Mount Fail, help me climb it.

May 25, 2010 2:14 PM

I installed a program on my Recently Upgraded Ubuntu OS to help me manage mounting/unmounting various drives plugged into the computer. Big mistake; I've royally messed things up. Now my computer won't mount anything, and so cannot reboot properly. Please help!

The BIOS loads OK (duh, I'm not quite dumb enough to mess that up, I think), and I've tried going from a couple of different options from the long list that shows up when I press ESC during the boot process. The most relevant information I've been able to copy off the screen was from the 2.6.24-21-generic option:

mountall main process (3342) killed by abrt signalgeneral error mounting filesystems

Here's some more info from the 2.6.27-generic option:

mount: mounting non on /dev failed: no such device
[7.699823] ata5: exception Emask 0x1 SAct 0x0 SErr 0x0 action 0x0 t4
[7.699878] ata5: irq_stat 0x00020002 device error via D2H FIS
chroot: cannot execute /etc/apparmor/initramfs: no such file or directory
init: ureadahead main process (1211) terminated with status 5

I'm taking these down by hand and using a remote computer right now, so there's a bit of a disconnect that's preventing me from automatically printing all the logs. This was the best I could get before having to run out the door.

Using some of the other options on the list gets me screen after screen of similar log, mostly undecipherable to me, and then usually hang or go unresponsive at some point. The (maintenance) options are a total mystery to me. If I don't access this menu and let the boot process continue like normal, it hangs on Starting Up... forever.

So. I need some direction here. What can I do to reestablish mounting settings for (at least!) my main drive, the one with the OS installed on it? How can I get my computer to boot up properly again? Can I try booting from a LiveCD or flash drive, and editing fstab from there? I'd prefer to do this without having to reinstall, but if that's necessary I can do that. Help!

I've found some pages on using ntfs-config and editing the fstab file, so I'll be looking into that for changing mounting preferences in the future and hopefully won't be so poorly informed as to create a similar disaster. I just need to get back to the functional computer stage before I can proceed with that.

I'm really sorry for being such a n00b when it comes to Ubuntu/Linux (still). You're a hero for helping such a disgusting excuse for a User as I.

posted by carsonb to Computers & Internet (6 answers total)

Response by poster: pysdm is the program I installed that got me into all this trouble, by the way. I jumped without looking, and now my desktop is dead on the rocks.
posted by carsonb at 2:16 PM on May 25, 2010

How can I get my computer to boot up properly again? Can I try booting from a LiveCD or flash drive, and editing fstab from there?

Yes, this is what I would try. Boot from the LiveCD and then fix things up on the boot drive. Possibly there's an option to fix the boot disk or re-install Ubuntu without nuking your user directories?
posted by zippy at 2:39 PM on May 25, 2010

carsonb, I can't remotely answer this question, but, if you haven't done this already, please register and post this question to the Ubuntu Forums as well as here.
posted by nangar at 2:41 PM on May 25, 2010

There's not really enough info to go on here but I can take a few stabs. Most of the info you posted is related to it not finding file systems, though not necessarily directly relevant. However the middle two lines indicate an error report from the drive itself (see https://ata.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Libata_error_messages) so before you do anything else check your drive cables.

If you can rule out this my guess would be that you have a problem with grub, fstab and uuid's, perhaps grub and fstab aren't finding the disks because they have been mislabeled or you have a mix of old and new systems. This page https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2 might help you with that.
posted by tallus at 10:26 PM on May 25, 2010

Response by poster: Alright. I have my boot disk all lined up and a bunch of man pages and the fstab article and pysdm instructions printed out and am about to head home to try to fix this mess.
Update tonight = good.
Update tomorrow = probably not so good.

I appreciate the suggestions so far (except the Ubuntu Forums one - IME it's useless*) and will post my fix if/when it happens!

* I could go on and on about how the Ubuntu help community just doesn't understand how helpless their "Windoze" converts are when it comes to these issues and furthermore has no fucking clue on how to impart their knowledge unto those who need it, but I'm tired and hungry and this isn't the place and I have to go home now to try to fix my computer on my own. bleargh.
posted by carsonb at 4:08 PM on May 26, 2010

Response by poster: OK, so I'm still up shit creek. I got Ubuntu to boot properly once, but it was a surprise and I can't replicate it. It booted directly into a check disk which eventually completed, but then it hung on the purple ubuntu screen with the red/white dots turning into each other forever. I let that run for about 14 hours in the hopes it was just taking a long time to scan the ~1.75tB plugged into the system, but then gave up and restarted.

Actually, now that I think about it, all of this happened right after I checked all my cables. The power connection for my boot drive was a little loose, and it was again when I double checked this morning, but even after making sure everything was tight and secure again I'm back to square one.

Today I go the reinstall route. Hopefully I'll be able to copy my /home folder first.
posted by carsonb at 2:46 PM on May 27, 2010