Mint failed.
- Thread starter Zooeybabe
- Start date
You're not really giving us enough information.
linux-tips.us
I take it that you're unable to boot and that your OS is a Mint variety of some sort? We'll need more information to help you.
What sort of error are you getting? I take it that you had Mint installed and now it is broken, or is this a live system you're using for some other purpose?
Help us help you and we'll do our level best to get you sorted out.
How To: Ask A Good Support Question • Linux Tips
This article will teach you how to ask a good support question. After all, if you want good support you need to start with a good question.
linux-tips.us
I take it that you're unable to boot and that your OS is a Mint variety of some sort? We'll need more information to help you.
What sort of error are you getting? I take it that you had Mint installed and now it is broken, or is this a live system you're using for some other purpose?
Help us help you and we'll do our level best to get you sorted out.
Condobloke
Well-Known Member
A bunch of stuff went wrong. I've been running Linux Mint flawlessly for years. This morning all of my google icons were missing. Then some of my files looked like they had locks on them. So I rebooted. I got the initfrm screen or something to that affect. It told me my dev/sda was missing files. It tried to recover them. It kept telling me to run sfck...something like that, manually. I just couldn't get it to run. I tried rolling back to earlier kernels in the Linux recovery area. Now I am using an old hard drive and we accessed the drive that I thought was a goner on a drive reader device. I can see all the directories but I can't find any of my info. It says there is 66 gb left of space, which is accurate as I was just mentioning it to my husband. I just can't find my missing data.
Condobloke
Well-Known Member
Have a read of this. https://linux-tips.us/how-to-check-a-disk-for-errors/
The step of interest may be fsck....a little way down the page....but, read all of it.
The step of interest may be fsck....a little way down the page....but, read all of it.
G'day @Zooeybabe and welcome to linux.org
I don't suppose you took the recommended procedure and had a Timeshift snapshot or three stored on an external drive, did you?
Cheers
Chris Turner
wizardfromoz
Excellent! Very helpful and I will surely refer to it do it the right way when I put the other drive back in. It is much faster than this old drive. It's a SSB drive...the one that messed up. I read all of it. I am a voracious reader. Thank you very much. I did run SMART and it passed.
As a matter of fact, I didn't. If I had known that was the proper procedure I would have done so.
Oops, might bear it in mind for the future, if you have (or get) the storage.
Any questions on Timeshift, you can ask over here https://www.linux.org/threads/timeshift-similar-solutions-safeguard-recover-your-linux.15241/page-18
Wiz
Any questions on Timeshift, you can ask over here https://www.linux.org/threads/timeshift-similar-solutions-safeguard-recover-your-linux.15241/page-18
Wiz
Condobloke
Well-Known Member
An SSD will certainly speed things up.
Have you figured out how you will transfer the info from the hdd to the ssd ?...a backup perhaps ?
Have you figured out how you will transfer the info from the hdd to the ssd ?...a backup perhaps ?
The SSD is the drive that failed. Well, not the drive itself but some of the software on it. We usually use a drive reader. It allows me to see all of the info on said drive and I can drag and drop whatever I want off of it to my main hard drive.
Welcome to the Forum.
If you do have Timeshift set up...you can restore a snapshot from the live session ( the Mint ISO you burnt to a Flash Drive).
Boot to the live session...click the Menu button and type...Timeshift and hit Enter. When the Timeshift window comes up...click Next and Finish...all your snapshots will appear...select the one you want and click Restore.
If you want to try to fix broken System Files you can also do this from the live session too...which I think is easier...I've never had this problem but this method does work because I've tried it.
To try to fix your System Files...you need to know which partition the Linux Filesystem is on...so you run this command...
Go down to here...
You'll see my Linux Filesystem is sda2. note yours might be different.
I can go on with the next command...
This command will check and repair System Files...fingers crossed.
Of course all of the above could be avoided if you had a System Backup Image created with Foxclone and or RedoRescue...should anything happen it's a simple matter to put the Image back on the Drive with nothing lost but that's another story...anyway hope this helps.
If you do have Timeshift set up...you can restore a snapshot from the live session ( the Mint ISO you burnt to a Flash Drive).
Boot to the live session...click the Menu button and type...Timeshift and hit Enter. When the Timeshift window comes up...click Next and Finish...all your snapshots will appear...select the one you want and click Restore.
If you want to try to fix broken System Files you can also do this from the live session too...which I think is easier...I've never had this problem but this method does work because I've tried it.
To try to fix your System Files...you need to know which partition the Linux Filesystem is on...so you run this command...
Code:
sudo fdisk -lYou'll see my Linux Filesystem is sda2. note yours might be different.
I can go on with the next command...
Code:
sudo fsck -p /dev/sda2This command will check and repair System Files...fingers crossed.
Of course all of the above could be avoided if you had a System Backup Image created with Foxclone and or RedoRescue...should anything happen it's a simple matter to put the Image back on the Drive with nothing lost but that's another story...anyway hope this helps.
Along with the rest of the comments, it sounds like it might be related to a permission's issue, thus the lock icon on some of the files. If you've lost ownership of the files, that might even account for the missing icons as you don't have permission to load said icons.
Hmm...
This sounds far enough gone to consider preserving /home (you can chown the entire directory easily) and then doing a clean install that's followed by installation of your favorite apps and then restoring their configuration directories to restore your previous settings.
Hmm...
This sounds far enough gone to consider preserving /home (you can chown the entire directory easily) and then doing a clean install that's followed by installation of your favorite apps and then restoring their configuration directories to restore your previous settings.
