Ubuntu not booting after power surge

After a power outage yesterday, my PC will not boot into Ubuntu 12.04

Cold boot gives me a screen with GNU Grub Ver: 1.99 with boot options of: Ubuntu with Linux 3.5 generic, and Recovery mode.

When I select the first, I get the ubuntu splash screen then blank screen, on the second option, recovery mode, I get to a log in screen. I enter login and password and get to (dos prompt??). I can see the files on my drive here by typing 'dir' but cannot access or boot to anything.

I do not wish to lose my files as I do not have a recent backup.

Any help please.

Laptop system: Sony Vaio VPCEE23FX AMD Athlon II x2 320GB hdd, ATI Radeon HD4250

Thanks in advance.

 

Were you using the proprietary ATI Catalyst driver? I have the same GPU as you on my Ubuntu 12.04 desktop and experienced something similar a few months back. Long story short...ATI no longer supports the driver for the Radeon 4250 chip on the most recent version of Xorg. It woulda been nice if Ubuntu warned users of the issue before unleashing a new Xorg; so we can make a decision whether to hold back the Xorg package or revert to the OS driver. Once Xorg is installed, you're pretty much railroaded into the OS driver route. It is what it is at this point...

You need to purge the fglrx package so Ubuntu can default to the open source driver. Choose the way that makes the most sense for your situation: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RadeonDriver

If I recall correctly, I just purged the fglrx packages from the command line in recovery mode, then rebooted, with Ubuntu reverting to the default open source driver. You might even have to reboot to the prior kernel image before your current 3.5.x kernel...I can't remember for sure, in order to boot with the OS driver. I've got no issues with the open source driver, so I'm okay with using it. Not sure what options you might have with a laptop, but reverting to the OS driver should make your system usable again. It's kinda freaky looking at a black screen with no GUI to boot into, but your data is fine...it's there. And you can always recover data with a liveCD and an external drive.

If you insist on the proprietary driver, you might have to do some hacking and/or enable a PPA. It's all linked in the Ubuntu doc page above...

Good luck

 

Hi Hedon,
I followed the instructions on the link provided:

After purge command: fglrx is not installed so not removed

After reinstall: E: package 'xserver' has no installation candidate
E: unable to locate package xorg-core

I followed the next step of removing the nvidia nouveau but it removed nvidia common. Upon purge command: virtual packages like xserver-xorg-video-nv cannot be removed.

I am getting a little lost here - I wanted also to be sure I am putting the commands in the right place...
After selecting recovery mode in the grub menu, I am taken to a dos type screen and I am asked to log in and enter password. I am then at a command line of: computer@computer-VPCEE23FX:~$ Do I need to back out to a different directory? excuse the DOS speak but I am more familiar with that... just want to be sure.

The laptop has only wifi access to the internet - is that a problem? I am using to a different pc to communicate here.

Thanks for any help - getting a little confused!. Also had trouble booting from cd despite changing boot sequence in BIOS.
Thanks

 

If your GPU is Radeon 4250, you're either using the OS driver, or you've activated the proprietary Catalyst driver, fglrx. You DO NOT have an nvidea or nouveau driver. It's just not possible. So you're either OS, or fglrx.

I'm confused by your purge, then "reinstall" comments... If fglrx is not installed, then you're using the OS driver and this fix is not for you. You'll have to let me know. And your reinstall comments are confusing, as it appears you may not be typing the package name correctly. Copy & paste for accuracy (see below reference for commands to be copied). Edit: My bad...you don't have a GUI for copy/paste. Type carefully and double-check spelling, syntax, etc...

But before you do anything further, based on your description, you're in the right place for command entry. Recovery mode will lead to a DOS-looking screen that linux refers to as the terminal, or command line, or CLI. The terminal prompt format should look like user@computer name:~$ So yes, you're at the right place. Before we get too far, what happens if you log in with user name and password, and type 'startx' at the prompt, without the quotation marks? Under normal circumstances, this would start the GUI interface. Does 'startx' provide a desktop? How about 'start gdm'? (don't forget to leave out the quotation marks)

Assuming you get an error message of some sort, you need to purge fglrx, discussed here:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Troubleshooting/VideoDriverDetection#Problem:_Need_to_purge_-fglrx

You are only interested in this part:

copy and paste each of the sudo commands into the terminal, 1 line at a time. Edit: my bad, no gui for copy/paste. the long line in front of "purge" and "reinstall" are actually two dashes with no spaces between them. type 1 line at a time, carefully checking spelling, syntax, and spacing. Even if you get a message about fglrx not being installed, continue with the 2nd and 3rd lines, 1 at a time, to fix any packages that were potentially corrupted. But let me know that fglrx wasn't installed, so we can look at other options, because if fglrx isn't installed, then this is not your issue. After the third entry, then reboot.

