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NOoBuntuLinux 11-18-2008 02:36 PM

!! Problem !! Every Start Up - "Routine Check for Drive errors"
 
There is a routine drive check at startup after the Hewlett Packard Bios prompt. When the check gets to 25%, I see error after error after error pop up with "fail" at the end of a few lines in terminal, and nothing happends after. Just a terminal prompt with computer name.

BUT: Immediately after I press 'ESC' for 'skip' at the 1% complete, it skips, and it takes you to the normal login screen, but not after 1%... like after 2% you cannot skip by pressing 'ESC'. It just continues on its own. So is there like a utility out there to figure out the problem? It wasn't doing that before.. So wtf? Is there a way to turn that damn thing off?

Ubuntu Linux 8.04 LTS Desktop Edition 64-bit Hewlett Packard Pavilion Notebook 2 GB Ram Nvidia 6150 AMD 64x2

TB0ne 11-18-2008 02:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NOoBuntuLinux (Post 3346645)
There is a routine drive check at startup after the Hewlett Packard Bios prompt. When the check gets to 25%, I see error after error after error pop up with "fail" at the end of a few lines in terminal, and nothing happends after. Just a terminal prompt with computer name.

BUT: Immediately after I press 'ESC' for 'skip' at the 1% complete, it skips, and it takes you to the normal login screen, but not after 1%... like after 2% you cannot skip by pressing 'ESC'. It just continues on its own. So is there like a utility out there to figure out the problem? It wasn't doing that before.. So wtf? Is there a way to turn that damn thing off?

Ubuntu Linux 8.04 LTS Desktop Edition 64-bit Hewlett Packard Pavilion Notebook 2 GB Ram Nvidia 6150 AMD 64x2

You're getting errors, because your partition/drive is damaged, and fsck is trying to fix it. You're skipping the part where the problem gets fixed.

It's dropping you to a prompt, probably because it's asking you to manually run fsck on that partition, due to the # of errors....have you tried following those instructions?

NOoBuntuLinux 11-18-2008 08:17 PM

Experience rough on the edges with prompts
 
I don't really look at the prompt. To me, basically it is saying "You are screwed" or in this case "fail". I guess I will write down the error prompt messages and post them. I mean I don't think there is a problem because simply bypassing it with 'ESC' fixes it (in this case.. skips), and I go on with my day surfing.

TB0ne 11-19-2008 07:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by NOoBuntuLinux (Post 3346965)
I don't really look at the prompt. To me, basically it is saying "You are screwed" or in this case "fail". I guess I will write down the error prompt messages and post them. I mean I don't think there is a problem because simply bypassing it with 'ESC' fixes it (in this case.. skips), and I go on with my day surfing.

Noooo...there IS a problem, probably caused by an improper shutdown. If you get errors, you get them for a reason; usually because something is wrong, and you need to correct it. 'ESC' doesn't "fix" it...it bypasses it; Linux doesn't force you to do things like Windows does.

dasy2k1 11-19-2008 11:55 AM

once you have logged on try running fsck on all non mounted partitions (unmount everything you can first)

PTrenholme 11-19-2008 02:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TB0ne (Post 3347495)
Noooo...there IS a problem, probably caused by an improper shutdown. If you get errors, you get them for a reason; usually because something is wrong, and you need to correct it. 'ESC' doesn't "fix" it...it bypasses it; Linux doesn't force you to do things like Windows does.

That's a rather unhelpful comment to drop on a new Ubuntu user.

Let's see if we can walk the user through the steps needed to try to fix the problem, eh?

First, with a drive problem, fixing it using tools stored on the drive itself is, at best, problematic. (The tools may also be corrupted.) So the best thing to do is get one of the several bootable CDs available for fixing disk problems and boot your system from it instead of your hard drive. One such Live CD can be found here, but there are hundreds of various LiveCD available. Assuming you go with the "System Rescue CD" I mentioned first, I'll walk you through an attempt to fix your problem. (The steps to follow will be pretty much the same using most "rescue" CDs.)

So, download the ISO image of the rescue CD and burn it to a CD. (Be sure to use the "burn an ISO image" option to create the physical CD. That's the only way to get a bootable CD from an image file.) The downlad and burn can be done on any computer and operating system.

