[SOLVED] Mint 18.3 shows "Disk I/O error. Replace the disk" on start-up.

Brant · 11-06-2018, 12:27 PM

3p ~ $ sudo du -sh /lost+found
[sudo] password for brant:
16K /lost+found

It is an SSD. Back on October 30th I mentioned that:
I ran GParted, to double-check how it saw my SSD, and saw this message:

The driver descriptor says the physical block size is 2048 bytes, but Linux says it is 512 bytes.

Is this important, or--whatever this is about--is it possible that there are knock-on effects from this? (one more thing for me to read up about).

Brant · 11-06-2018, 01:11 PM

sudo du -sh /lost+found
[sudo] password for brant:
16K /lost+found
brant@brant-ThinkCentre-M93p ~ $

It is an SSD
I only realized today that at some point, during the repeated running of sudo e2fsck -cfv /dev/sda1, it has stopped showing "Disk Error". Now it is simply blocking at a black screen.

business_kid · 11-07-2018, 06:06 AM

What are your mount options? I've sda as an SSD and this is what I was advised

Code:

/dev/sda3        /                ext4        noatime,diratime,discard         	1   1
/dev/sda2        swap             swap        noatime,diratime,discard         	0   1
/dev/sda6	 /media/hd0	  ext4	      noatime,diratime,discard         	0   0
/dev/sda1	 /boot            auto        noatime,diratime,discard  	1   2
/dev/sda5        /home            ext4        noatime,diratime,discard         	1   2
/dev/sda7	 /mnt/virtual     ext4        noatime,diratime,discard,user     1   2

sda6 is a spare barebones system (LFS atm), sda7 is for VM images

atime reads/writes accesses every 5 seconds; relatime every 15 seconds. noatime doesn't.

Brant · 11-07-2018, 07:50 PM

brant@brant-ThinkCentre-M93p ~ $ sudo du -sh /lost+found
[sudo] password for brant:
16K /lost+found

This is happening with a 120G SSD.

I had persuaded myself that running sudo e2fsck -cfv /dev/sda1 cleaned things up at least temporarily, but I have run it twice in the last couple of days, and starting up has been affair of chance: sometimes it starts first time, and sometimes it takes three or four tries.

In one of my earlier posts I mentioned that running GParted resulted in this message:

The driver descriptor says the physical block size is 2048 bytes, but Linux says it is 512 bytes.

I still wonder if this is the cause of my problems, or the result of a problem.

business_kid · 11-08-2018, 04:46 AM

OK, it's not finding significant amounts of lost clusters but something is messing your filesystem up. smartctl also checks the disk internally. Look up the man page, choose options and run that.As for this

Code:

The driver descriptor says the physical block size is 2048 bytes, but Linux says it is 512 bytes.

I honestly don't know. The fdisk mbr is 512 bytes. The allocated space for the mbr & partition table is usually 2048 bytes. Boot loaders and other things of course modify that. Then filesystems set their own block size, i.e. the unit of space that they allocate even the smallest entry. As the partition size goes up, that unit goes up. These things were designed around 16 bit computers, we're now using 64 bit in the main, drives are SATA (Serial Advanced Disk Attachment), and going into massive ASICs. So I'm sure changes were necessary.