We're only doing this at this point to re-establish a baseline configuration for your system.

 

If the previous post doesn't fix your issue, I'm wondering if booting to the previous kernel will resolve your issue. Using the power outage as a clue, your issue may have been caused by a corruption of the kernel header or related issue.

To boot into a previous kernel, reboot your computer and press/hold the shift key while GRUB loads. Once GRUB is displayed immediately arrow down to "Previous Linux Versions" to stop the automatic boot countdown, and select this entry.

A screen should appear with all the different linux kernels installed on your system, with the most recent at the top and the oldest at the bottom. Select the most recent kernel available, which will likely be the kernel that immediately preceded the one that is causing your boot issues. Let me know if the previous kernel boots for you.

 

This is another option for us to pursue. Just posting it here while it's fresh, so I don't have to search for it again later.

http://askubuntu.com/questions/296163/black-screen-on-login

Just keep working the posts, in order, 1 at a time, and let me know the results of each. 1 at a time. Resist the temptation to jump ahead and try things out of sequence, without providing me feedback. We have several options...

 

1st Post:

type: startx
RESULT: not currently installed - suggest sudo apt-get install xinit

type: start gdm
RESULT: unkown job
sudo apt-get remove --purge xorg-driver-fglrx fglrx*
RESULT: FGLRX - NOT INSTALLED
FGLRX-DEV - NOT INSTALLED
FGLRX-AMDCCCLE NOT INSTALLED (etc)

sudo apt-get install --reinstall libgl1-mesa-glx libgl1-mesa-dri xserver-xorg-core
RESULT: 'Some packages could not be installed . This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distro that some requied packages have not yet been created'

sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg
RESULT: xserver-xorg not installed

And yes, not being able to copy n paste is a pain.

Post 2:
Previous versions:
Ubuntu with Linux 3.5.0-27 Generic
-25 " "
-23 " "
3.2.0-41 Generic pae
-40 " "
-38 " "

these are the only previous versions.

 

selecting previous kernel: hangs in purple screen then black screen and nothing.

 

After going into recover menu and selecting 'resume' normal boot, then entering login and password I get this:

Welcome to Ubuntu 12.04.5 LTS (GNU/LINUX 3.2.2-28-generic 1686)
New release "12.10" is available
Run 'do-release-upgrade' to upgrade it

Your current Hardware Enablement Stack (HWE) is no longer available. Security updates for critical parts (Kernel and graphic stack) of your system are no longer available.

There is a graphics stack installed on this system. An upgrade will become available on 2014-07-16 and can be evoked by running 'update-manager' in the dash.

*** It could also be possible that I had installed some updates a few days or so before and not rebooted and changes came into effect after reboot from power surge??

 

Okay. based on your post #7, I'm satisfied you are using the OS driver, not the proprietary fglrx driver. We can cross those issues off the list. Based on your post #7 & #8, I think we can rule out a kernel, or kernel header issue.

Now we can focus on open source, plymouth, and lightdm issues. I'm a little confused about the response to 'startx' being RESULT: not currently installed - suggest sudo apt-get install xinit. Ubuntu is recommending the package to be installed to start x server, but it should already be there. In the terminal type

Code:

sudo apt-get install xinit

then try again

Code:

startx

Anything?

If nothing, referencing the link in my post #6, I'd like you to boot into recovery mode, enter username & password. At the terminal prompt type

Code:

start lightdm

Anything?

If nothing, I'd like you to remove lightdm by typing

Code:

sudo apt-get remove lightdm

Then reinstall with

Code:

sudo apt-get install lightdm

once installed, type

Code:

sudo reboot

Anything?

 

What you described with install, power surge, reboot is absolutely possible. And it's a nightmare to troubleshoot, because it's extremely difficult to pinpoint the last package(s) installed prior to the corruption.

With that said, I would NOT recommend upgrading to 12.10, as it's no longer supported. Until we get your graphics issue restored and your confident everything is working fine, you should avoid introducing any further changes to your system. I would recommend you stay with 12.04 for the full 5 year window through 2017. Or, if you really feel the urge to upgrade to the latest & greatest, we'll change your "software update" settings to notify you of "Long Term Support" versions only, and you can upgrade to 14.04 LTS. But hold off until we either
a) resolve your graphics issues or
b) successfully backed up your data for later retrieval, thereby allowing 12.04 to be reinstalled or 14.04 to be newly installed

 

You previously posted:

How did you get kernel 3.2.2-28 booted on your system?

