx additional unnecessary bother.

Many thanks for seeing it through with me.

Now, back to Reorx caveat that I will still have to resize that DATA partition. Please advise just how much, any dangers inherent etc. etc.
I am unable to open the new DATA partition or to save a file into it. "Permission Denied"
Do I have to "mount it" or something else?

[Reorx]

Is the "DATA" partition (SDA7) for sharing data between Win and Mint or is it just for your Mint data? I assume it is just for your Mint data because you have intentionally formatted it to ext4. If my assumption is correct, instead of resizing any partitions, you could just move the data from your /home folder to the DATA partition which will free up space on SDA5 (probably about 20GB). Austin will be able to walk you thru the process of fixing the permissions on SDA7 and then auto-mounting it @ boot up...

[austin.texas]

I am unable to open the new DATA partition or to save a file into it. "Permission Denied"
Do I have to "mount it" or something else?

Yes, you will have to move some of your personal files from sda6 to the new data partition to make room.
But first, to get the drive mounted as a data partition, please post the result of the commands:

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cat /dev/sda6/etc/fstab

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inxi -pou

[Wompoo]

Is the "DATA" partition (SDA7) for sharing data between Win and Mint or is it just for your Mint data? .........................

I am planning on using it just for my Mint data.

Austin,
Here is the result of those commands in terminal:

[Reorx]

Is the "DATA" partition (SDA7) for sharing data between Win and Mint or is it just for your Mint data? .........................

I am planning on using just for my Mint data.

Perfect! No need to resize anything - just move data once you get permissions and fstab straightened out.

Happy Minting!

[austin.texas]

You can boot into MInt on the hard drive.
Make a directory named DATA (not data) to use as a mount point.

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sudo mkdir /DATA

Take ownership of that directory:

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sudo chown $USER:$USER /DATA

Open /etc/fstab in your text editor:

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gksudo gedit /etc/fstab

Add these 2 lines to the end of fstab:

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# mount sda7 on /DATA
UUID=803662ac-d6d2-4ed0-963a-2b54fef465c2   /DATA   ext4   defaults,noatime   0   2

Save and exit the editor.
To mount the partition enter:

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sudo mount -a

- OR you can reboot.
Now you can make folders (like NewMusic, Photos, etc.) and save your personal files on /DATA

If you make a folder on /DATA you can create a symlink to that folder in Nemo by holding SHIFT down and dragging the folder you created into your existing /home/username folder.
Or you can just create Bookmarks in Nemo.