[ubuntu-za] Problems with fstab

Mon Jun 15 19:17:28 UTC 2020

Boot option 1 defenitely is the hdd, wich you want to mount as /home.
Usually also listed as sda1... Therefore the uid identifiers for the
partitions...

I'm thinking maybe boot from a live disk and check the files on each disk.

 Whenever I reinstall for what ever reason, I clean all but the home folder
on the disk and keep only what I need there.
You can also use gparted to set the boot flag and resize partitions as
needed.

Anyway the best would be to backup all data you need, before doing too
much...

I've also seen the boot repair option on  the current beta version linux
mint cinnamon disk, wich is also an option to help fix boot problems.

On Mon, 15 Jun 2020, 20:15 Bill Cairns <cairnsww at gmail.com> wrote:

> Sorry - that question came out backwards. I mean how can I get the right
> boot program onto the SSD disk for BIOS.
>
> On Mon, 15 Jun 2020 at 16:49, Bill Cairns <cairnsww at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hello Bruce and others,
>>
>> Thanks for your responses so far. I suspect that Bruce is pointing me in
>> the right direction. After the install, I had a lot of trouble getting the
>> machine to boot. I am not sure how to relate the disks described by the
>> BIOS setup to the disks that I have partitioned.
>>
>> I have Gigabyte UEFI DualBios 2011.
>>
>> My boot option 1 is 'SATA PM: ST31000524AS'
>> (This works)
>> Boot option 2 is 'SATA PM: ATAPI iHAS122 C'
>> (When I select this, it just sits there spinning a little wheel at me.)
>> Boot option 3 is 'Realtex PXE B03 D00' (I understand that has something
>> to do with 'boot from LAN?)
>>
>> My other options would be:
>> 'ubuntu'
>> (The same wheel spinning)
>> 'UEFI TEAM5Lite3D120G' (Which I presume is the SSD?)
>> (When I select this, I get 'Media test failure, check cable
>> Reboot and select proper Boot device.)
>>
>> You (Bruce) say: 'I think you might be booting from /dev/sda1 in MBR mode
>> which has it's own /etc/fstab and is trying to mount a non existent/faulty
>> root partition. The emergency error normally comes from /boot/initrd.img
>> (InitRAMFS) if it is unable to hand off to the init system on disk
>> (systemd).'
>>
>> But it does mount and run the correct root partition. It goes wrong when
>> fstab tells it to mount /home.
>>
>> How do I go about getting bios loaded onto the SSD?
>>
>> Thanks for the help so far. I am learning a lot even if I am not fixing
>> the problem.
>>
>> BIll
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, 15 Jun 2020 at 16:11, Bill Cairns <cairnsww at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Thanks Bruce - I need to reboot to have a look at that and will come
>>> back on my other machine.
>>>
>>> On Mon, 15 Jun 2020 at 15:57, Bruce Pieterse <dev at santura.co.za> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi Bill,
>>>>
>>>> Thanks, just wanted to make sure the obvious was covered. I think
>>>> Wesley and Frans was on to something earlier.
>>>>
>>>> Three things I want to mention:
>>>>
>>>> 1. As mentioned by Wesley earlier in the thread, please make sure the
>>>> BIOS is using the SSD root filesystem when booting (/dev/sdb1) and is set
>>>> to UEFI mode. Generally this is marked as UEFI: ubuntu in the BIOS but can
>>>> possibly vary depending on the BIOS. I think you might be booting from
>>>> /dev/sda1 in MBR mode which has it's own /etc/fstab and is trying to mount
>>>> a non existent/faulty root partition. The emergency error normally comes
>>>> from /boot/initrd.img (InitRAMFS) if it is unable to hand off to the init
>>>> system on disk (systemd).
>>>> 2. You have a swap partition with UUID
>>>> 1c5e43a0-097c-4d68-90df-e544497323dd enabled in /etc/fstab, but that
>>>> partition doesn't exist in the output of *sudo blkid*. You can comment
>>>> that line out for now. You can use a swap file instead and can be setup
>>>> after you get this fixed.
>>>> 3. The entry in /etc/fstab is correct, but I think the problem is point
>>>> 1.
>>>>
>>>> Best approach is to completely, disconnect the the old hard drive and
>>>> only have the SSD in and then setup the BIOS correctly, then reboot into
>>>> Ubuntu. If everything is OK, shut-down, reconnect your old hard drive and
>>>> boot up again.
>>>>
>>>> Absolutely last resort or another alternative is to rsync your /home
>>>> directory from /dev/sda6 to another disk (rsync -avu /mnt/old-home/
>>>> /mnt/tmp-home), format /dev/sda with just 1 ext4 partition, mount it, then
>>>> rsync the contents back to the drive. This will ensure that this is no MBR
>>>> on /dev/sda and is only used for /home.
>>>>
>>>> Let us know how it goes.
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, 2020-06-15 at 12:51 +0200, Bill Cairns wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi Bruce,
>>>>
>>>> I got 'command udo not found' until I copied it right!
>>>>
>>>> Here you are:
>>>> /dev/sdb2: UUID="2e740efb-b15b-4bea-9ef8-a20dd7a87186" TYPE="ext4"
>>>> PARTUUID="2d6e92df-4f61-489d-b490-b7494b2dac37"
>>>> /dev/sda1: UUID="ea22080c-4fda-44a2-9823-b51cef829ada" TYPE="ext4"
>>>> PARTUUID="00023991-01"
>>>> /dev/sda6: UUID="b7092661-c008-4beb-9cdc-06c3dd036181" TYPE="ext4"
>>>> PARTUUID="00023991-06"
>>>> /dev/sdb1: UUID="B9BC-946C" TYPE="vfat" PARTLABEL="EFI System
>>>> Partition" PARTUUID="26461b51-7dde-415d-bc0b-f8c93d1606a7"