 

Ugh! my apologies - 3.5.0-28

 

well that makes more sense:-D

So are you back in business with a GUI desktop and kernel 3.5.0-28? If not, where are you in the process? What's the last recommendation you tried? And the result of that?

 

typed:
sudo apt-get install xinit

RESULT: a list of:
'failed to fetch https/us.archive.ubuntu.com/pool/main/x/xserver.com'
and
'could not resolve 'us/archive/ubuntu.com'

nothing else works.

 

I would be happy to install 14.04, as was my intention soon anyway. But still do not wish to lose my data.

 

This is a message usually associated with no internet connection. Can you connect an ethernet cable to your laptop, thereby over-riding your wifi connection (or lack thereof)? If you can, please connect with ethernet and run through that post again.

If we can't pull packages from the internet, we will need to save your data to an external drive and reinstall, or install 14.04 fresh, and then copy your data back.

Any idea how many GBs of data you have? Do you have an external usb drive or flash drive that will hold all of it?

 

Attached ethernet cable, ran 'sudo apt-get install xinit' then ran 'startx' and GUI loaded.
Desktop fully restored. First message upon loading: 'update manager closed unexpectedly' so obviously it was in use when the power outage happened.

Rebooted system and it was very slow and hung on the Ubuntu splash screen. Rebooted again, selected Recovery Mode then it hung on 'Check Battery State' I used the ctrl+alt+F1 as noted in the earlier link and it got me to the log in screen in which I was able to 'startx' again to get to the GUI again.

I am going to use the time this evening backing up my data and come back to the issue tomorrow with no threat to data loss as there is still some issues and will probably install 14.04 which was my intention anyway.

 

Now we're getting somewhere! Internet access was the key!

Based on your comment about Update Manager, and based on previous info about 12.04.5, I will venture to guess that Update Manager was indeed running at the time of crash and had partially installed some upgrades, but not others, leaving your system in an unstable condition. Version 12.04.5 is a very recent point release of 12.04, so it may even be possible that you were in the middle of a very important system-wide point release before failure.

We can probably fix this, but truthfully, if your intention is to upgrade to 14.04 then it will most certainly be faster and cleaner to burn 14.04 to a disc (or usb, if you prefer) and do a fresh install. During the installation, the installer will detect a previous version of Ubuntu and ask if you want to install alongside that version, or overwrite that version and replace it. Obviously, you will want to replace.

Are you dual-booting, or running Ubuntu as the only OS? If you're interested, we can install Ubuntu 14.04 with your /home directory on a separate partition. This would allow future versions of Linux (Ubuntu, or something else in the future, if you change your mind) to be installed, completely overwriting the prior installation, but leaving your /home directory completely untouched and intact, as well as the data within it. If you're interested, check out this link:
http://www.tecmint.com/ubuntu-14-04-installation-guide/
pay specific attention from step 6 forward. With your data safely backed up, you might as well give it a shot. The worst you could do is mess up, and try again?!

In the future, if you want to fresh install another linux OS (or newer version of Ubuntu) you just repeat the steps above, with the exception that when it comes to the choice of disk and partitions, choose "other" and then, manually select the partition(s) for / and /home; check that the installer will format only the / partition, and not the /home partition.

Tada....new OS...same old data and config settings! Enjoy!

 

Using 'startx' I was able to access GUI, however there was no access to cd-rom or usb drives "Unable to mount 2gb file system - Not Authorized". I am not able to boot from cd or usb despite boot order in BIOS, therefore cannot install or reinstall any kind of Ubuntu.
Boot Process:
power on
boot to Grub Menu (ver 1.99)
select Recovery Mode
stops on battery check state (press ctrl+alt+F1 gets to login)
login in
type 'startx'
boot to GUI
No cd-rom or usb access (I tried some mount commands to no success)
Everything else is all there programs, docs etc.
I have Wifi and wired internet connection, can access web pages etc.

Tried to do 'safe' updates through update manager but regardless of what is done, system still boots like this with no cd rom access.
Have tried all options in grub menu - still same. Tried updating to Grub2 (from Ubuntu support) but this didn't seem to take either.

My system is completely backed up now, so I have no problems with losing data here, but would like the next installation to be 2 partitions so that I do not have this problem in the future for distro upgrades etc. I have stand alone Ubuntu on this laptop. I have windows XP on another old pc to access here.

 

this is somewhat confusing to me. in the interest of full disclosure, this is new territory for me. i'll still try to help, if i can, but i don't want to convey the illusion that "hey, I've got this...just do the following..." Looks like I'll be learning something new also?!

