[SOLVED] Laptop with mint 19 stopped booting

[Deenoo]

Fix worked, system fully operational! Big thanks!

[Tarzan]

Well it had me really nailed, I lost both my m19 laptop and my m19 pc but your timely expertise rescued my Titanic headache.
There's an important lesson or two in this whole scenario and I've learned both of them, I am indeed blessed by the God of 'Lucky I found your post'

[antikythera]

Clem posted about this in the releases & announcements section of the forum.

[cherryblossom11]

Clem posted about this in the releases & announcements section of the forum.

For whatever reason the instructions in that post did not work for me. The instructions on p2 from leocansan did work however. THANKS!

Some notes:
I never set a root password but recovery shell was asking me for one, nothing worked so what I did instead was reboot and ctrl+alt+f1 on blank screen to get to terminal, login and issued the commands with sudo. cd does not work with sudo apparently.
When I ran the commands in the announcement, after doing the 'rm -rf /var/run' part my login screen magically appeared a moment later, but I returned to terminal to enter the final command and reboot, but everything was still the same. weird.

These updates need to be fully tested before being rolled out to countless users, even if it is a small update it's clear that these things can and do happen. And they shouldn't. I get that mistakes happen but this was pretty excessive.

And I will probably move from timeshift to using backup images with clonezilla from now on. I guess it wouldn't hurt to keep timeshift running too but clearly it has limitations, it totally failed to fix this issue.

[ivan+0]

Worked for me! Thanks!

[waldoeli]

Short and simple fix listed by leaocansan, many thanks.
Solved the problem on my PC in no time, as compared to search and try for hours.

But now to the tricky part: What is going to happen if the system is updated manually or by the system actualization?

Regards

[Slave5Tom]

Thanks @leocansan. Simple fix for a big problem. In my case, in the recovery mode, when I selected ROOT prompt, it went to root prompt without the root pw. I never set a root pw on install, so that might be why. Just did an system update this morning, but on the lookout for offending base-util to avoid. Installing future updates with caution.

[karlchen]

Hi, Waldoeli.

Nothing bad is going to happen, if a Mint 19 Tara system, which has just recovered from the base-files 19.0.2 problem, fetches update packages again.
For the moment, the Mint 19 Tara repo offers base-files 19.0.1 again. Cf. Clem's announcement here.

Karl

[waldoeli]

Hi Karl

Thanks for the feedback and link.

waldo

[chris-LEJ]

Worked like a charm for me, thank you so much community is a awesome thing.

[regan]

Thanks to the community for the help with this issue, I was seriously very desperate!

Thanks!

[Goetz423]

Good bless you leocansan,
you saved my evening and problably the hole week.

It workes as you mentioned. Very nice.

Greetings
Goetz

[manfriday]

Many thanks!!!
I had the same issue and your recommendation solved the issue for me too.

[ronux]

I tried this method and it did allow me to get past the splash screen and to the the login screen. However, when I put in my password, the login screen just pops up again.

Please create a new thread with your issue. A looping login screen is an issue commonly seen on the forum and sometimes indicates a full (or nearly full) root directory.

Did anyone create a new thread? I have the same issue.
My "before update issue" password does not work any longer, thanks!

[SMG]

Please create a new thread with your issue. A looping login screen is an issue commonly seen on the forum and sometimes indicates a full (or nearly full) root directory.

Did anyone create a new thread? I have the same issue.
My "before update issue" password does not work any longer, thanks!

Multiple people created new threads. There were a variety of issues/resolutions because of how people tried to fix the issue before finding the solution. I don't recall anyone having a password no longer work, so that needs a new thread.

[ronux]

Thank you SMG
I followed part of what you mentioned in the previous message, see 'looping login screen' issue.
I did search for those keywords and from the results I found this post:
viewtopic.php?p=1769597#p1769597
which clearly indicates how to tackle the looping issue.
In my case I had to remove a couple of files as suggested from the post.
I was able to login back into my PC, all good.
Once again thank you for your suggestion and help, cheers!