>>>> /dev/sdc1: LABEL="Transcend" UUID="60CC093DCC090F4A" TYPE="ntfs"
>>>> PARTUUID="f2d4863e-01"
>>>>
>>>> Regards,
>>>>   Bill
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, 15 Jun 2020 at 11:06, Bruce Pieterse <dev at santura.co.za> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi Bill,
>>>>
>>>> Please can you provide the output of *sudo blkid | grep
>>>> "ext\|vfat\|ntfs" * to get a better understanding of your disks and
>>>> partitions.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, 2020-06-15 at 09:42 +0200, Bill Cairns wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi Wesley,
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for your reply.
>>>>
>>>> I hope that I am talking sense here. (I am sometimes not sure that I am
>>>> using the right terminology.) Going back in time, I started with only the
>>>> hard disk which is now sda. I had boot, the OS, and everything else on it.
>>>> Then after a couple of years I added the ssd - now sba. Now I have
>>>> installed the OS on the ssd, but I still boot from my hard drive. (That is,
>>>> when I did the install, I specified '/' as being on sb2.) It seems to work
>>>> very well except for this problem of not being able to use fstab to specify
>>>> where /home is.
>>>>
>>>> At the moment, I am manually mounting /home after startup. Again, it
>>>> all works well except that I have two /home directories - one on the ssd
>>>> and the one that I use.
>>>>
>>>> Bill
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, 15 Jun 2020 at 02:17, Wesley Werner <wesley.werner at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hi Bill
>>>>
>>>> You said the boot drive is sda1, but your SSD disk lists as sdb2
>>>> (UUID=2e740efb). Perhaps the BIOS is booting the wrong drive?
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Regards
>>>> Wesley Werner
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, Jun 15, 2020 at 1:03 AM Bill Cairns <cairnsww at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> I tried looking at the drive before mounting it as /home and this is
>>>> what it looks like with mount -v (I asked nautilus to mount the '960 Gb
>>>> drive')
>>>> /dev/sda6 on /media/bill/b7092661-c008-4beb-9cdc-06c3dd036181 type ext4
>>>> (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,uhelper=udisks2)
>>>>
>>>> I can access it quite happily that way too.
>>>>
>>>> On Sun, 14 Jun 2020 at 16:19, Bill Cairns <cairnsww at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for your reply Paolo. I confess that I am not quite sure what I
>>>> should be looking for. The mount -v gives me:
>>>> /dev/sda6 on /home type ext4 (rw,relatime)
>>>> While /proc/mounts has
>>>> /dev/sda6 /home ext4 rw,relatime 0 0
>>>>
>>>> That would seem the same, but I am not sure I am looking at the right
>>>> things.
>>>>
>>>> This is the ssd with the OS from mount -v:
>>>> /dev/sdb2 on / type ext4 (rw,noatime,errors=remount-ro)
>>>> and from /proc/mounts:
>>>> /dev/sdb2 / ext4 rw,noatime,errors=remount-ro 0 0
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, 13 Jun 2020 at 22:34, Paolo Gigante <paolo.gigante.sa at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Not that it should cause a crash but are you sure its an ext4
>>>> filesystem on that device?
>>>> If the mount command works, you may want to try 'mount -v' to see what
>>>> mount is actually doing. Once you have used the mount command to attach the
>>>> FS, does the entry look like in /proc/mounts
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, Jun 13, 2020 at 2:38 PM Bill Cairns <cairnsww at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Boot is on the hard drive - sda1
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, 13 Jun 2020 at 15:30, Frans de waal <meesterarend at gmail.com>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Just a thought... What is the boot drive in the bios?
>>>>
>>>> On Sat, 13 Jun 2020 at 15:10, Bill Cairns <cairnsww at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Hello everybody,
>>>>
>>>> I am trying to run 20.04 with my OS on an SSD device and my home
>>>> directory on my old hard drive.
>>>>
>>>> This mount command works perfectly:
>>>> sudo mount UUID=b7092661-c008-4beb-9cdc-06c3dd036181 /home
>>>>
>>>> However, when I try to do the same thing in fstab -
>>>> # /etc/fstab: static file system information.
>>>> #
>>>> # Use 'blkid' 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>
>>>> # / was on /dev/sdb2 during installation
>>>> UUID=2e740efb-b15b-4bea-9ef8-a20dd7a87186 /         ext4
>>>>  noatime,errors=remount-ro 0       1
>>>> # swap was on /dev/sda5 during installation
>>>> UUID=1c5e43a0-097c-4d68-90df-e544497323dd none            swap    sw
>>>>            0       0
>>>> #
>>>> # Home is on sda6. Added 2020-06-13
>>>> #
>>>> UUID=b7092661-c008-4beb-9cdc-06c3dd036181 /home ext4
>>>> nodev,nosuid,relatime  0  2
>>>>
>>>> The system crashes rather badly and says 'You are now in emergency
>>>> mode' or something equivalent. (And I have no idea how to do anything in
>>>> emergency mode!)
>>>>
>>>> I have used the example in https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Fstab
>>>> (changing the UUID of course).
>>>>
>>>> I am sure that I am missing something very simple. Can anyone help
>>>> please?
>>>>
>>>> Thanks, keep safe,
>>>>
>>>> Bill
>>>>
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