Ubuntu wont't boot after upgrade because of mountall

blither · 11-06-2010, 04:15 PM

I just upgraded from 9.10 to 10.04 and after the upgrade I am getting an exit code of 32 from mountall which is causing the system to not boot. This wouldn't be a big deal except I have no blank CDs and it won't boot from a thumb drive so I can't go in an modify the /etc/fstab myself.

Does anyone know of any tricks to get around this?

TobiSGD · 11-06-2010, 05:45 PM

Does it work to start in single user mode (I think it is called rescue mode or similar in your grub menu)? If that doesn't work try to start your OS with

Code:

init=/bin/bash

appended to your kernel line in Grub. Then you should at least be able to have a look at your fstab.

blither · 11-06-2010, 08:10 PM

Cool, can I do this from a disk that I already have of Ubuntu 8.x? Because, I don't even get a boot menu for grub so the only way I can change the options is to boot from another disk. And the reason I can't just look at fstab from there is because my disk is formatted to ext4 and my ubuntu install disk doesn't support ext4.

TobiSGD · 11-06-2010, 08:36 PM

Try hitting the Esc-key at start, maybe your Grub is configured not to show a menu.
There is no way known to me to mount an ext4-drive if your kernel doesn't support this filesystem.

blither · 11-06-2010, 08:39 PM

TobiSGD, sorry I meant if I could use a install disk to boot the main drive with the init=/bin/bash since my actual system can read ext4.

syg00 · 11-06-2010, 09:07 PM

Not with a normal liveCD - the init parm will get passed to the booted (i.e. liveCD) kernel.

As suggested, try the <Esc> key just after the POST messages - while the screen is blank - to get to grub.

blither · 11-07-2010, 08:48 PM

Thanks, syg00, it turns out that pressing escape actually prompts for which drive to boot and from here I booted my usb. It was slightly irritating that this didn't seem to be documented anywhere. But, thanks for the responses.

syg00 · 11-07-2010, 09:50 PM

In that case it's probably getting to the BIOS boot menu. That's "hardware" - you were probably too quick.
So long as you got it fixed.