[SOLVED] unable to boot/unable to mount file system Help!

[oxf]

I switch on the PC and it loads the Grub splash screen. However, it does not automatically boot the top entry after two seconds as it's supposed to and just hangs. I hit enter to boot it and it attempts to but after a few seconds gives me the error
"unable to mount file system....a maintenance shell will be started"

what should I try next?

FYI
this occurred after I was using it and then everything suddenly froze up on me and I had to crash out Now this!

[Rubberman]

You got this error because there is a serious problem with your system hardware or software installation. Does it boot into a mainentance shell, or does it just go into la-la land? Also, please provide some information about your hardware as well as the version of Ubuntu you are running and kernel (if you know it).

[oxf]

You got this error because there is a serious problem with your system hardware or software installation. Does it boot into a mainentance shell, or does it just go into la-la land? Also, please provide some information about your hardware as well as the version of Ubuntu you are running and kernel (if you know it).

Uhm "serious problem" ??? That doesnt sound good!

Yes it boots into maintenannce shell or a recoverymode. (it will also boot into windows OK)

I'm using Karmic with kernel 2.6.31-22. (Also same result with previous kernel 2.6.31-21)

Compaq Presario M2000 notebook. 40GB HD
WD400 iDE

Anything else you need to know?

Thanks!

[Rubberman]

Once you get into the maintenance shell you should be able to run fsck on your unmounted file systems and see if something a rotten in Denmark. You might want to use the -c option to check for bad blocks as well, since that is a common cause of your sort of problem. Since it is getting into maintenance mode, that is the most likely problem. Report what you find back here and we can help you decide what to do next.

[oxf]

Once you get into the maintenance shell you should be able to run fsck on your unmounted file systems and see if something a rotten in Denmark. You might want to use the -c option to check for bad blocks as well, since that is a common cause of your sort of problem. Since it is getting into maintenance mode, that is the most likely problem. Report what you find back here and we can help you decide what to do next.

Well I'm up and running again ...thanks!

fsck -c did find some errors. Specifically:

"Inode part of a corrupted orphanded linked list found"
"deleted inode has zero dtime"
"block bitmap differences"
"free blockcount wrong" (several)
Inode bitmap differences"
"free inode count wrong" (several)

All now "fixed" and it boots normally as far as I can see. So my question is why did this happen? was it related to when everything froze up earlier and I had to crash out? or is this something with my HD? I ran the HD check in bios setup and it checks out OK.

[Rubberman]

Glad your back functional. If the system "froze" while writing to disc, it could definitely have caused this sort of problem, especially if it couldn't access the tools such as fsck to fix the file system when booting, which it will normally be able to do. So, you did have a fairly "catastrophic" failure, but not a total one. If the BIOS disc test was ok, then the disc is probably not the culprit, though running fsck with the bad_blocks option enabled is not a bad idea. If there are some starting to show up then it will copy those sectors if it can (using a number of retries to get it) and then map them out of use by the file system. That has allowed me to continue using failing drives until replacements arrived in the past.

[oxf]

Glad your back functional. If the system "froze" while writing to disc, it could definitely have caused this sort of problem, especially if it couldn't access the tools such as fsck to fix the file system when booting, which it will normally be able to do. So, you did have a fairly "catastrophic" failure, but not a total one. If the BIOS disc test was ok, then the disc is probably not the culprit, though running fsck with the bad_blocks option enabled is not a bad idea. If there are some starting to show up then it will copy those sectors if it can (using a number of retries to get it) and then map them out of use by the file system. That has allowed me to continue using failing drives until replacements arrived in the past.

Well I guess all I can do at this point is monitor it, be prepared and see what happens!
Anyway thanks for the help. Have a good weekend..