These are obviously permissions issues, and I can't help but wonder if this is related to booting in recovery mode. Now that xinit was reinstalled, are you able to boot into the most recent kernel normally? How about the prior kernel, normally? How did you get your data backed up if you can't access cd or usb drives?

But the real head scratcher to me is why your BIOS won't allow boot from a cd or usb device? If the BIOS boot order can't be changed, or isn't recognized, can you manually invoke the alternate boot process by tapping a Fn key during boot process (every manufacturer uses a different Fn key)? For instance, on my Asus motherboard, tapping <Fn8> during boot will interrupt the boot sequence to ask which device should be booted from:
1. optical drive
2. hdd
3. external usb
4. network
I have also seen Fn12 and ESC keys accomplish this; your machine will probably flash the Fn key options at the bottom of your screen during boot process.

Can you manually change the boot order? Until we figure this out, we're at a standstill. Solving permission problems within Ubuntu does nothing to allow installation from a LiveMedia, we need to be able to boot from that device, which occurs before your OS is even loaded. We need to solve this at the BIOS level.

Your 1st post indicated this was a Sony Vaio VPCEE23FX laptop. Found this from a guy who had boot issues:

Does this resolve the boot issue?

If we resolve the BIOS boot issues, we're good to go...

 

If helpful, this is from the online Sony Vaio manual:

How can I change the boot device order?
You can use one of the BIOS functions to change the boot device order. Follow these steps:
1Turn on your computer.
2Press the F2 key when the VAIO logo appears.The BIOS setup screen appears. If the screen does not appear, restart the computer and press the F2 key several times when the VAIO logo appears.
3Press the < or , key to select Boot.
4Press the M or m key to select the drive whose boot device order you want to change.
5Press the F5 or F6 key to change the boot device order.
6Press the < or , key to select Exit, select Exit Setup, and then press the Enter key.At the confirmation prompt, press the Enter key.

The copy & paste lost some graphics characters. step 3 is left & right arrow keys; step 4 is up & down arrow keys; step 6 is left & right arrow keys.

 

I have changed the boot order in BIOS it is not reading the drive OR not seeing the data on the disc (?) so the next possibility is that my disc did not burn correctly or the downloaded file was corrupted. Will redo download and burn to eliminate this from the equation.
I backed up all my docs and spreadsheets to google drive and uploaded all my pictures and wallpapers to a social media site.. This was the easiest option and my music is already on an external drive.

 

If your WinXP machine and Sony Vaio are the same architecture 32 bit vs. 64 bit, you can also try the "failing" disc in the WinXP machine.

Obviously if the "failed" disc boots in WinXP, it's not a corrupt download, nor a bad burn. At that point, it's a failed optical drive in the Vaio.

Then we can move to create a LiveUSB stick. If the LiveUSB won't boot in the VAIO, it has to be BIOS or motherboard related, by process of elimination.

 

Update: So I figured it couldn't be hardware as the system was recognizing the cd and usb in Disk Utility and I could physically hear and feel the cd rom working plus I was using a usb mouse and keyboard the whole time.
Where ever I went I was either denied permission or asked for a password ( using startx to access GUI) and went searching the web for 'ubuntu' and 'permission' and ended up finding a post in a forum with similar issues:
" -/Xauthority -file was being owned by root. After logging in type:

sudo chown user:user .Xauthority

I rebooted with the 14.04 cd in drive and booted to the install screen. I selected 'Something Else' during the partition setup and there were 3 partitions, 10.10, 12.04 and a swap. I installed 14.04 over the top of 10.10 and everything is perfect - 14.04 installed, my old 12.04 with all my data is still on a partition and accessible and I have overwritten an old version and possibly part of the problem.

so all is well for now - it seems I only have to come back here every few years or so, not bad considering if I had a windows system I would be on here every week

Thanks once again for your help!

 

I'm glad you got that sorted out. I knew the CD & usb were permission issues, and I suspected your .Xauthority issue was also permission related, as I experienced a similar issue on a Zorin machine 3-6 months ago. But once you said you really wanted to upgrade to 14.04, I saw no reason to fix the permission issues for files that were going to be overwritten in a 14.04 installation.

I was stumped on the "can't boot a LiveCD" issue, as I have never seen that before (just lucky I guess...), and I would've never thought that fixing permissions for .Xauthority would allow a LiveCD to boot. In fact, I still don't understand how that fixed your LiveCD boot issue. In theory, there's no relation between the two; in reality, it worked.

Glad you're up and running! Good outlook on the Linux repair! You fixed it yourself, but can you imagine what Staples or Geek Squad woulda charged to troubleshoot and fix a similar GUI/boot issue in Windows? Good job Sulli!