/dev/sda1 timout and emergency mode

[jlbo93]

Hello,

My son laptop is running Kubuntu 24.04.
His machine fails to start properly and we got errors about /dev/sda1 timeout which causes going into emergency mode.
What is /dev/sda1 ? How could I fix this?

Thanks,

[jlittle]

sda1 is the first partition (that's the "1") on the first SATA-connected storage drive (that's the "a"). It doesn't work, times out, and suggests the drive has nasty errors.

If you'd like more constructive help, please tell us more about the laptop, such as the make and model, and what you know about the storage in it.

If it was me I'd boot to a live USB (such as a Kubuntu install USB) and investigate from there.

[skyfishgoo]

something is wrong with the drive.

it can help sometimes to break and make the SATA cable and power cable connections couple of times at both ends of the cables.

these electrical connections can get tired and just quit intermittently before they just fail altogether.

[jlbo93]

Hello,

Thanks for the replies.
The machine is a Lenovo " ideapad 3-15ITL6 " Laptop. The laptop is 3 years old.The disk in the computer is a SSD one.
I have started kubuntu from an USB drive. This /dev/sda1 looks to be a FAT16 thing and not in a good shape.My son finally told me he 'tried' to install MS Windows (not sure how he did this, but this was the beginning of the problem!).
So when in 'emergency' mode, I have edited fstab and made the sda1 'auto,nofail'.
with this change, the laptops starts but kubuntu only gave me black screen and mouse... I discovered he (my son) also switched to 24.10 ... I had to manually install many packages including: kwin_x11 plasma...
and tada kubuntu finally started, he was able to login and use the laptop (i still don't understand why konsole & dolphin were also missing and needed a manual install...)
I am still wondering what this sda1 is: should I completely remove it from fstab?

Thanks,

[jlittle]

Firstly, being sure that any data is well backed up is well advised.

Secondly, (writing this after typing the page below) the quickest way to a good state is to reinstall Kubuntu from scratch, wiping anything on the SSD. Once you have the computer booted to the Kubuntu installer, it takes about 10 minutes, then a big software update and you are done. Maybe wait until 25.04 is released, 2025-04-17, and kill two birds with one stone. Any software installs or customization would be lost.

I am still wondering what this sda1 is?

sda1 is (very likely) the ESP (EFI System Partition, the partition required by UEFI, the boot software computers use these days). We have a sub-forum for it. Normally, Windows and Linux can share the ESP.

I really thought you had a hardware problem, but I suspect the failed install of Windows corrupted /dev/sda1.

should I completely remove it from fstab?

Kubuntu will want to write to it if there's an update to the grub bootloader. (I normally don't mount it to stop updaters messing with it, but I don't use grub in the normal Ubuntu or debian fashion.) And the release upgrade procedure (f.ex, 24.10 -> 25.04, needed by sometime in July) insists it is mounted, or at least it has in the past.

I think the ESP is suspect. It works, in that Kubuntu starts. Ideally, you'd

1. use the partition manager to delete it
2. use the partition manager to create a new one in its place, formatted FAT32 with the "esp" and "boot" flags
3. run in a konsole:

sudo grub-install /dev/sda1
sudo update-grub

Unfortunately, after you do step 1, the computer won't be bootable until you complete step 3. It may be good to have a boot-repair-disk handy (strange how the haven't changed the name, actual disks haven't been used for over a decade). There's lots of help pages about boot-repair.

[jlbo93]

Hello,

Thanks for your reply.
I think i am going to back up all data from this laptop and do a fresh install of Kubuntu using a flash usb drive.
Would that create 'clean' partitions and fix the issue?

Thanks,