[SOLVED] Computer will not boot properly

kevinbenko · 12-05-2020, 09:08 AM

*: forgive me, I am on a "live disk"

*: I tried to determine what drive was bad/needed replacing

*: When I tried to find it, I discovered that the computer would't boot

*{darn}!!!!!

I can boot into / directory ONLY

I edited /etc/fstab to remove every drive except / (duh) and /home... with no success.

the live disk tells me that every drive exists and has stuff in each.

Can anyone give me some assistance in my nightmare.

Thank you for your time, and have a goood day!

hazel · 12-05-2020, 11:12 AM

If you boot a live disc, your working root partition is a ramdisk created for that purpose. It may look like your normal root partition, because all root directories have the same content, but it is not. Consequently the /etc directory that you see is not your normal /etc directory but a temporary one created for this boot, and similarly with /etc/fstab. What you need to do is examine /dev/sda directly.

Code:

fdisk -l /dev/sda

will give you a list of the partitions on it. You can then mount them by hand, one by one, on /mnt and examine them.

michaelk · 12-05-2020, 11:14 AM

Will not boot and only boot into / is a bit vague.

What are the real error messages?

How are the drive(s) partitioned, which filesystems are you using? encryption, RAID etc.

Could be several problems.

Bootloader problems?

Drive problems, run SMART to see if a drive could be failing.

Corrupted filesystems, try running fsck to see?

rnturn · 12-05-2020, 11:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kevinbenko

*: forgive me, I am on a "live disk"

*: I tried to determine what drive was bad/needed replacing

*: When I tried to find it, I discovered that the computer would't boot

*{darn}!!!!!

I can boot into / directory ONLY

I edited /etc/fstab to remove every drive except / (duh) and /home... with no success.

Bad disk? What has happened to make you suspect that?

If I understand your plight, you can boot off the live DVD and see you data on the hard disks -- a real good sign, BTW, and makes one wonder if there really was a bad disk -- but cannot boot from the hard disk itself? Or is the boot from the hard disk the situation where the other filesystems are not mounting? (Booting from the live DVD is not going to mount the filesystems on hard disks. How would it know about them?)

While you're booted using the live DVD, have you run fsck for the hard disk partitions? Including the "/" partition?

Did you remove or merely comment out the /etc/fstab entries for all non-/ filesystems. (I would probably never do the former but have opted for the latter during a migration of a previous fstab to fresh installs.)

Anyhoo, if the system is booting from the hard disk and only "/" is mounted, have you tried mounting the other filesystems by hand? If so, and if the mount commands threw error messages, can you capture any that are displayed? You can either write those down and re-type them here or capture the mount session using "script":

Code:

# script sdb2_mount.log
Script started, file is sdb2_mount.log
# mount /dev/sdb2 /mnt        # for example -- no errors on this one
# umount /mnt
# exit
Script done, file is sdb2_mount.log
#

and then attach that log file or paste the contents into "code" tags. Note: you'll need write access to wherever the script log file is going to be written. If you've booted from the live DVD, you should be able to mount a thumb drive to hold the script log file(s).

Do one thing at a time and make sure you record results. Making multiple modifications that result in a change in system behavior makes it very difficult to know which modification is responsible for the change in behavior.

HTH...

jamison20000e · 12-05-2020, 11:54 AM

Hi.

Don't forget to back your data up whilst you can.
"I discovered that the computer would't boot"
What exactly happens after, powering on?

kevinbenko · 12-05-2020, 01:15 PM

OK, here is my respons to the fdisk:

Disk /dev/sda: 2.7 TiB, 3000592982016 bytes, 5860533168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 4096 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 4096 bytes / 4096 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 62C18461-B81F-464E-A7A9-84CAA7255A81

Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/sda1 2048 976895 974848 476M EFI System
/dev/sda2 976896 1954101247 1953124352 931.3G Linux filesystem
/dev/sda3 1954101248 3907225599 1953124352 931.3G Linux filesystem
/dev/sda4 3907225600 5860532223 1953306624 931.4G Linux filesystem

===================
{{sda1 == UEFI partition
sda2 == root partition
sda3 == home partition
sda4 == VDO partition }}
===================

I've got to login to my system and get some error codes to some responses

root@sysresccd /root %

michaelk · 12-05-2020, 01:28 PM

Also how full is your home partition?

kevinbenko · 12-05-2020, 02:24 PM

the /home directory is about 391.3 Gb of 1.5 Tb so it is approximately 1/4 full (or 3/4 empty)

kevinbenko · 12-05-2020, 02:34 PM

After I boot, it takes much much longer than usual, it does a check on my main HHD, eventually dropping into "scream and die, you are screwed" mode.

=============================

The errors are practally all the same, while my / (dev/sda2) partition seems to be fine, the other three partitions are not:

time out on /dev/sda{1, 3, 4}
dependency failure for /dev/sda{1, 3, 4}
dependency failure for {the names of the other partitions}

=============================

Also, when I had a "scream and die" problem, I put the bad drive in, and everything seems to me to be the way it was normally. I did that BEFORE I had asked for help.

kevinbenko · 12-05-2020, 02:37 PM

Also, I moved the "other" partitions from my /home directory into /mnt/directory

but it doesn't work.....{banging my head against the wall}

kevinbenko · 12-05-2020, 03:08 PM

Oh... also... How do I get SMART. It isn't on the repository for Debian.....

michaelk · 12-05-2020, 03:32 PM

Sorry...
S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) consists of the smartd and smartctl (the command line tool ) which is installed via the smartmontools package.

So how many drives? Post the output of the command
lsblk

computersavvy · 12-05-2020, 09:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by kevinbenko

After I boot, it takes much much longer than usual, it does a check on my main HHD, eventually dropping into "scream and die, you are screwed" mode.

=============================

The errors are practally all the same, while my / (dev/sda2) partition seems to be fine, the other three partitions are not:

time out on /dev/sda{1, 3, 4}
dependency failure for /dev/sda{1, 3, 4}
dependency failure for {the names of the other partitions}

=============================

Also, when I had a "scream and die" problem, I put the bad drive in, and everything seems to me to be the way it was normally. I did that BEFORE I had asked for help.

I am a little concerned about the cause of the dependency failure. Are you using encryption? Did you switch from ext4 to btrfs? or what else have you done that might cause that? That message hints at a missing kernel module needed to open the filesystem on those partitions.

If you have not done anything that could cause those errors, then you need to boot into the live USB then run (as root)

Code:

 fsck.ext4 /dev/sda(2, 3, 4)

for each of those 3 partitions.
When that completes then run

Code:

 fsck -t vfat /dev/sda1

Once all those have been completed successfully and you are sure the filesystems are clean then it should just boot normally.

kevinbenko · 12-05-2020, 10:29 PM

OK... I did something "questionable"
Since the whole thing was started because I replaced a "dead" drive with a good drive I did a netinstall (Debian) on the good drive, and that is now my system drive. I will be migrating my directory trees (just /home and /home/VDO) to my good drive.
In addition, I will be mounting the non-/home drives to /mnt.

Tomorrow.

Once I stop beating my head against the table.

I guess I will probably buying 4 3TB drives in the near future.

{as an aside..... once upon a time, Seagate was pretty {darn} good. Not so good recently. Can anyone tell me what brand yoouu suggest? Yeah... this question is probably on a different forum on LQ.... just asking.....}

OH, yeah... I will call this "Solved".... sort of.....