Checking root filesystem, hangs

[lokiman]

Hello all, after some time using Kubuntu 6.06 (dapper) and learning a lot of things, suddenly I'm having a problem at boot time, (and i have not done anything weird, just "aptitude dist-upgrade"s).

The problem is:

*Checking root file system
/dev/sda6: clean, ####/#### files, ####/#### blocks
[17179585.312000] EXT3 FS on sda6, internal journal.

(#'s are a lot of numbers)



and it hangs.
Of course, sda6 is my root partition as shown in fstab:


proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/sda6 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/sda5 /home ext3 defaults 0 2
/dev/sda7 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0

# Generado por Kubuntu
/dev/sda2 /media/sda2 vfat defaults,utf8,umask=007,gid=46 0 0


and the options are those written by default. It has worked until now!.
I have only one SATA hard disk, and my computer is an Acer Aspire 5633 notebook.

I have booted from the live-cd and performed a fsck (efsck i think) to sda5 and sda6, even with the option -f to force ignoring the journaling and checking all the filesystem, but the result always is "file system clean".

So what should be the next step?

PS1: When the system hangs, it ignores the keyboard, so things like CTRL+Z o +C or CTRL+ALT+SUPR doesn't work
PS2: it doesn't work even on "repair mode".

[askrieger]

Re: Checking root filesystem, hangs

It's not obvious to me, based on what you are reporting, that the system is hanging while checking sda5. It may be hanging while checking sda6; especially since you have sda5 set to mount ro on errors. Just for test purposes, you could try to set sda6 to "0 0" in /etc/fstab. You'll have to do that from the live CD. If it boots properly, that way you know where the problem is.

Another possibility is that, somehow, your alternative OS (the one in sda1, etc.) has screwed up your Kubuntu installation. Although I would think that that would cause it to fail the fsck.

[penguin.ch]

Re: Checking root filesystem, hangs

In addition, I would like to suggest thorough file system checks on both /dev/sda5 and /dev/sda6, to be launched manually from a live system (on unmounted partitions) - just to make sure that there are no serious problems lurking ...

HTH
Birdy

[mjthfx]

Re: Checking root filesystem, hangs

This happened to me today after I had to boot into my old WinXP partition. After I was done, Windows had to apply some updates on shutdown >

My linux ext partition is also sda5 and my swap on sda6... too get rid of it always starting and hanging on boot, I went into fstab and changed the numbers at the end of these 2 main partition from 1's to 0's like askrieger said

It has now fooled the system that the automatic fsck as gone by for another X number of times but I am still stumped why it happened, other than friggin windows doing something crazy > when I shut it down to go back into Edgy - its all I can think... but why

And what can i do to do a manual check of sda5 in my case if its mounted, i can't... is this where the live cd comes in?

[askrieger]

Re: Checking root filesystem, hangs

i can't... is this where the live cd comes in?

That's exactly where the live CD comes in. You can boot up the Live CD, then start a konsole and use "fsck /dev/sda5" to check your "/" tree. There's no point in checking a swap partition. The original poster had his /home/ tree on /dev/sda6. Check out "man fsck" for options.

[lokiman]

Re: Checking root filesystem, hangs

hi, after checking my partitions using the command "fsck -fv /dev/sda6" (and sda5), from the ubuntu live-cd, no problems are found
(BTW mjthfx, i would recommend you to use those options: "f" forces a check even if it seems not necessary for the program, and "v" is for verbose mode so more info will be printed out to the screen).

So i changed the last "1" in my sda6 line in fstab to look like this:
/dev/sda6 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 0
so it skips the file system check; the result is that kubuntu continues loading at the point where it used to hang, but now it hangs just before the login screen appears: the X server has loaded and the screen shows only a blue background. Then the only way to restart is, again, pressing the pc's power-off button.

It seems very strange that the keyboard doesnt function at all, because if im not wrong, at that point the kernel should have been loaded and the keyboard drivers should be working by that moment.

Sorry, i had forgotten one important thing: all this problem started when the pc entered in "suspend to ram" state because i closed the lid. When I tried to wake it up, the screen remained blank and that was the first time i was forced to do a "hard reset"



At this moment i think that the fastest way of recovering the system would be a reinstall, however i'm not doing that for now because it's not so urgent for me and because it's a good chance of learning a couple of things about file system restoring and/or repairing So please continue giving your opinions

[sky]

Re: Checking root filesystem, hangs

Hi,

Can you try to go in console mode when the computer hangs on X startup ? I guess no, if you need to make a hard power off to make it answer... Anyway, it's a good idea to try no and then try to start X by the startx command. In case you don't know, to go to console mode, it's Ctrl + Alt + F1
If you can't do this, try to start with a live cd, then mount the partition where you kubuntu is installed and check in the error logs the last messages you can see (for example in xorg.0.log) all this messages are kept in the folder /var/log.

Hope it helps

[askrieger]

Re: Checking root filesystem, hangs

In the event, that you do decide to reinstall, be sure to save EVERYTHING in you home partition (sda5) because the dotted files under /home/<your-username>/ contain most of the customizations that you have made to the system (especially to KDE).

Meanwhile, however, we can learn a lot if you can dertermine the last line of the bootup messages that fly up the screen as your system boots. That would tell us which script in /etc/rc2.d is now hanging. Once that is determined, you can probably get away with simply reinstalling one or more packages that may have been damaged. Perhaps, all you will have to do is repair a startup script or a configuration file.

[lokiman]

Re: Checking root filesystem, hangs

Hello, I've "repaired" the boot process!

we can learn a lot if you can dertermine the last line of the bootup messages that fly up the screen as your system boots.

That's exactly what I thought yesterday , so I started Kubuntu in "repair mode" and found that the last line _before_ the "checking file system" stuff was "Loading Intel wireless driver" (more or less), so I downloaded and installed the last ipw3945 driver version and now the system loads with no problem

Now, it's time to leave the computer and stay with the family or friends: thank you askrieger, penguin.ch, mjthfx and sky for all your replies, and Merry Christmas for everybody