[PorkPieHat]

Hope I'm posting this in the right place

I seem to have this problem

Running 32-Bit Linux Mint Tessa (kernel 5.0, Cinnamon) on a old Samsung N110 netbook - don't laugh, hero technology

After a big 161 MB update, today, the system failed to boot

The LinuxMint splash-screen (with the "dots" animation) appeared, but was replaced by a black-screen and blinking-cursor: no login screen

Tried leocansan's soln from this very thread:

Code: Select all

To recover from systemd-logind not starting, just follow this instruction:
Boot your computer;
Press SHIFT key while booting;
Select Advanced mode -> any recover booting option;
When recover menu appears, select to go to ROOT prompt;
Enter your root password;
Type:
cp -r /var/run/* /run [PRESS ENTER]
cd /var [PRESS ENTER]
pwd [PRESS ENTER]
The above command has to show '/var'
rm -rf run [PRESS ENTER]
ln -s /run [PRESS ENTER]
reboot [PRESS ENTER]
And done.

No joy

Tried clem's "full" solution, here:

viewtopic.php?f=143&t=331605

Code: Select all

mount -o rw,remount /
rm -rf /var/run
ln -s /run /var/run

Zip

Tried Clem's solution prefaced with "service lightdm stop" (as suggested by nikolaus above - 1st page):

Belly-up

Tried booting off an earlier kernel

Nada

I still have my install DVD, so I can set-up a working environment and access the N110's drive. How then do I proceeed?

I seem to have the /var/run -> /run symlink

Code: Select all

lrwxrwxrwx 2 root root   4 Dec 17 2018 run -> /run

NOTES:

From a chroot, I did

root@mint:/# dpkg -s base-files
Package: base-files
Essential: yes
Status: install ok installed
Priority: required
Section: admin
Installed-Size: 375
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com>
Architecture: i386
Multi-Arch: foreign
Version: 19.1.3
Replaces: base, dpkg (<= 1.15.0), miscutils
Provides: base
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.3.4)
Pre-Depends: awk
Breaks: initscripts (<< 2.88dsf-13.3), sendfile (<< 2.1b.20080616-5.2~)
Conffiles:
/etc/debian_version 71f3b31c52b52a91784e496ddf94b019
/etc/default/motd-news e2d38a5c7454c64a967d6a2fe033558f
/etc/dpkg/origins/debian 731423fa8ba067262f8ef37882d1e742
/etc/dpkg/origins/ubuntu ea35901c45553c3451f60476be94d2d8
/etc/host.conf 89408008f2585c957c031716600d5a80
/etc/issue 307b368bb89a9b21b41a5a776baf15f6
/etc/issue.net 07516bb7cdd33132bbfc79998cb3def2
/etc/legal d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e
/etc/lsb-release fe50b1e8d6c371b11901ad1d8d4dbd16
/etc/profile.d/01-locale-fix.sh 870346d97b16faac4a371b04ffe4cc2f
/etc/update-motd.d/00-header 3e2b31c72181b87149ff995e7202c0e3
/etc/update-motd.d/10-help-text 3e2b31c72181b87149ff995e7202c0e3
/etc/update-motd.d/50-motd-news 3e2b31c72181b87149ff995e7202c0e3
Description: Debian base system miscellaneous files
This package contains the basic filesystem hierarchy of a Debian system, and
several important miscellaneous files, such as /etc/debian_version,
/etc/host.conf, /etc/issue, /etc/motd, /etc/profile, and others,
and the text of several common licenses in use on Debian systems.
Original-Maintainer: Santiago Vila <sanvila@debian.org>
root@mint:/# dpkg -s initscripts
dpkg-query: package 'initscripts' is not installed and no information is available
Use dpkg --info (= dpkg-deb --info) to examine archive files,
and dpkg --contents (= dpkg-deb --contents) to list their contents.
root@mint:/#

