fstab related boot problem

[Graham Watkins]

Steve wrote:
> On Sun, 14 Feb 2010 19:46:08 -0000, Graham Watkins  
> <shellycat.gw at ntlworld.com> wrote:
>
>   
>> I'm having an intermittent boot problem where the system appears to hang
>> and I get the following message:
>>
>>        One or more of the mounts listed in /etc/fstab cannot yet be
>> mounted: /home: waiting for UUID=7x6fcee8-9505-437f-bb29-b9c894041172
>> swap waiting for UUID=59a31579-1a6c-46a8-9ecb-7d1679a9943e
>> Press ESC to enter a recovery shell
>>
>> In the recovery shell, I have been able to mount and view the /home
>> partition although when I then attempt to start X it crashes.  This
>> happens whether I  do it as root or user (although as user it finishes
>> booting before it crashes).
>>
>> Booting with a live CD and then Googling produced a possible remedy:
>>
>> mount -n -o remount,rw /
>>
>> then
>>
>> dpkg --configure -a
>>
>> followed by reboot.
>>
>> This did not work.
>>
>> Another suggestion:
>>
>> sudo mount -o rw,remount /
>>
>> or sudo mount -o rw,remount /dev/sda9 (or whichever partition it is)
>>
>> followed by
>>
>> sudo update-grub
>>
>> This also did not seem to work although after a couple of failed
>> attempts at restarting X and rebooting I eventually managed to get into
>> the system which is the only reason I am able to post this message.
>>
>> However, I managed to get back in once before without doing most of that
>> fancy stuff - I'm not sure why, so I fully expect the problem to occur
>> again.
>>
>> Any suggestions on how to deal with this so I can switch my computer on
>> in confidence that it will actually start would be appreciated.
>>
>> Sorry if this is long-winded but I wanted to give as much information as
>> I could.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> Graham
>>
>>     
> Sounds a bi like a dodgy drive to me.  I would run the Palimpsest Disk  
> Utility to see if it reports any problems.
>
> 	System > Administration > Disk Utility
>
>
>   
Followed your advice and there may be something in it. /dev/sda9 is 
shown as 37Gb unrecognised, unknown and unused.  This is my home 
partition and it is currently mounted.  Palimpsest shows no partition 
label and its type is (0x83)

However this partition is only one partition on a hard disk which 
contains several partitions.  How is it that only two partitions are 
giving this problem?

Cheers,

Graham