Wubi

Ubuntu 11.10 (wubi) won't load after hard reboot

Asked by Tallowman

I installed Ubuntu 11.10 using Wubi onto my laptop last week.

Everything going ok until Ubuntu froze this morning. I tried the normal ctrl alt delte, but got nothing, so went for a hard reboot.

Since then, Ubuntu will only get so far as the Ubuntu splash screen (screen before login), and it freezes there. I have found out that a hard reboot is a big no-no as far as Wubi is concerned. Seems I've learnt the hard way.

I tried Ubuntu again in recovery mode, and can login to my Ubuntu account within the command line. So is my Ubuntu is still there, but is this an issue with Nautilus or Gnome? Or do I need to renistall fully.

Complete noob to Linux, ubuntu, dual booting, Wubi, etc, so any advice will be much appreciated!

Thanks.

Question information

Language:
English Edit question
Status:
Solved
For:
Wubi Edit question
Assignee:
No assignee Edit question
Solved by:
Tallowman
Solved:
Last query:
Last reply:
Revision history for this message
bcbc (bcbc) said : 		#1

Hit 'e' on first entry in the grub menu, remove 'quiet splash' and add 'nomodeset' instead. Then Ctrl+X to boot. See where it freezes up, if there is any indication of an error.

If that doesn't work, boot in recovery mode and enter:
df -h

That will tell you the size of the virtual disk (loop0) and how much space is remaining.
Thanks

Revision history for this message
Tallowman (ste-houston) said : 		#2

Hi, thanks for the response.

I did as you suggested. By entering 'nomodeset', I was taken to the ubuntu color background wash, and this was fragmented by what looked like black text on black background. Then, there was a few status messages in white:

* starting web server apache2
* checking battery state...

I was then in the terminal. So I rebooted using ctrl+ alt + del, and booted in recovery mode. I entered df -h, and got the following:

/dev/loop0 Size-18G, used-12G, Avail-5.0G, Use%-70%

I noticed something else. When booting to Ubuntu, just before the Grub menu, I see falshing up for a second the following messages:
No Wubilder
"Prefix" not set

 - These messages may not be totally accurate as they flash for a split second!

Thanks.

Revision history for this message
bcbc (bcbc) said : 		#3

Those "no wubildr" and "prefix not set" messages don't mean anything. Well they don't indicate a problem.

I wonder whether you should boot from an Ubuntu CD and fsck the root.disk. It's not a clear cut case requiring fsck (i.e. file system won't mount) but there could still be some corruption from the hard reset. You might need to force the fsck (if it appears clean it won't run)... e.g. if the root.disk is on /dev/sda2:
sudo mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
sudo fsck -fv /mnt/ubuntu/disks/root.disk

(-f is force and -v is verbose. You can also use -y to let fsck automatically try to correct errors without asking first).

Or if you want to play around first, when you boot to the terminal, try to start the desktop:
sudo service lightdm start
or
sudo service lightdm restart

See if that fires it up.

Revision history for this message
Tallowman (ste-houston) said : 		#4

Hi bcbc,

Thanks for persisting with me! I've solved the issue.

It seems that the hard reboot was a red herring. When Ubuntu crashed, this was what I looked for in google, and it seems that there is such a shout against hard reboot with wubi that I accepted this was the problem.

However, given I was able to get into the terminal, I thought I'd have a look around - all my file structure was intact, so I started thinking along different lines. I remembered that just before Ubuntu froze on me, I had been following a tutorial regarding configuring the display to allow use of a second monitor. This involved a change to /etc/xorg.conf, and when I navigated to this directory, I noticed there was a copy of this file, pre the changes I had made.

So I deleted the changed and reinstated the original, and et voila, it works!

So, thanks again for the very helpful advice and diagnostic info you have given me - Certainly learned some useful methods of diagnostics for future.

Cheers,
Ste