ubuntu stopped booting, dual booter

Can you boot in Recovery Mode (its one of the boot options)?
Have you installed proprietary drivers from non-ubuntu repositories?

I have no installed proprietary drivers from non-ubuntu repositories.
I tried the top-most recovery mode option and got several fast scrolling pages ending with:
/dev/sda2 contains a file system with errors, check forced
/dev/sda2: |============ 100%
/dev/sda2: UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY; RUN fsck MANUALLY i.e.without -a or -p options.
fsck died with exit status 4 [fail]
*An automatic file system check (fsck) of the root system failed.
A manual fsck must be performed in maintenance mode with the root file system mounted in read-only mode.
* The root system is currently mounted in read only mode.
A maintenance shell will now be started.
After performing system maintenance, press CONTROL-D to terminate the maintenance shell and restart the system.
bash: no job control in this shell
bash: groups: command not found
bash: lesspipe
bash: The: command not found
The program 'apt-get' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing
apt-get install apt
bash: apt-get: command not found
bash: dircolors: command not found
bash: The: command not found
The program 'apt-get' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing
apt-get install apt
bash: apt-get: command not found
root@les-desktop:~#
[I typed apt-get install apt and got:]
The program 'apt-get' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing
apt-get install apt
bash: apt-get: command not found
root@les-desktop:~#

Before I could write all this down the screen went blank and I tried again to get all this down on paper.

I put in the following with the following results:
root@les-desktop:~# fsck
fsck 1.40-WIP (14-Nov-2006)
e2fsck 1.40-WIP (14-Nov-2006)
/dev/sda2 contains a file system with errors, check forced.
PASS 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
PASS 2: Checking directory structure
Directory inode 6782977, block 0, offset 0: directory corrupted
Salvage <y>?

Shall I enter y for yes?

yes. you should.

Did that and answered yes to correct errors as they came up.
Booted to recovery mode again and it got thru fsck check and then:

*Mounting local filesystems...
[mntent]: warning: no final newline at the end of /etc/fstab
Failed to acces '/dev/hda1': No such file or directory
                                                                                               [fail]
*Activating swapfile swap... [OK]
*Configuring network interfaces... [OK]
*Starting portmap daemon... [OK]
*{couldn't get this last one before screen went blank... [OK]
root@les-desktop:~#

In the length of time it took to type this the screen went blank. Am I gaining on it? And what next?
Thanks to all who are trying to help. Les

If you don't have data that you need to recover, the simplest would be to reinstall Ubuntu from scratch.

I have been so impressed with ubuntu that I have moved away from M$ as completely as possible. I use a w2000 program to program our church's projector each Sunday and I haven't got my scanner to work properly yet.
Otherwise all my data is in ubuntu. So I definitely have data that I need to recover - thunderbird mail, evolution mail, open office files, etc, the last two months of work.
Have I lost everything if I reinstall ubuntu? I would spend whatever time is required to recover it, but I don't know how yet.

Yes, you will loose everything if you install as is.
The problem is that your installation was pretty badly corrupted, it will be very difficult if not impossible to guide you from here and attempt a manual recovery.
I guess you don't have a separate partition and/or hard disk for your home directory?

I installed dapper from the live CD that came with the book 'ubuntu linux for non-geeks' and upgraded to edgy then fiesty from the internet.I have whatever partitions that it put one when I installed it.
How can I check to see if I have a separate partition for the home directory?
Any idea as to what caused this corruption?

Then chances are that you don't have it.
Booting from the LiveCD, give this command in a terminal:

sudo fdisk -l

and paste here the output.
Try also with this:

sudo mount -t ext3 /dev/sda2 /mnt && cat /mnt/etc/fstab

and paste here the output.

