a power failure caused my pc to shutdown unexpectedly. I'm running Ubuntu Breezy. Upon reboot, it stops at the part:

mount: Mounting /dev/hda1 on /root failed: Invalid argument
mount: Mounting /root/dev on /dev/.static/dev failed: No such file or directory
mount: Mounting /dev on /root/dev failed: No such file or directory
Target filesystem doesn't have /sbin/init

BusyBox 1.0 Built-in shell
/bin/sh: can't access tty; job control turned off
#

------------- then dead -----------------------

I tried a few livecds i'm sure that works, but everytime it reaches mounting /etc/fstab it just stays stuck. Any ideas?

My partitioning looks like this :
/hda1 root
swap
/hda3 home

Do you think home is damaged?

Or just the root partition? Is this the reason it won't boot into linux? Why my livecd doesn't work also when it comes to fstab?

It sounds like your / filesystem may be damaged?

Note that / and /root are not the same thing. The latter is your root user's home directory.

I would first trying running fsck on the partition that you mount to /. (You can do this from your live cd. Just make sure the partition is unmounted before you begin this.)

It could actually be physical damage to your drive, so yeah do what anomie said and run fsck.

I've just accessed my /home partition using livecd. Just like you said, i didn't mount the hdd at first, then mounted the /home partition by hand. It works. I can access everything. NOw for the tricky part. I've been wanting to try opensuse 10, and I already have a copy. Will opensuse allow me to install even if I have a broken / partition? Can I just ask it to format that partition, and leave the /home partition alone? Or do I have to remove my / partition first before opensuse allows me to install?

i don't know how to run fsck

In terminal just give yourself root permissions and type fsck. The drives you run it on have to be unmounted though or else it could cause file system damage.

so you mean boot from a livecd without the hard disk mounted, then run fsck /dev/hda1?

Yep that should work.

ok. Thanks a lot for all your advice.

When trying fsck /dev/hda1, it shows the following:

replaying journal..

Reiserfs journal '/dev/hda1' in blocks [18..8211]: 0 transactions replayed

Then just hangs. Any ideas?

Reiser has its own implementation of fsck.

Try If that reports errors, try

You're right. I'm using Reiserfs. But still, it hangs at the same point.

Guess the patition is really broken. Any way to check whether the hard drive may be physically damaged or not? I can still mount the 3rd partition, ext3 and still use it under livecd.

So reiserfsck --check on that partition hangs?

yes, don't know what to do next

That sounds really ominous. This is the point where I say: back up your personal data files while you can.

I don't have any further advice short of re-installing Ubuntu. Sorry..