cannot mount '/home' and hangs boot

[geezer]

2 HDDs - one Vista and one Kubuntu. Using Grub to boot.

During the Linux boot, it stops on the 'mount all' and cannot mount '/home'

Linux disk has 2 partitions:

• '/' , 100GB and
• '/home', 400GB

The computer is under warranty and the shop has tested the disk and found it okay.

Any ideas on how to find out how to mount '/home'

[geezer]

cannot mount '/home' and hangs boot

I think I posted this on the wrong sub-forum and so posting here also:

2 HDDs - one Vista and one Kubuntu. Using Grub to boot.

During the Linux boot, it stops on the 'mount all' and cannot mount '/home'

Linux disk has 2 partitions:

• '/' , 100GB and
• '/home', 400GB

The computer is under warranty and the shop has tested the disk and found it okay.

Any ideas on how to find out how to mount '/home'

[geezer]

Re: cannot mount '/home' and hangs boot

Booted 9.10 Live CD and installed Gparted. Ran it and had it check and fix errors on both partitions of the Linux HDD.

Reported the operation completed successfully, did not report any errors fixed. Still cannot mount /home

Is there a command to discover the UUID of partitions? Seems like I saw one in the dim past, but cannot remember it.

[dibl]

Re: cannot mount '/home' and hangs boot

Is there a command to discover the UUID of partitions? Seems like I saw one in the dim past, but cannot remember it.

sudo blkid

[geezer]

Re: cannot mount '/home' and hangs boot

Thanks - I executed the sudo blkid command. I was hoping to compare the UUID listed there to the UUID in fstab.

All partitions show up in the output, except the partition to be mounted as '/home', the partition I want.

Weird - Gparted showed all partitions and all info on all partitions and checked the partition in question.

Yet for the mounting s/w and whatever s/w behind blkid, the partition simply does not exist.

How can a partition simply disappear?

I have been running 9.10 since it was released. Occasionally I would get a message about waiting to mount the partition, but the message only lasted maybe 10 to 15 seconds and was gone. Previous releases had no problem with mounting all partitions.

And then all of a sudden the partition simply disappeared and the waiting didn't stop and hung the boot. If I try to boot into recovery mode, the same problem exists of course. So recovery mode isn't really available either.

What would do that?

And how can it be recovered?

Somehow the partition exists as evidenced by Gparted. Yet it doesn't exist for the mounting s/w.

I'm hoping to be able to recover the partition without re-installing. The Kubutu Live CD will not let me re-install 9.10 over 9.10. I have run the installation up to the disk selection process and the current Linux disk is simply not presented as an option. I think I remember sometime in the past that was done to prevent installing over a current installation. So I would have to re-install 9.04 or an earlier version and then install 9.10.

[dibl]

Re: cannot mount '/home' and hangs boot

Does

sudo fdisk -lu

show it?

In GParted is it shown as having a filesystem?

[geezer]

Re: cannot mount '/home' and hangs boot

Does

sudo fdisk -lu

show it?

In GParted is it shown as having a filesystem?

Booted the 9.10 Live CD again and installed Gparted again and listed the information for the desired partition. The field for the UUID is displayed blank. Gparted indicates that the partition does not have a UUID. All other disk partitions have UUIDs listed.

Gparted listed the partition filesystem as ext3 which is what it was formatted as by the Kubuntu installation back in 8.xx

Given that I doubt that fdisk will list one either.

So somehow either the UUID was deleted by some unknown (to me) mechanism or was created without a UUID or ....

I was hoping that gparted would be able to copy the partition contents to another disk so that I could at least save it. It indicated that it could copy the contents, but then would not copy to another disk. The partition on the other disk that I wanted to copy to is FAT32 (from an ext3 partition). I was hoping to reformat th destination partition on the other disk to ext3, but gparted didn't offer the option of reformatting the destination partition.

Is there a method for assigning the UUID other than repartitioning and reformatting during a new installation? I have the UUID is it supposed to be from fstab.

Thanks for the help.

[skunk]

Re: cannot mount '/home' and hangs boot

Is there a method for assigning the UUID other than repartitioning and reformatting during a new installation? I have the UUID is it supposed to be from fstab.

I dont know about FAT32 disks, but this command will set the uuid for ext2/ext3/ext4 disks

sudo tune2fs /dev/sda<X> -U <enteruuidhere>

edit: fixed typos

[dibl]

Re: cannot mount '/home' and hangs boot

@geezer, I dunno how your hard drive got so snarfed up, but you can search this forum and Ubuntu forum and I can't find another comparable example of "UUID disappeared".

So, let's just say a quark from an alternate universe hit the UUID and knocked it off the partition.