Here are the results:

sudo fdisk -l
Disk /dev/hda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 * 1 7296 58605088+ 7 HPFS/NTFS
/dev/hda2 7297 14405 57103042+ 83 Linux
/dev/hda3 14406 14593 1510110 5 Extended
/dev/hda5 14406 14593 1510078+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris

and

sudo mount -t ext3 /dev/sda2 /mnt && cat /mnt/etc/fstab
mount: special device /dev/sda2 does not exist
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

After rebooting, can you try again with this command:

sudo mount -t ext3 /dev/hda2 /mnt && cat /mnt/etc/fstab

Did you have a CD/DVD inside your CD/DVD ROM driver when you did the fsck?
Do you have a PATA or SATA disk?

sudo mount -t ext3 /dev/hda2 /mnt && cat /mnt/etc/fstab

came back with

bash: /home/ubuntu/: Is a directory

Did you have a CD/DVD inside your CD/DVD ROM driver when you did the fsck?
No, I did not. I had booted in the recovery mode.

Do you have a PATA or SATA disk?
I have a western digital 120 gig eide hard drive

Les, you have a pretty badly corrupted installation. There is nothing I can do from here. The only advice I can give is to reinstall.
You can try to recover some data by using one of these utilities to read your ext3 partition from win2k:

http://www.fs-driver.org/download/Ext2IFS_1_10c.exe
http://www.chrysocome.net/explore2fs
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/ext2fsd/Ext2Fsd-0.31a.exe?download

Try reading from the /dev/hda2 partition.

I ran
sudo mount -t ext3 /dev/hda2 /mnt && cat /mnt/etc/fstab
again and it came back with

mount: /dev/hda2 already mounted or /mnt busy
mount: according to mtab, /dev/hda2 is already mounted on /mnt
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

Is this better?

YES.

What is the output of this:

cat /mnt/etc/fstab

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# /dev/hda2
UUID=d0381b45-e295-49f6-9c3d-48633fddb599 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
# /dev/hda5
UUID=1c7764f6-ed35-4bcc-911e-3a926c5f8d61 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
/dev/cdrom /media/cdrom1 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
/dev/ /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto 0 0
# Generated by Automatix
/dev/hda1 /media/hda1 ntfs-3g defaults,locale=en_US.utf8 0 0
## End of Automatix mounted partitions

>Any idea as to what caused this corruption?

No, but:

# Generated by Automatix
 /dev/hda1 /media/hda1 ntfs-3g defaults,locale=en_US.utf8 0 0
## End of Automatix mounted partitions

Automatix is unfortunately known to cause this kind of problems; indeed it is neither supported not recommended by Ubuntu.

Now that you can access your partition, I suggest you go through your data and check what you can save, after which just do a complete reinstall.

Thank you Cesare,

I have two final questions about the resolution of this problem:
1. I guess I need to recover data using w2000 utilities listed in
previous answer and that I won't be able to access them thru ubuntu.
2. When I reinstall ubuntu what will happen when it asks about
partitioning? will it make another set of partitions?

You have been very patient with this old man [71] and I really
appreciate it.

Les

Les,

you can access you data either through win2k (installing and using one of the utilities I have listed in my previous answer) or you can do it through ubuntu. The latter implies that you have to use the terminal which might not be so confortable for you. I sincerely hope you will be able to recover it without further problems.

When you have recovered your data and reinstall ubuntu, you can keep the actual partitions or make new ones, its totally up to you (you will be asked during the installation). Read carefully what is on the screen, also the details of the partitions the installer proposes. If you see something "fishy"or you don't understand, just come back here and ask.

Let me also add a word of caution for the future (sorry to be so pedantic, but as parents always say, it is for your own good....): be carefull when you install software which is not coming from the Ubuntu official repositories; in doubt, check with us, we are here for this.

I have successfully recovered data using Ext2_1_10c that you suggested. Easy enough and I have the data stored on the w2k drive and on a CD. I am now attempting to reinstall ubuntu and and up to the part I don"t understand, the partitioning.

I have a 120g drive that had a 54.5g linux, a1.4g swap and a 55.9g w2k and here is what I see on the prepare disk space screen:

How do you want to partition the disk?

