Hello!

Forgive me if this process is all outlined elsewhere!

I have a version of Ubuntustudio 11.10 (oneiric ocelot) (amd64) installed and previously running fine on a Toshiba Satellite notebook.

All of a sudden, when I went to re-start this machine, I saw the splash screen appear, and then the text output from several startup scripts appear, and then NOTHING! No hd access, no further booting, and I am stuck with a black screen which I can type on to my hearts content. This is not a command-line-processor prompt, but more like a weird text editor! Nothing I type has any effect, and the system does not respond to anything I type from then on!

This was the ONLY os on this machine, so there are no dual-boot issues.., so I had the idea that Ubuntustudio would have been installed on sda1. So, armed with a Ubuntu 11.04 LiveCD, I booted-up with that.

Once booted up with the LiveCD, I performed the following from a command-prompt:

sudo mkdir /old_linux
sudo mount /dev/sda1 /old_linux

Ok, now I could see the root directory of my Ubuntustudio installation in folder /old_linux, and my file-system tree is intact...; here is my question (finally):

How do I find out where the boot sequence is failing? I have checked the hd and filesystem with the command:

sudo fsck.ext4 /dev/sda1

which reports nothing of any consequence. Afterwards, the boot sequence still fails (in the exact same way each time).

What file "starts" the boot sequence script processing in Ubuntustudio (or, what file is the "head" of the startup script process)? I would like to simply "comment-out" each script's execution line(s) until I discover which script is failing (and thus, killing my bootup process)... - Does any of this make sense?

I am not a complete noob to Linux, but I am fairly new to Ubuntu, and so I am not familiar with the boot sequence of this distro.

I hope I have provided enough info. so that you can at least understand what I require. As far as what the actual problem is, that is what I hope to establish by selectively "commenting-out" specific portions of the startup script (and scripts executed by it...).

Thanks in advance!

Andre. (Z_Tagr)

There are a couple of things you could try: as you did before, try mounting the FS in a livecd and looking through /var/log. I have a /var/log/boot file, I don't know if this is on Ubuntu as well... Secondly, if I recall correctly, one of the alternative TTYs has lots of debug information, I think it might be #12 - but try pressing Alt+F1,F2,F3-F12 and seeing if a) it's booted far enough to bring up TTYs b) any of them have interesting information on them...

Hope this helps,

Thanks, Snark!

That was the kind of info. I was looking for!

Your suggesstion has provided me with a new method for trouble-shooting this type of problem in the future! Because I did not / could not see what errors (if any) were occurring, I was unable to determine where the problem was! The /var/log/ folder holds a WEALTH of knowledge of which I was previously completely unaware! And, yes, there is a file named "boot" within this folder as well!

While I have not yet established what the problem is, I believe that this is pointing me in the right direction...

I will provide an update to this posting when and if I determne what the actual problem is, but, for now, I consider this issue CLOSED...

Thanks again for your speedy reply, and for the handy trouble-shooting tip! I am sure I will have ample opportunity to use this info. in the future!

Yours,
Andre (Z_Tagr)

So have you solved the problem yet??
What did you do before you restarted the machine and ran into problems? Was there a kernel update? If so, then try booting to the previous kernel that was working ok and see if it boots successfully.
Did you add any third party repos to your repository sources? This includes those often problematic PPA repos. If so, then possibly a rogue repository caused the problem.
Try booting to recovery mode if you can. This will load a single user (root) terminal without a graphical desktop. The recovery mode will show the entire boot process in a scrolling text output. Hopefully this may provide some insight into where the problem is.

Hello tommcd!

I am sorry to say that, as a result of pressures requiring that particular machine to be in a "working" state as quickly as possible, I was not able to trouble-shoot this problem any further, and was forced to wipe and re-install Ubuntustudio 11.10. All was not lost, as I was able to recover all important data from the filesystem beforehand...
It was a very recent install, and so this was not such a big bother...

I am truly sorry that I was unable to provide this problem with more of my attention, as I would have enjoyed resolving the issue without resorting to such a severe action! However, that particular notebook is my ONLY access to the internet at my place of residence, which has only a wireless service provider. None of my other machines have the ability to connect to it (a problem which I am still actively trying to resolve...).

However, I am logging all of these suggestions for future reference in the event that something similiar should happen again (and at such a time that I am not as able to simply re-install the OS...).

How would I go about booting that partition in recovery mode (should this problem occur again in future)? I mean, with the Ubuntu LiveCD, there was a "rescue / recovery mode" option available (and that is what I used to view my original filesystem on the partition that was giving me problems, and how I recovered my data as well...)? But I was completely unable to boot from the problematic partition, in any mode that I am aware of! Is there some trick I am not aware of? Normally, the machine just boots, with no user intervention required until login time...

As to what I was doing right before...; I was trying out Audacious with the Fluidsynth plugin, and had just gotten MIDI playback working using a Timidity port, and had decided to shut off the machine for a while. I requested the shutdown, and the system did not respond as I expected (no "requester" was displayed allowing me to click and shut down immediately, or wait out the default time till the system automatically powered-off). I waited for this "requester" for quite some time, to no avail. Finally, I was forced to power-off the system "forcefully"...; I tried to re-boot immediately thereafter to see if any further issues might have resulted from my forced power-down, and that is when I noticed that the machine would no longer boot normally. I know that this method of powering off is not a good idea, but what are you to do in the event that the system does not respond to user requests in any sort of timely fasion? I mean, it was no worse than what would have occurred if a power failure had occurred! And, up until that point, all requests to shut down had been met with a timely appearance of that aforementioned "requester", so I was familiar with how long this should take. That it had not appeared on that occassion was quite surprising to me!

Anyways, thanks again for your suggestions! If (god forbid) this problem re-occurs, I hope to be able to resolve it using some of the suggestions I have received here!

Yours,
Andre. (Z_Tagr)

If Ubuntu is the only OS on the machine you will not see the grub menu as the system boots. If you hit the shift key as the computer is booting you should see the grub menu, which will give you the option to boot to normal or recovery mode. It also gives you the option to boot to previous Ubuntu kernels.
If you wish to see the grub menu every time the system boots, simply comment out (i.e., place a # in front of) the GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0 line in the /etc/default/grub file; and set the GRUB_TIMEOUT= line to the number of seconds that you want the grub menu to be displayed before it boots the system. The default for multiple OS users is 10 seconds.
The 2 lines would look like this:
That is how it is on my system. Then be sure to run: in the terminal to update the /boot/grub/grub.cfg file, which makes the changes take effect the next time you boot Ubuntu.
See this on grub2: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2
And specifically the /etc/default/grub file: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Gr...rub_.28file.29