Here's background info:

http://linux.die.net/man/8/blkid

http://linux.die.net/man/3/libuuid

Couple of things you could try here:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=430123

If it were me, I would make my first priority to get any useful data off that partition safely. If you boot a Live CD (Kubuntu or otherwise), you should be able to make a mount point, for example

sudo mkdir /media/badpart

use fdisk -lu to make sure you know the /dev/# of the bad partition:

sudo fdisk -lu

then mount the correct partition (let's assume /dev/sdb2):

sudo mount -t ext3 /dev/sdb2 /media/badpart

Now you can use Dolphin or the CLI to access /media/badpart and copy everything you want off of it onto a USB stick, other partition, or burn it to a CD/DVD, or something like that.

Then, I would use GParted and re-format that partition. And I would test it a bit before entrusting it with anything important.

[NeoGraven]

Re: cannot mount '/home' and hangs boot

I had this problem as well. I have an odd drive AND partition arrangement, and even telling the mountall to wait didnt help.

I ended up merging a partition with another on my secondary drive, and removed an extra EXT3 partition off my first drive then merged the remaining space. This corrected the problem. As for your UUID, it was not properly picked up during the install. You have a parition list you can show me of all drives?

[Qqmike]

Re: cannot mount '/home' and hangs boot

I wonder what TestDisk would see on that drive.
FIRST, what dibl says: get you data off that pup asap.

[Qqmike]

Re: cannot mount '/home' and hangs boot

One more shot in the dark: wonder if you have a bad superblock? I've had good luck fixing such using
http://members.iinet.net.au/%7Eherma...xt3_superblock
But I don't know exactly how this ties in with the UUID part of the business.

[geezer]

Re: cannot mount '/home' and hangs boot

Thanks everybody.

Going to follow dibl's advice on mounting and copying info.

Then try Testdisk and then tune2fs

If tune2fs will assign the proper UUID to the partition, then I can retain my info.

Bought a new HDD (2.5", 320 GB - wow, I used that to replace a 10 yr old 120 GB disk. The new HDD is like 1/16 the volume and more than twice the capacity - amazing how they have advanced the state of the art in HDDs)

Had a thought on gparted and reformatting the FAT32 partition - I think I have to unmount it first.

[dibl]

Re: cannot mount '/home' and hangs boot

Had a thought on gparted and reformatting the FAT32 partition - I think I have to unmount it first.

Yes, you absolutely do. FAT32 is not a very rugged filesystem, among the current choices. Even NTFS would be better, if you need to access that partition directly from Windoze.

[geezer]

Re: cannot mount '/home' and hangs boot

Update.

First I want to thank everybody for their help.

I was thinking along the lines that dibl suggested, but he made it concrete by supplying the details - Thank You.

I followed dibl's directions.

First I was able to use Gparted to convert a FAT32 partition on the new HDD to ext4. Mounted that partition and copied all of the home directory over using 'cp -acdpr'. Checked to make sure it all copied over, even the hidden files - it was all there. That relieved the pressure since all of the content was now safe on the new HDD.

Used tune2fs to try and write a UUID for the partition that didn't have one. tune2fs executed and didn't output any error or warning messages. Checked with blkid - still no UUID. repeated a few times with the same results - OK tune2fs wasn't working with the partition for some reason.

Then I used Gparted to experiment with the partition that didn't have a UUID. First resized with some empty space in front. Created a new partition of the empty space. Gparted reported a UUID for the new partition, but the problem partition still didn't have a UUID. Then deleted the bad partition and resized the newly created partition with a UUID to occupy all of the now empty space (i.e., back to the original bad partition size). Decided to make it ext4 and reformatted. Then cut the size of the Vista partition in half and created a new partition with ext4 filesystem. That gave me 2 ext4 backup partitions with the original bad partition now ext4 also.

Created the desired mount points for the new partitions as back-up partitions.

Edited fstab and changed the old '/home' UUID to the new UUID created by Gparted and changed ext3 to ext4. Also added entries for the 2 new ext4 back-up partitions.

Copied my home directory which I had copied to the new back-up partition back to the re-created partition.

Re-booted.

Had quite a few error messages from KDE trying to boot because the 'cp' command (which I had to execute as 'sudo cp ..' had made root the new owner of ALL of the files on my restored home directory. executed chown to get them back to my ownership (that took a few iterations to get all of the hidden files done).

KDE then booted fine and everything was saved and now backed-up on 2 back-up HDDs.

Now I need to write a few scripts which I'll execute to back-up all files on my home directory to the 2 back-up partitions. Execute the scripts just before shutdown. That will give me 3 copies of everything on 3 separate HDDs.

Again, Thank You everybody.

Note: I didn't panic this time, kept my head and civility and asked for help from the experts here. Got the help needed.