HELP! Stuck at BUSYBOX!

[GregM]

I have done this before I just don't remember how I did it.
My computer has crashed and it first goes to the Grub page and I just hit <Return>.
Then it goes to a page that says BusyBox v1.30.1
and there I sit.
This has happened to me before and it involved entering a command (which I can't remember) and after that just hitting <Return> over and over and over.
I am currently locked out and have booted off the Kubuntu 20.04 install disk to get to this forum to ask for help.
Can someone help?
Please

[oshunluvr]

What does Busybox return when you enter exit

[GregM]

Have not tried typing "exit".

[GregM]

Right now I have booted and am operating on a 4 month old backup. I can unplug this hdrive and plug in the one I am having trouble with and try typing exit if you think it will help.

[GregM]

I had to read the screen and write this down so there may be some syntax errors....

/dev/sda1: contains a file system with errors. Check forced inodes that were part of a corrupted orphan linked list found.
/dev/sda1: unexpected inconsistency run fsck manually. fsck exited with status code 4. The root file system on /dev/sda1 requires a manual fsck.

[oshunluvr]

Well, there's your answer. Reboot and try this:

fsck /dev/sda1 -y

[oshunluvr]

Then enter reboot

Assuming all is well, I'd check your hard drive status.

[GregM]

It is booting now and I am operating from the distress hdraive.
It still started with grub and I hope that goes away.

How should I check my hdrive status?
I will be backing up this hdrive as soon as I get things smoothed out a bit.

[oshunluvr]

smartctl

[GregM]

I scanned it with smartctl and did the long version (30 minutes) and it scans 100% clean.

[oshunluvr]

I don't there's such a thing as "100% Clean".

These are the important things to look at:
Reallocated_Sector_Count
Reported_Uncorrectable_Errors
Command_Timeout
Current_Pending_Sector_Count
Offline_Uncorrectable

Your drive may not report all of them, but basically, they should all be 0.

Something has be damaging your file system if you have encountered this problem before. I'd try and figure it out before it's too late. Make a backup.

[GregM]

I'm just reporting what the software said

[GregM]

Thank you for the help.
It is working fine now and I have cloned the problem hdrive to a backup hdrive using clonezilla.

Thanks again for the rescue.

[GreyGeek]

"Four month old backup".
One of my clients asked me how often should they back up. I answered by asking "how much do you want to re-enter?"
They began backing up every noon and every night.
If I were still running my business today I'd write a cron task to do a BTRFS snapshot every 15 minutes, deleting the oldest after creating the new one. That would be about 32 mostly empty snapshots that would take up very little room on their storage drive.

In your case I'd recommend backing up every evening before you shut down.

[GregM]

There is such a program that will back up every day?