2

Currently I'm running 18.04. I remember there was an update this morning, and I thought everything was fine when I shut it off. I turned it on this evening, and for some reason everything's got a padlock on it now.

I tried rebooting, but nothing was happening so I forced shutdown. When I tried again, it went back to the black screen that says:

/dev/sda4 contains a file system with errors, check forced.
Inodes that were part of a corrupted orphan linked list found.

/dev/sda4: UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY: RUN fsck MANUALLY.
         (i.e., without -a or -p options)
fsck exited with status code 4
The root filesystem on /dev/sda4 requires a manual fsck

BusyBox v1.27.2 (Ubuntu 1:1.27.2-2ubuntu3.2) built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

(initramfs)

Looking around online, some posts said it might have been related to an update.

I tried running fsck as suggested in the black screen, but it's no good. Everything still goes back to read-only after about a minute. I don't want to run fsck again because I tried fixing an external drive with a similar error with a similar method, and it made the problem worse.

They also said my hard drive might be failing. I'm using an ASUS X445LF and it's been my only computer for about three years.

UPDATE: Running from a live USB then attempting a fix using fsck works, but only for a short while. Almost by the next reboot, files are changed back to read-only again.

Jae
  • 53
  • 1
    This does have to be done from a Live USB - Linux used to be able to perform an fsck while root was mounted, but no longer. – Charles Green Apr 22 '19 at 14:03
  • @CharlesGreen Yes, it seems like we've encountered the same problem. I couldn't find it during my search, so my search might have been all wrong. Anyway, will it be fine to run the suggested process as is? Or should I backup first? (I don't have a usable backup media right now.) Also, this system can also boot into Windows. Will it be safe to keep using that side while this is happening on this side? They are on the same hard drive so I am concerned. – Jae Apr 22 '19 at 14:10
  • Generally the process should be safe, but I'm pretty paranoid about having multiple backups about my place. So I'm a little torn on what to tell you. – Charles Green Apr 22 '19 at 14:12
  • @CharlesGreen I should note that I do not recall receiving the same error message as in that other post. AFAIR, the update finished like normal. – Jae Apr 22 '19 at 14:15
  • @CharlesGreen And what about the Windows side? Is it safe to use while this "INCONSISTENCY" is present? I use that side for work and... I don't have an off day tomorrow so I really need it. And, at the same time, that also means I can't go to the city to buy backup media. Possibly, that's not necessary information, but I'm really not sure how to proceed with this. – Jae Apr 22 '19 at 14:19
  • @ fsck should respect the boundary between partitions and operate only on the partition that you instruct it it - in your case /dev/sda4. I can only tell you that I've had to do it myself on occasion (using an Arch boot USB no less) and have had success with the procedure. – Charles Green Apr 22 '19 at 14:22
  • @CharlesGreen So, I just took the plunge and did the check as suggested in the other post. For now, it seems to have worked. Thanks again. Is there any way I can determine what caused this or what I did wrong that resulted in this? I thought if I understood what happened, I could possibly prevent it from happening again in the future. – Jae Apr 23 '19 at 00:14
  • I think it could possibly be determined, but would require a lot more knowledge than I have. My own problem was related to hibernation, where occasionally I could not reboot after hibernate. There are lots of possible causes from physical defects in the disk, to the system powering off to soon, and probably many I don't know about. – Charles Green Apr 23 '19 at 04:21
  • 1
    Possible duplicate of fsck error on boot: /dev/sda6: UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY; RUN fsck MANUALLY and Boot drops to a (initramfs) prompts/busybox – karel Apr 23 '19 at 06:03
  • I spoke too soon, it seems, as it happened again tonight. Looks like the fixes done during the check were only temporary. It was working well this morning and there were no updates. Upon rebooting this evening, files and folders are read-only once more. – Jae Apr 24 '19 at 14:39
  • It could be a hardware problem. Have you tried smartctl? – WinEunuuchs2Unix Apr 29 '19 at 23:41
  • I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because it sounds like a hardware problem. – WinEunuuchs2Unix Apr 29 '19 at 23:42
  • @WinEunuuchs2Unix Hi, sorry, things got busy, then lost my live stick... Finally got a new one. The error is still happening until today. And fsck still doesn't solve the problem. What should I be looking for in the smartctl output? – Jae Jun 16 '19 at 08:12
  • @Jae This question has been closed already. Try out the duplicate questions and answers. If none of them help you post a new question with relevant details and explain why the duplicates don't work. The other option is voting to reopen this closed question which requires 4 peers to review and takes a bit longer... – WinEunuuchs2Unix Jun 16 '19 at 13:57

0 Answers0