Arch Linux

svxiii

Member

Registered: 2014-09-17

Posts: 21

System fails to boot

Every other morning, this happens:

http://i.imgur.com/uWRJbiM.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/mLritfE.jpg

I have no idea how to fix this and it's been happening for a couple of weeks now.
Ctrl+Alt+Delete doesn't even work when this happens, so I have to go with Alt+SysRq+REISUB.

thearcherblog

Member

Registered: 2014-10-30

Posts: 165

Re: System fails to boot

Hello,

I'm not expert at all but I will try to help you...

Can you tell us more about your system? I mean, how many hard drives, partitions,...

Seems like is detecting issues on one of the hard drives / partitions.

I had this problem before with another hard drive that was quite old and was plugged on the computer... Maybe that is the problem...

I hope that helps...

Regards,

TheArcher

svxiii

Member

Registered: 2014-09-17

Posts: 21

Re: System fails to boot

I have two HDDs; the one Arch uses is only about 3 years old.
Model number: Hitachi HDS721010CLA332
It has 7 partitions, but only 5 of them are in use:

# /dev/sda5 LABEL=ROOT
UUID=7e8012c6-0d14-491c-a007-ecb8162635dc	/         	ext4      	rw,relatime,data=ordered	0 1

# /dev/sda1 LABEL=BOOT
UUID=032a194e-24c6-4a5d-a162-caad0c3db869	/boot     	ext4      	rw,relatime,data=ordered	0 2

# /dev/sda2 LABEL=HOME
UUID=2aa61564-32b8-47cf-997a-cec0a00e7f32	/home     	ext4      	rw,relatime,data=ordered	0 2

# /dev/sda6 LABEL=SWP
UUID=6c9548dd-6b16-47ed-b670-81abbfb39559   none        swap        sw                          0 0

# /dev/sda8 LABEL=SND
UUID=fe22ecde-2dce-42ff-a919-2f5d6ce563ef   /home/svxiii/sound  ext4        rw,relatime,data=ordered    0 2

TheSaint

Member

From: my computer

Registered: 2007-08-19

Posts: 1,523

Re: System fails to boot

The picture is not clear enough.
For what I can detect, it seems that your boot partition /dev/sda1 fails the file system checking.
So, perhaps you need a live distro on USB/CD and perform a ext4.fsck -f for all the disk partitions.

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do it good first, it will be faster than do it twice the saint

mrunion

Member

From: Jonesborough, TN

Registered: 2007-01-26

Posts: 1,938

Website

Re: System fails to boot

Are we understanding correctly that when this happens, the "fix" is to just reboot and eventually it will boot up? Or are you having to do something else to "fix" this so you can boot?

Last edited by mrunion (2014-11-20 13:45:13)

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Matt

"It is very difficult to educate the educated."

svxiii

Member

Registered: 2014-09-17

Posts: 21

Re: System fails to boot

Yes. The "fix" so far has been to just reboot once.

Also, fsck reported no errors. I just ran it off a live cd.

Last edited by svxiii (2014-11-20 13:52:26)

TheSaint

Member

From: my computer

Registered: 2007-08-19

Posts: 1,523

Re: System fails to boot

Apparently systemd.fsck failed to complete the fsck.
It's good to see the journal, but frankly how to do it from outside the system?
EDIT
Ehm, maybe chroot into the system.

Last edited by TheSaint (2014-11-20 13:52:07)

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do it good first, it will be faster than do it twice the saint

TheSaint

Member

From: my computer

Registered: 2007-08-19

Posts: 1,523

Re: System fails to boot

Yes. The "fix" so far has been to just reboot once.

Also, fsck reported no errors. I just ran it off a live cd.

Solved ?