O Guided - resize SCSI1 (0,0,0) partition #2 (sda) and use freed space
     New partition size 57% (29.8 GB)
                                   ============================{ }=================================

O Guided - use entire disk
        O SCSI1 (0,0,0) (dsa - 120.0 GB ATA WDC WD1200JB-00R

O Manual

It looks like if I leave the slider where it is I will cut my previous linx partition in half with a new one.
If I move the slider all the way to the right it reads 100% (52.2 GB) which looks like almost all of what I had before.
Siince I want to reinstall ubuntu over the previous one and not loose my w2k partition and am not sure what I am doing, please advise me before I take the next step. Thanks, Les

The best would be to do a manual partitioning, but you have to be very carefull otherwise you may loose your win2k partition.
I expect that the partitioner will show you 3 partitions:

hda1 -> this is your win2k partition, make sure is NOT formatted and the boot flag is on (check also size is correct and file system is NTFS)
hda2 -> this is going to be your new ubuntu partition, make sure it IS formatted and the boot flag is off (check also size is correct, file system is ext3 and mount point is /)
hda3 -> this is going to be your swap (check size)

It is possible that the partitioner will use sda instead of hda (I think this is a bug in the installer disk).
It is also possible that the partitioner will show another 2 partitions, one extended and one logical (hda3 and hda4) and will propose the swap in hda5. In this case remove hda3 and hda4 and change hda5 to hda3, and make it your swap.

Check and recheck, make especially sure that YOU DO NOT FORMAT the hda1 (or sda1) partition.

I've checked manual and I see:
Device Type Mount point Format? Size Used
/dev/sda1 nfts /media/sda1 60011 MB 10100 MB
/dev/sda2 ext3 /media/sda2 [X] 58473 MB 7400 MB
/dev/sda5 swap 1546 MB 0 MB

I checked the box to format sda2 but don't see how I can make any other changes on this page.
The only two check boxes [New partition table] and [Undo changes to partitions]

I'm trying to remember, I think you have to select the partition you want to edit and press enter or space, then you can change it.
You could also try with [New partition table], see if you can recover your partitions there. Don't worry about making changes at this stage, they will not be written and you can always undo your changes if not happy. A couple of screens later you will be asked to commit your changes, by then you have to be 100% sure of what you did.

BTW, I really appreciate your precision and patience, I know it is very difficult for you to take note by hand and paste them back here.

highlighting and ENTER allows me the option to make changes.

device......type...mount point..format.......size........used
/dev/sda1..ntfs./media/sda1......[ ].......60011 MB ...10100 MB
/dev/sda2.ext3./media/sda2......[x]......58473 MB....7400 mb
/dev/sda5.swap.......................[ ].......1546 MB...... 0 mb

What changes should I make?
 As you can probobly guess I have never done this before. [even though I have been working and playing with computers since 1982]

I would do:

/dev/sda1 ntfs /media/sda1 [ ] 60011 MB
/dev/sda2 ext3 / [x] 58473 MB
/dev/sda3 swap [ ] 1546 MB

Also, there should be an option somewhere to make sure that sda1 has the boot flag enabled.
If you don't find it is ok, it is already enabled and hopefully it won't be changed and even if changed we can correct it later booting with the LiveCD.

Note the mount point for /dev/sda2 is / (this means your file system root).

OK, I went ahead and pressed forward and got an error message that says:

No root file system is defined
Please correct this from the partitioning menu.
[with a OK check box on it]

I pressed OK and am still on the same page. I have no idea what it
wants now.

There are 3 choices at the bottom of the page"
Edit partition
delete partition
undo changes

plus of course cancel, back and forward

Cesare Tirabassi wrote:
> Your question #9330 on Ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/9330
>
> Status: Open => Answered
>
> Cesare Tirabassi proposed the following answer:
> Did you follow my instructions?
> Note my last message: is your mount point for /dev/sda2 this: / (a slash character)?
>
>
Sorry, the mount point for /dev/sda2 is currently /media/sda2 [that
was what I got when I advanced to this page and since it started with a
/, I thought it was OK.
So I should delete the media/sda2 part?

Thanks Cesare Tirabassi, that solved my question.