root@mint:/# inxi -Fxxxrz
12System: 12Host mint 12Kernel 4.15.0-20-generic i686 12bits 32 12compiler gcc 12v 7.3.0 12Desktop N/A
12dm LightDM 1.26.0 12Distro Linux Mint 19.1 Tessa 12base Ubuntu 18.04 bionic
12Machine: 12Type Laptop 12System SAMSUNG 12product NC10/N110 12v N/A 12serial <filter> 12Chassis 12type 10
12serial N/A
12Mobo SAMSUNG 12model NC10/N110 12serial <filter> 12BIOS Phoenix 12v 07D0.M012.20090908.RHU
12date 09/08/2009
12Battery: 12ID-1 BAT1 12charge 26.6 Wh 12condition 26.6/48.8 Wh (55%) 12volts 12.4/11.1
12model SAMSUNG Electronics 12type Li-ion 12serial N/A 12status Full
12CPU: 12Topology Single Core 12model Intel Atom N270 12bits 32 12type MT 12arch Bonnell 12rev 2
12L1 cache 64 KiB 12L2 cache 512 KiB
12flags nx pae sse sse2 sse3 ssse3 12bogomips 6383
12Speed 867 MHz 12min/max 800/1600 MHz 12Core speeds (MHz) 121 798 122 798
12Graphics: 12Device-1 Intel Mobile 945GSE Express Integrated Graphics 12vendor Samsung Co 12driver i915
12v kernel 12bus ID 00:02.0 12chip ID 8086:27ae
12Display 12server X.org 1.19.6 12driver intel 12unloaded fbdev,modesetting,vesa 12tty N/A
12Message No advanced graphics data found on this system.
12Audio: 12Device-1 Intel NM10/ICH7 Family High Definition Audio 12vendor Samsung Co
12driver snd_hda_intel 12v kernel 12bus ID 00:1b.0 12chip ID 8086:27d8
12Sound Server ALSA 12v k4.15.0-20-generic
12Network: 12Device-1 Qualcomm Atheros AR242x / AR542x Wireless Network Adapter 12vendor Foxconn
12driver ath5k 12v kernel 12port 18a0 12bus ID 02:00.0 12chip ID 168c:001c
12IF wlp2s0 12state down 12mac <filter>
12Device-2 Marvell 88E8040 PCI-E Fast Ethernet 12vendor Samsung Co 12driver sky2 12v 1.30
12port 2000 12bus ID 03:00.0 12chip ID 11ab:4354
12IF enp3s0 12state down 12mac <filter>
12Drives: 12Local Storage 12total 149.05 GiB 12used 12.60 GiB (8.5%)
12ID-1 /dev/sda 12vendor Samsung 12model HM160HI 12size 149.05 GiB 12speed <unknown>
12serial <filter> 12rev 0-06 12temp 41 C 12scheme MBR
12Partition: 12ID-1 / 12size 31.37 GiB 12used 12.60 GiB (40.2%) 12fs ext4 12dev /dev/sda6
12ID-2 swap-1 12size 4.05 GiB 12used 0 KiB (0.0%) 12fs swap 12dev /dev/sda5
12Sensors: 12System Temperatures 12cpu 45.0 C 12mobo N/A
12Fan Speeds (RPM) N/A
12Repos: 12No active apt repos in /etc/apt/sources.list
12Active apt repos in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list
121 deb http: //packages.linuxmint.com tessa main upstream import backport #id:linuxmint_main
122 deb http: //archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic main restricted universe multiverse
123 deb http: //archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-updates main restricted universe multiverse
124 deb http: //archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu bionic-backports main restricted universe multiverse
125 deb http: //security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ bionic-security main restricted universe multiverse
126 deb http: //archive.canonical.com/ubuntu/ bionic partner
12Active apt repos in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/webupd8team-indicator-kdeconnect-bionic.list
121 deb http: //ppa.launchpad.net/webupd8team/indicator-kdeconnect/ubuntu bionic main
122 deb-src http: //ppa.launchpad.net/webupd8team/indicator-kdeconnect/ubuntu bionic main
12Info: 12Processes 171 12Uptime 2h 04m 12Memory 1.95 GiB 12used 382.0 MiB (19.1%) 12Init systemd 12v 237
12Compilers 12gcc 7.5.0 12alt 7 12Client Sudo 12v 1.8.21p2 12inxi 3.0.27
root@mint:/#

Hope all that helps

OOps! Don't know why all those "12"s have been inserted into the copied text above. The terminal o/p had missing chars, replaced by 4-element square matrices: top row 00, bottom row 03. I understood this to be an "end of text" character

I really need this netbook, and I would prefer not to reinstall.

All help gratefully received

[Larry78723]

@PorkPieHat Please start a thread of your own after reading How to get help especially item 5

[SMG]

Hope I'm posting this in the right place

Please create your own thread. Your situation is not the same as the one in this thread.

This thread is about Mint Tara 19.0. You have Mint Tessa 19.1. You also seem to not really have what you think you have. You indicated:

Running 32-Bit Linux Mint Tessa (kernel 5.0, Cinnamon) on a old Samsung N110 netbook

yet your inxi information indicates you have the 4.15 kernel and no desktop.

12System: 12Host mint 12Kernel 4.15.0-20-generic i686 12bits 32 12compiler gcc 12v 7.3.0 12Desktop N/A
12dm LightDM 1.26.0 12Distro Linux Mint 19.1 Tessa 12base Ubuntu 18.04 bionic

[Mountain Hare]

leocansan's answer worked for me too on my first attempt. Thank you so much!