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do it good first, it will be faster than do it twice the saint

svxiii

Member

Registered: 2014-09-17

Posts: 21

Re: System fails to boot

I don't know yet.
This happens once every 2 days (weird, right?).
I guess I'll have to wait a while and see if I get those errors again.

thearcherblog

Member

Registered: 2014-10-30

Posts: 165

Re: System fails to boot

Now that you can login on your computer... maybe you can check the journalctl... maybe has some entries there.

svxiii

Member

Registered: 2014-09-17

Posts: 21

Re: System fails to boot

I just went through the log. I can't find anything wrong

TheSaint

Member

From: my computer

Registered: 2007-08-19

Posts: 1,523

Re: System fails to boot

try this out

# journalctl  |grep fsck

If you need a finer grained search then you have to learn a bit more of grep regex.

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do it good first, it will be faster than do it twice the saint

svxiii

Member

Registered: 2014-09-17

Posts: 21

Re: System fails to boot

I did that already. My apologies for not mentioning it.
Basically what I got was [partition_label_here]: clean m/n files x/y blocks.

So just to make the list shorter now, I'll mention everything that I've tried so far:
google <- nothing
fsck <- nothing
journalctl <-nothing
checking the UUIDs in /etc/fstab <- nothing

I've also looked for words from the errors I've already presented in the screenshots above running journalctl, such as "start job", "start\ job", "Timed\ out" and "Timed out".
So far I found nothing

Last edited by svxiii (2014-11-20 22:41:29)

bulletmark

Member

From: Brisbane, Australia

Registered: 2013-10-22

Posts: 661

Re: System fails to boot

I have been having the same/similar problem recently but only occasionally. I typically shut my pc late each day and boot up each morning. I just went through my journal:

Nov 04 08:01:00 pc systemd[1]: Timed out waiting for device dev-disk-by\x2duuid-b1cb611a\x2d33de\x2d46f2\x2dbba3\x2d9f631e6a16ab.device.
Nov 04 17:32:28 pc systemd[1]: Timed out waiting for device dev-disk-by\x2duuid-b1cb611a\x2d33de\x2d46f2\x2dbba3\x2d9f631e6a16ab.device.
Nov 07 07:24:28 pc systemd[1]: Timed out waiting for device dev-disk-by\x2duuid-b1cb611a\x2d33de\x2d46f2\x2dbba3\x2d9f631e6a16ab.device.
Nov 12 20:26:17 pc systemd[1]: Timed out waiting for device dev-disk-by\x2duuid-b1cb611a\x2d33de\x2d46f2\x2dbba3\x2d9f631e6a16ab.device.

I have never seen this problem before Nov-04. I went through my pacman log and find:

[2014-11-03 07:12] [PACMAN] upgraded linux (3.17.1-1 -> 3.17.2-1)

So maybe that 3.17.2-1 kernel is the issue? OP, please check your logs and see if they correlate with mine?

PS edit: I should add that I have not seen the problem since Nov 12, probably because that is a backup disk that was being mounted automatically at boot. On Nov 13, I changed it to not mount at boot but rather my daily cron backup script mounts/unmounts it on demand. Haven't seen a problem since then so it seems the kernel problem (if any?) occurs when booting only.

Last edited by bulletmark (2014-11-20 23:51:03)

svxiii

Member

Registered: 2014-09-17

Posts: 21

Re: System fails to boot

I found nothing similar in my logs.
I'll add "systemd.log_level=debug systemd.log_target=kmsg log_buf_len=1M" to the kernel command line and see if I can get any useful info the next time this happens

TheSaint

Member

From: my computer

Registered: 2007-08-19

Posts: 1,523

Re: System fails to boot

KERNEL COMMAND LINE
       systemd-fsck understands one kernel command line parameter:

       fsck.mode=
           One of "auto", "force", "skip". Controls the mode of operation. The
           default is "auto", and ensures that file system checks are done
           when the file system checker deems them necessary.  "force"
           unconditionally results in full file system checks.  "skip" skips
           any file system checks.

       fsck.repair=
           One of "preen", "yes", "no". Controls the mode of operation. The
           default is " preen", and will automatically repair problems that
           can be safely fixed.  "yes " will answer yes to all questions by
           fsck and "no" will answer no to all questions.

If you will like to try it out.

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do it good first, it will be faster than do it twice the saint