Brant · 11-08-2018, 01:14 PM

sudo smartctl --all /dev/sda
smartctl 6.5 2016-01-24 r4214 [x86_64-linux-4.10.0-38-generic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-16, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Device Model: ADATA SU650
Serial Number: I24594J024499
LU WWN Device Id: 5 02b2a2 01d1c1b1a
Add. Product Id: mavlsata
Firmware Version: V3.36
User Capacity: 120,034,123,776 bytes [120 GB]
Sector Size: 512 bytes logical/physical
Rotation Rate: Solid State Device
Device is: Not in smartctl database [for details use: -P showall]
ATA Version is: ACS-3 T13/2161-D revision 4
SATA Version is: SATA 3.2, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 6.0 Gb/s)
Local Time is: Thu Nov 8 19:03:27 2018 UTC
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status: (0x02) Offline data collection activity
was completed without error.
Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled.
Self-test execution status: ( 0) The previous self-test routine completed
without error or no self-test has ever
been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection: ( 0) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities: (0x35) SMART execute Offline immediate.
No Auto Offline data collection support.
Abort Offline collection upon new
command.
No Offline surface scan supported.
Self-test supported.
Conveyance Self-test supported.
No Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities: (0x0002) Does not save SMART data before
entering power-saving mode.
Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability: (0x00) Error logging NOT supported.
General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 1) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 1) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 1) minutes.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 5
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 0
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 143
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 203
161 Unknown_Attribute 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 0
164 Unknown_Attribute 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 7463
165 Unknown_Attribute 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 16
166 Unknown_Attribute 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 13
167 Unknown_Attribute 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 15
169 Unknown_Attribute 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 0
176 Erase_Fail_Count_Chip 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 0
177 Wear_Leveling_Count 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 0
178 Used_Rsvd_Blk_Cnt_Chip 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 0
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 0
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 38
195 Hardware_ECC_Recovered 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 0
241 Total_LBAs_Written 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 363
242 Total_LBAs_Read 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 656
243 Unknown_Attribute 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 0
244 Unknown_Attribute 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 0
245 Unknown_Attribute 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 0
246 Unknown_Attribute 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 0
250 Read_Error_Retry_Rate 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 0
251 Unknown_Attribute 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 0
252 Unknown_Attribute 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 0
253 Unknown_Attribute 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 0
254 Unknown_SSD_Attribute 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 0

SMART Error Log not supported

SMART Self-test Log not supported

Selective Self-tests/Logging not supported

mint@mint ~ $ smartctl --test=long /dev/sda
smartctl 6.5 2016-01-24 r4214 [x86_64-linux-4.10.0-38-generic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-16, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

Smartctl open device: /dev/sda failed: Permission denied
mint@mint ~ $ sudo smartctl --test=long /dev/sda
smartctl 6.5 2016-01-24 r4214 [x86_64-linux-4.10.0-38-generic] (local build)
Copyright (C) 2002-16, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org

=== START OF OFFLINE IMMEDIATE AND SELF-TEST SECTION ===
Sending command: "Execute SMART Extended self-test routine immediately in off-line mode".
Drive command "Execute SMART Extended self-test routine immediately in off-line mode" successful.
Testing has begun.
Please wait 1 minutes for test to complete.
Test will complete after Thu Nov 8 19:06:25 2018

Brant · 11-08-2018, 07:03 PM

This afternoon I installed Puppy Xenial 64 bit as a frugal install, thinking that it might provide a cross-check.

When I shutdown and restarted, it opened to Linux Mint! On trying again,it opened to Puppy.

Trying again after a break, on starting, it blocked at a black screen; restarting, it showed the
"Disk I/O error. Replace the disk and then press any key." which I have not seen for some time.
When I pushed the Enter key, it then started on Puppy.

Back at the beginning of this calvary I used a flash-drive with Puppy Xenial 32 bit a few times, either out of curiosity,or because I simply needed to get on line, and it always seemed to work, but maybe I was just lucky?
But I tried it again, and it opened three times in succession without a problem.
So where is the hiccup, such that it will open happily from a disk, but not from an installation?

business_kid · 11-09-2018, 07:59 AM

So now it's now puppy Xenial? Ok.

My guess is smartctl didn't open /dev/sda because it was mounted. I will further guess that there's something up with grub's config in mint. Whatever you have you need to get out of hidden mode. It's tapping Right Shift as you boot for Mint, I don't know for Puppy. Anyhow there are only some problems that can be solved by point and click, and this isn't one of them. I'd tell you to have a look at /boot/grub/grub.cfg except Mint makes a teetotal mess of that, over elaborating like crazy, and I presume Puppy is little better. Here's mine

Code:

