Ubuntu Karmic fails to restart on Dell Laptop - only logo shows briefly, then error m

[UserName108]

Hi,

Have been running Karmic 910 for six months on a Dell Latitude D510 laptop with a Pentium M CPU, 2 GB of RAM and Intel 915 graphics, and I really like it, especially the Gnome desktop. However, a glitch occured after suspending, resuming, shutting down and trying to restart. Now after selecting Ubuntu in Grub the Ubuntu logo shows up onscreen, doesn't seem to pulsate, and eventually is replaced by an error message that the system gave up waiting for root device.

The LiveCD shows the Ubuntu partition as unrecognized, unknown or unused in Palimpsest Disk Utility, though Gparted shows it as normal ext4. The partition doesn't show up in Places. From the command prompt (via ctrl-alt-F1) I'm able to run fdisk, which shows the partitions but am unable to mount the Ubuntu sda4 partition - the error message is that the file type must be specified.

Starting recovery mode in Grub brings about 25 lines of startup messages, mostly dealing with usb devices, but a few render errors are there too. The last message before dropping to the ash shell is that a device could not be found. (ALERT! /dev/disk/by-uuid/5cee... does not exist.) The ash commands are completely new to me, so I haven't had any luck with recovery mode.

If the problem is related to Intel graphics, I would like to try some "quirks" (software fixes for hardware problems, including Intel graphics bugs) mentioned on the ubuntu.wiki site. I'd also like to recover the data on the desktop, but so far cannot get into the file system.

Please advise:

Does GRUB need to be reinstalled? If so, why?

Would reinstalling without formatting anything preserve the data?

Would upgrading to Lucid help prevent the problem from occurring again?

Thank you.

[devils casper]

Hi and Welcome !

UUID of / partition has been changed somehow. Did you resize or create partition(s) recently?

Boot up from Ubuntu LiveCD, mount / partition and post the contents of /etc/fstab file here. Post the output of command sudo blkid too.

mkdir temp
sudo mount -t ext4 /dev/<root_partition> temp
cd temp/etc
cat fstab
sudo blkid

Post output of last two commands here.

[UserName108]

Hi dc,

Thank you for your response.

I haven't changed partitions since installing Karmic, but did have to alter GRUB a bit to
get it to recognize Granular Linux on sda5. It had mislabelled the drive letters of the Granular
installation. (A Karmic review in digit Magazine also encountered this bug in the beta version of GRUB used in Karmic.) Since then, GRUB has been working fine for months.

Here are the outputs of the commands you suggested:

ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ mkdir temp
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo mount -t ext4 /dev/sda4 temp
ubuntu@ubuntu:~/temp/etc$ cat fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid -o value -s UUID' to print the universally unique identifier
# for a device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name
# devices that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# / was on /dev/sda4 during installation
UUID=5cee7dce-3225-4112-b8b8-9672670f5fa4 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0
ubuntu@ubuntu:~/temp/etc$ sudo blkid
/dev/loop0: TYPE="squashfs"
/dev/sda1: UUID="16905C15905BF9A7" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda3: UUID="7A2214A122146483" LABEL="DATA" TYPE="ntfs"
/dev/sda5: UUID="91f0d9b4-efc9-48a6-a687-855486f47653" SEC_TYPE="ext2" TYPE="ext3"
ubuntu@ubuntu:~/temp/etc$

sda4 is the Ubuntu partition.

[devils casper]

According to /etc/fstab file, /dev/sda4 is / partition but blkid is not listing /dev/sda4.
Did you change Partition Structure of your Hard disk?
Post the output of sudo fdisk -l command here.

sudo fdisk -l

* Its small L in fdisk -l.

[UserName108]

A week ago I did convert two partitions on an external HD from ntfs to ext3. They've been working fine.

Here is the output from fdisk:


ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -l

Disk /dev/sda: 80.0 GB, 80026361856 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 9729 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x41ab2316

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 1 1275 10241406 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda2 1276 1913 5124735 5 Extended
/dev/sda3 2626 9729 57062848+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/sda4 * 1914 2625 5719140 83 Linux
/dev/sda5 1276 1913 5124703+ 83 Linux

Partition table entries are not in disk order

Disk /dev/sdb: 2000 MB, 2000682496 bytes
64 heads, 63 sectors/track, 969 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 4032 * 512 = 2064384 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x09f709f6

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 1 969 1953439+ 6 FAT16
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

[devils casper]

Mount /dev/sda4 partition again and edit /etc/fstab file.

mkdir temp
sudo mount -t ext4 /dev/sda4 temp
sudo nano temp/etc/fstab

Replace UUID with actual device name in a line for /dev/sda4 partition.

UUID=5cee7dce-3225-4112-b8b8-9672670f5fa4 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1

With this

/dev/sda4  / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1

Press Ctrl+X, Y and hit Enter key to save file.

[UserName108]

Updated fstab with nano and checked it. The change looked fine, but still the system hangs in the same way during startup. Can you suggest any more steps for recovery?

Tried to backup the system onto a new SanDisk 4 GB thumb drive, but it stopped after 2.4 GB, with an error message that the drive was full. At least the home directory seems intact, but usr and var are not complete.

Today Ubuntu Lucid came to me on a DVD. I'm wondering whether I should upgrade or consider BSD. From your logo and detailed advice I have the idea you may be expert in both. If I venture into BSD would there be a utility to convert .deb packages into a BSD format? Some programs I would like to use are available as .debs. I recently read that Linus said if BSD had been around when Linux was starting, Linux never would have happened - quite a strong recommendation for BSD!

[JosePF]

Hello,
i dont understand what is the /dev/sd5 partition. In fstab is not used...why do tou have this partition?

Could you report?
sudo dmesg | grep sd

Regards

[UserName108]

Thanks for your help. I've installed Ubuntu Lucid in my old Windows partition (am now running XP in VirtualBox in Ubuntu, due to lack of a proper video driver for a new HD monitor in Windows) and the installation process brought back my previous Ubuntu Karmic installation.

A word of caution for those planning to install Lucid: The GRUB installer used in the Desktop version only recognizes a maximum of two installed systems and is notorious for corrupting the MBR, as it did during my installation. The workaround is to install the Server version first. See ubuntuguide.com for details.

I am also running PCLinuxOS, which has a utility on its menu for updating the Master Boot Record (MBR) that works great for undoing Ubuntu's mischief. It apparently uses the "legacy" version of GRUB, which works fine and correctly finds all the other installations.