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My laptop has Ubuntu OS. While trying to boot it is giving me the following error: 

97.255199 systemd[1]: timed out waiting for device #device.                                                                                                
[TIME] Timed out waiting for device #device                                 
[DEPEND] Dependency failed for #device                                      
[DEPEND] Dependency failed for Swap

my system had Ubuntu 16.04, i tried to reinstall swap using Ubuntu 16.04 cd, but Ubuntu is getting stuck before the installation screen appears. However the installation screen appears if i use 14.04 Ubuntu. Should i go ahead with that. Thanks

RIchard Williams
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  • 14.04 will be End of Life in 13 months, so you probably shouldn't go back to it at this point. Rather it seems like you've probably made some system configuration changes on 16.04, that is likely causing the issue you're seeing, and you should resolve that instead. – dobey Mar 20 '18 at 13:27
  • You can mount the partition, that is used as root partition by your Ubuntu 16.04 LTS system, and edit the file /mountpoint/etc/fstab to turn off swap with a # character at the beginning of the line that controls the swapping (probably only one line). Then you should be able to boot into your Ubuntu 16.04 LTS system, create a correct swap partition and edit the line in /etc/fstab to match your new swap partition. Then it should work with swap after rebooting. – sudodus Mar 20 '18 at 14:11
  • @sudodus: my system is not even booting from hard disk. How do i run these commands. – RIchard Williams Mar 20 '18 at 14:19
  • Boot from a live drive (USB pendrive or DVD disk). If one version or flavour does not work, try another one, for example Lubuntu or Xubuntu with lighter desktop environments than standard Ubuntu, and a different version, 14.04, 16.04, 17.10.1 depending on your hardware. Maybe you need some boot option, for example nomodeset to make it boot to a graphical desktop environment. Then mount the partition, that is used as root partition by your Ubuntu 16.04 LTS system according to my previous comment. – sudodus Mar 20 '18 at 14:24
  • @sudodus: thanks. When i am trying to boot from any live cd, it is going to a login page where the username 'ubuntu' and password blank is not working (this works in a properly working system). – RIchard Williams Mar 21 '18 at 06:02
  • Are you sure that the computer is booting from the live DVD? Maybe it is booting from an installed Ubuntu system, even though you try to boot from the live DVD. -- You are right about the the username 'ubuntu' and password blank (no letters, only press the Enter key) in Ubuntu live. -- Have you checked with md5sum, that the iso file was downloaded correctly? – sudodus Mar 21 '18 at 06:49
  • @sudodus: yes, i used the same usb image to install Ubuntu in some other system – RIchard Williams Mar 21 '18 at 08:37
  • @dobey: In this situation the only option left is to install the swap from 14.04 cd – RIchard Williams Mar 25 '18 at 06:14
  • @sudodus:finally i was able to compare the output of /etc/fstab and sudo blkid. But the UUID's of swap are exactly the same. Still the same error coming. – RIchard Williams Mar 26 '18 at 09:29
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    When booted from the live 14.04 DVD disk, please check/fix the root file system of the installed 16.04 LTS system, sudo e2fsck -f /dev/sdxn where x is the device letter and n is the partition number, so for examle /dev/sda1 if the first drive and the first partition (in that drive). – sudodus Mar 26 '18 at 11:50
  • @sudodus: thanks, did it, still the same problem. – RIchard Williams Mar 26 '18 at 16:20
  • @sudodus: one observation: if i comment out the swap line from /etc/fstab, the error message as shown in the original post vanishes, however the system does not boot either. – RIchard Williams Mar 26 '18 at 16:38
  • Good observation :-) It is possible to run Ubuntu without swap. So something else is wrong too. -- If I understand correctly, you can boot from an Ubuntu 14.04 LTS live drive (USB or DVD). Maybe it works from a 16.04.1 LTS with the xenial kernel series, which is different from the current Ubuntu 16.04.4 with the artful kernel series. See this link and links from it, How to select the version and flavour of Ubuntu. Scroll down to the end of the page. – sudodus Mar 26 '18 at 17:58
  • @sudodus: i have taken a backup of my home folder. Should delete 16.04 Ubuntu and then newly install any other Ubuntu? Thanks. – RIchard Williams Mar 27 '18 at 08:17
  • Yes. Try them live before installing. – sudodus Mar 27 '18 at 12:03
  • @sudodus Problem again: the installer crashes. The error message is like: "problem in ubiquity, this is not an official Ubuntu package. Please remove any third party package and try again". The same usb image is working in other machine. Also i tried both 12.04 and 14.04. Same error. – RIchard Williams Mar 28 '18 at 07:08
  • What iso file is it? What is the file name, and what is the url (web address) from where you downloaded it? If it is an official Ubuntu or Ubuntu flavour (Kubuntu, Lubuntu, ... Xubuntu) iso file, and it matches the md5sum, you should not get that message. But it might be a bug(?) – sudodus Mar 28 '18 at 09:21
  • @sudodus: ubuntu-14.04.5-desktop-i386.iso. I downloaded from http://releases.ubuntu.com/14.04/. It matches md5sum. I tried with 14.04.4, 12.04.4. Same error. The crash is happening after 99% installation is complete i mean at the end. – RIchard Williams Mar 28 '18 at 11:21
  • You can also try the first point release ubuntu-14.04.1-desktop-i386.iso, which uses another linux kernel (the original trusty kernel series). -- By the way, maybe things are fine, except that reboot does not work correctly due to a race condition. See this link to get a graceful reboot. – sudodus Mar 28 '18 at 11:31
  • @sudodus: thank you so much. This has worked perfectly. Just curious, why particularly this Ubuntu is working – RIchard Williams Mar 31 '18 at 12:18
  • It was a 'qualified guess'. This version has the original 'Trusty' kernel, the linux kernel 3.13 series, which should work according to your original question. – sudodus Mar 31 '18 at 15:04
  • @sudodus: I bought my laptop in 2009. Can this be a reason for such problem? – RIchard Williams Apr 01 '18 at 09:51
  • Yes. Often the upgraded hardware drivers continue to work with old hardware, but it happens that the compatibility is dropped for some hardware. If you are an active tester, it is likely that you will detect such problems, and can keep it compatible with your computer's hardware. See Ubuntu Development version / How to participate. – sudodus Apr 01 '18 at 10:13
  • @sudodus: after I installed 14.04.1 in a new partition the old Ubuntu I.e. 16.04(where the original problem happened) is working perfectly. What was the problem? – RIchard Williams Apr 10 '18 at 08:50
  • This sounds too good to be true, but good things happen :-) I would guess, that it was a problem with the bootloader grub and that the bootloader of 14.04.1 LTS does a good job with the early stages of the boot process. It also means that both the linux kernel of 14.04 and that of 16.04 work with the hardware of your computer. – sudodus Apr 10 '18 at 10:23
  • @sudodus: I want a suggestion. My laptop is currently working fine. I bought it in 2009. Only 2 times I have changed the battery. Every other thing is working fine. Should I buy a new laptop now ? – RIchard Williams Apr 15 '18 at 11:28
  • You should have a good routine for backup at regular time intervals, because something in the computer might stop working at any time. But as long as your computer is working fine, you need not buy a new laptop. But if you have the money, and you want to buy a new one, that is another thing to consider. – sudodus Apr 15 '18 at 19:25

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