# Begin /boot/grub/grub.cfg
set default=0
set timeout=5
set root=(hd0,1)

menuentry "Slackware64-Current - Dec's Kernel" {
        linux   /vmlinuz-4.14.55-dec7 root=/dev/sda3 ro
}
menuentry "Slackware64-Current - Generic Kernel" {
        linux /vmlinuz-4.14.55 root=/dev/sda3 ro
        initrd /initrd.gz-4.14.55
} 
menuentry "LinuxFromScratch 4.18.5-dec1" {
        linux   /vmlinuz-4.18.5-dec1 root=/dev/sda6 ro
}

Google how to stop them both (puppy and Mint) from hiding the boot menu. Make it so. Do a text search for 'menuentry' in /boot/grub/grub.cfg. Note that the first 'root' entry is the partition grub is on, in my case hd0 (=sda) partition 1 (=sda1). The root partitions for each entry are your respective root partitions, often expressed as UUIDs.

Beware also that if you don't have a common /boot directory (Like I have), you'll have two different grub.cfg files, and the one you configure last is the one that will have precedence. So if you boot & update/upgrade Mint, that will have precedence, while if puppy updates, that rules. Make sure there is a menu entry in each for the other. Here's a chunk fromk my /etc/default/grub to show the menu entry

Code:

# If you change this file, run grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg
# afterwards to update /boot/grub/grub.cfg.

GRUB_DEFAULT=0
#GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT=0
GRUB_HIDDEN_TIMEOUT_QUIET=false

Brant · 11-10-2018, 03:32 PM

Puppy Xenial was an attempt to sidestep my problems, which evidently did not work.

I have however been looking about for any nuggets of information that might bear on my difficulties,and I finally found this:

"The issue I have experienced is that after a fresh install of Linux, the laptop will freeze every other boot. Sometimes, it freezes before reaching the login screen, sometimes before even reaching the boot splash screen, and sometimes just moments after logging in. Other times, it would boot and function normally for hours. It has been a very flaky issue."

"I have consistently resolved this issue by adding a boot flag to GRUB.
Edit /etc/default/grub, and add “nox2apic” to your boot parameters, like so:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="nox2apic quiet splash"

After making this change, run update-grub and reboot the computer.

This has saved me so much frustration over the years, I hope it helps you as well! If you run into a similar issue on another ThinkPad model, please let me know in the comments if this fix worked for you!" All this was drawn from the link below:

http://binaryimpulse.com/2014/08/len...issue-at-boot/

I followed this advice, and my computer opened five times in a row flawlessly
and then did not.
However reading all the related comments, there was mention that entering "noapic" instead of “nox2apic” might help. I did this, and again the computer has opened several times without problems.
Obviously I am not yet completely confident, so I will wait a day or two before I cross my fingers and call this one solved! (which leaves me wondering if anyone ever marks a thread "unsolved"?)

I am going to post a thankyou to the link mentioned above, and once I feel more confident about the results,I will post a synopsis of this discussion on the Linux Mint site with credit to the link--there may be other people wondering why their Lenovo computer is bugging.
And of course, thank you again to everyone who has bothered looking at this--with particular thanks to business kid, who has shown admirable patience!

Brant · 11-10-2018, 06:56 PM

And so much for optimism: after half-a-dozen flawless starts, it crapped out again, and then opened properly on the second try. I then shut down and reopened from the live disk and ran sudo e2fsck -cfv /dev/sda1 again figuring, why not?
I will now try to reopen from the installed version and will reread everything here,and then start over.
I confess that I find these temporary improvements very puzzling.

business_kid · 11-11-2018, 03:29 AM

Re post #24:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brant

nox2apic quiet splash

I would remove the 'quiet.' You want this thing to talk. I would also post on Mint forums as the devs have to look in there, and be annoying if they don't answer you.

Brant · 11-19-2018, 07:52 PM

I had started with the conviction that this was a software problem, but--having finally admitted that I could be wrong--I returned the tower to the vendor, who within a few minutes declared that the SSD was wonky, and said he would replace it on warranty.
My apologies to everyone whose time I have wasted (I have already apologized to my partner, who has been telling to take it back for a couple of weeks!).