Put the CD in you computer and reboot. If your BIOS is not set to boot first from tha CD (or DVD) drive, select the "Boot Menu" option (often F12) from your BIOS after the POST finishes.

You'll first see a "boot selection" screen where you should just take the default (i.e., pust the <Enter> key) option. Then you should see several screen-fulls of text going past really fast. That stuff is just a description of the boot process, of nointerest to anyone unless the boot fails, so just wait 'till it finishes.

When the boot finishes, you should see a screen describing various options. For the "System Rescue CD" I suggested above, one of the options is a "wizard" option that starts a Gentoo Linux system in an X-window, with the options at the bottom of the screen, and a terminal window open. Use that if you wish, or just enter the commands at the first prompt.

Now, the first thing that you need to do is find out where your Ubuntu installation is located. So, enter the command fdisk -l /dev/sd? (That an el, not a one, after the dash, and the question-mark is part of the command - it's a "wild-card" for a single character.) You should see a list of all your hard drives and the partitions on each one of them. One of those partitions should be labeled "Linux." Here's an example of what you can expecxt to see:
Code:

$ fdisk -l /dev/sd?

Disk /dev/sda: 160.0 GB, 160041885696 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 19457 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0xa602a602

  Device Boot      Start        End      Blocks  Id  System
/dev/sda1  *          1        8820    70846618+  7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2          17927      19457    12297757+  7  HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda3            8821      17926    73143945    5  Extended
/dev/sda5            8821      17549    70115661  83  Linux
/dev/sda6          17550      17926    3028221  82  Linux swap / Solaris

Partition table entries are not in disk order

I've hilighted my Ubuntu partition in red.

In my case, my Ubuntu is on /dev/sda5. Yours is probably not, but it should be easy enough to find.

Once you've identified the partition, you should try to run the fsck command again. Using my device name as an example the command would be fsck -y /dev/sda5 If that works, you're "home free."

There are additional tools on the SystemRescueCD that you can use if that fails, but try the above first and let us know what happened.

Note that, if you use the "wizard" option, and if your computer is connected to the Internet with a cable connection (i.e., not a wireless laptop), you might be able to use the Firefox browser in the Gentoo system to connect to this forum while running the rescue CD.

Good luck.

TB0ne 11-19-2008 03:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by PTrenholme (Post 3347883)
That's a rather unhelpful comment to drop on a new Ubuntu user.

Let's see if we can walk the user through the steps needed to try to fix the problem, eh?

Go right ahead, but there's nothing unhelpful about it. Error messages come up because there's something wrong. I've never seen a system that hasn't burped back something specifically telling the user what system to manually run fsck on, when the auto-check doesn't complete.

The OP said "I don't really look at the prompt". My first post said what to look at, and what to do, but the OP didn't say whether they did or not.

NOoBuntuLinux 11-19-2008 09:26 PM

:)
 
My laptop has a track record for messing up no matter what OS is on it. It's a hewlett packard notebook. The only thing i need is to be able to install limewire and java. Thats it, and it wont even do that for me. It gives an error about having to either close something thats not on, or manually typing 3 letters in the terminal.. The last time an error happened on my laptop, it was another seagate hard drive. 100 GB sata. This one is 160 GB sata.. but whats weird is that when I used this new one to install Vista again... it stated that it was only 140 GB, and still does even on Ubuntu.

dasy2k1 11-20-2008 03:37 AM

thats nothing to do with the drive size, just the way the manufacters mesure it.

to Segate 160GB is 160,000,000,000 bytes (actully the corect way for GB)

the os uses GiB which uses a base of 1024 rather than 1000 so
160GB would be 149 GiB (1GiB = 2^30bytes)

160GiB would be 171,798,691,840 bytes or approx 172GB

Sigshane 12-12-2008 10:12 AM

Thanks a MILLION to PTrenholme. I just let the disk check fail, then logged in as root, and ran the fsck command, which for me was fsck -y /dev/sda3, and everything is hunky-dory now.

Many thanks.

Shane

hoe 12-20-2008 05:34 PM

I fired up a live CD and typed that in and it solved my problem too!

Wayne


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