Rescuing a broken system

Please boot from Ubuntuinstall cd and please perform a filesytem check

How do I perform a filesystem check?

Booting from the install cd allowed me to salvage my documents off of my computer, so I think I'm just going to reinstall Ubuntu. Thank you for your time.

Hi :)

If you have backed-up your files then you could try a very sneaky install. When you get to the "Partitioning Section" choose "Advanced" or "Manual" at the bottom. It will re-scan your partitions. "Edit" or "Change" your main linux partition to set it's "Mount Point" = /
Do you have a separate /home partition? If you have then set it's "Mount Point" to /home obviously! If not then don't worry.

Ok, the trick is to make sure that no partitions get formatted (except the swap). Just make sure that all the partitions are UNticked in the "Format?" column.

Hopefully then you will find that your documents are still there after completing the install!!
Good luck and take care!
Regards from
Tom :)

Hi :)

It might be easier just to boot-up a LiveCd and do the file-system check. Boot up from any Ubuntu Cd and choose the "Try Ubuntu" instead of the install button. This should get you to a working Ubuntu desktop, otherwise this guide might help.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD

Try to get to a command-line

Applications - Accessories - Terminal

and give us the output of this command

sudo fdisk -l

where "-l" is a lower-case "-L". This should let you know which partitions are worth checking. Just check the linux ones but not the linux-swap. Lets say you wanted to check sda1, you would try

sudo fsck /dev/sda1

Also we might be able to fix this problem just by reinstalling just the boot-loader "Grub2". If you give us the output of the fdisk command then we could try to help guide you through this guide
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2#Reinstalling%20from%20LiveCD

Sometimes a reinstall is just easier but there can be something very satisfying about finding a more elegant solution ;)
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

I already reinstalled, but thanks for all the information. :)

-Mike

Hi :)

Well i had to reinstall quite a few times early on too. I am one of those people that pokes and prods at things until they break and then wish i hadn't broken it. So, i learned a few tricks eventually.

A fresh install is almost always better than an upgrade. But often new releases bring a few unexpected problems anyway so i tend to keep a 10-20 Gb partition free so i can install a new release before committing to it. The partition is also useful if i fancy trying out other distros to compare them with Ubuntu.

I found that having a separate /home partition helped me recover from most of my mistakes faster
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Partitioning/Home/Moving
because it kept my data&settings safely separate from the OS itself. Not many other distros allow a reinstall without formatting the / partition but almost all respect the /home.

Regards from
Tom :)