Well I'm not sure how they could be lost. I had most of them encrypted. I am not going to reinstall that drive right away. I am going to try the stuff in the first post., by condobloke but not right away. I am using this old hard drive for now. Thank you for all of your advice and I will let you know how it goes when we do it all.
The device is something we bought online last year. We had a bunch of old hard drives and we wanted to access them. It plugs into the computer and brings up all of the files on it.
Brickwizard
Well-Known Member
sounds like a SATA to USB connector [probably with power supply] I have a couple very useful thing to have
Sometimes people do things that can't be undone and a clean installed is required.
You could try Booting to the live session and mounting the Drive and copy and paste your folders etc to another Flash Drive or External Drive but if the Drive has failed this wont work.
You could try Booting to the live session and mounting the Drive and copy and paste your folders etc to another Flash Drive or External Drive but if the Drive has failed this wont work.
Hmm. Question for you guys; how do y'all run fsck in a mainstream installation? I know how we approach this with Puppy, but what's the recommended procedure with summat like Mint? I would guess you'd run it from a Live session, since the OS can't be mounted when running fsck on it. Correct?
Indeedy! And useful in other ways, too....
Off-topic:-
I also have two.
I use one with my "external" install of HaikuOS. I had an old Transcend PATA SSD kicking around from ye anciente Dell Inspiron that went south early last year. 'Twas perfectly usable - and still faster even than a USB 3.2 flash drive - so I cobbled together a drive enclosure from an old Compaq floppy-drive storage box I'd had for almost 30 years. I bought a PATA-to-SATA adapter off eBay for a couple of quid, then hooked it up to the big desktop rig via one of these SATA-to-USB 3.0 adapters.
Installation of Haiku was totally straight-forward. When I want to use it, I plug it into a USB 3.0 port, then boot it via a "chainload" entry in my main Grub4DOS selection menu. Which works a treat!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The second one's a bit of a 'special'. I use this with a DVD combo drive. I 'rescued' the brand-new Liteon tray-loader I'd just bought for the old Compaq desktop rig when that died in early 2020. The HP has one of these awful laptop-style DVD drives, mounted vertically; fragile, flimsy, tinny, and dreadful to use. All in the interests of cost-saving, and because these Pavilions don't have room for a conventional DVD drive due to the small size of the case.
So I use the Liteon, sitting on top of the Pavilion, as an "external" drive, again connected via a SATA-to-USB 3.0 cable. It works well.......but research showed that only adapter cables with a specific chip would work for one of these. Standard SATA-to-USB cables don't "see" the DVD drive, so a bit of searching around for a cable with the right chip was needed. I eventually found one, at approx double the cost of a 'conventional' cable.....
It works, though. Does exactly what I want from it. So why do I want an optical drive? Simple; because it's still the easiest way to make a Live session for trying-out new distros. With the exception of UNetbootin - which I am not a fan of - most of the USB 'flashing' installers don't work under Puppy, for various reasons. (All down to Puppy's unique method of operation, it seems. Despite being a brilliant wee distro, she DOES have her downsides.....)
(I happen to have a couple of hundred DVD blanks, which I picked up cheap on eBay a few years ago. Go figure.)
Mike.
Indeedy! And useful in other ways, too....
Off-topic:-
I also have two.
I use one with my "external" install of HaikuOS. I had an old Transcend PATA SSD kicking around from ye anciente Dell Inspiron that went south early last year. 'Twas perfectly usable - and still faster even than a USB 3.2 flash drive - so I cobbled together a drive enclosure from an old Compaq floppy-drive storage box I'd had for almost 30 years. I bought a PATA-to-SATA adapter off eBay for a couple of quid, then hooked it up to the big desktop rig via one of these SATA-to-USB 3.0 adapters.
Installation of Haiku was totally straight-forward. When I want to use it, I plug it into a USB 3.0 port, then boot it via a "chainload" entry in my main Grub4DOS selection menu. Which works a treat!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The second one's a bit of a 'special'. I use this with a DVD combo drive. I 'rescued' the brand-new Liteon tray-loader I'd just bought for the old Compaq desktop rig when that died in early 2020. The HP has one of these awful laptop-style DVD drives, mounted vertically; fragile, flimsy, tinny, and dreadful to use. All in the interests of cost-saving, and because these Pavilions don't have room for a conventional DVD drive due to the small size of the case.
So I use the Liteon, sitting on top of the Pavilion, as an "external" drive, again connected via a SATA-to-USB 3.0 cable. It works well.......but research showed that only adapter cables with a specific chip would work for one of these. Standard SATA-to-USB cables don't "see" the DVD drive, so a bit of searching around for a cable with the right chip was needed. I eventually found one, at approx double the cost of a 'conventional' cable.....
It works, though. Does exactly what I want from it. So why do I want an optical drive? Simple; because it's still the easiest way to make a Live session for trying-out new distros. With the exception of UNetbootin - which I am not a fan of - most of the USB 'flashing' installers don't work under Puppy, for various reasons. (All down to Puppy's unique method of operation, it seems. Despite being a brilliant wee distro, she DOES have her downsides.....)
(I happen to have a couple of hundred DVD blanks, which I picked up cheap on eBay a few years ago. Go figure.)
Mike.
Last edited:
Yup.
Repair Your Linux Filesystem With a Live USB or DVD • Linux Tips
It's possible for your filesystem to become so corrupted that you can't repair it easily. In that case, you can repair your Linux filesystem with a live USB or DVD.
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