Stuck in initramfs at boot

Question

Screen text reads:

Error reading block 23108274 (input/output error). 
/dev/sda5: UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY; run fsck MANUALLY

and:

fsck excited with status code 4
done
Failure: file system check of the root filesystem failed
The root filesystem on /dev/sda5 requires a manual fsck

At browsing Ask Ubuntu, I found similar problems mentioned but none of the previous solutions work.

After I tried the exit command, this was the result:

However, I retried the exit command, and then used "reboot", which got me stuck on the following screen :

As I'm told that each reboot aggravates the problem, I feel hesitant to force a shutdown.

I had no other option but to pull the plug. At restart, I got to an "enter setup f2" message on the bottom left, which I did. Within setup, I hit some of the keys to navigate. The system responded so slow that I doubt whether it did so at all and instead shifted through the different tabs at random. I managed to exit setup, and now find myself staring at this:

It took me some time but I now have an Ubuntu Live USB.

Answer 1

First we repair the disk with fsck. Then we fix the NCQ errors. Then we bad block the disk.

fsck

At the initramfs prompt, type:

fsck /dev/sda5

NCQ

You have NCQ disk errors.

Native Command Queuing (NCQ) is an extension of the Serial ATA protocol allowing hard disk drives to internally optimize the order in which received read and write commands are executed.

Edit sudo -H gedit /etc/default/grub and change the following line to include this extra parameter. Then do sudo update-grub to write the changes to disk. Reboot. Monitor hangs, and watch /var/log/syslog or dmesg for continued error messages.

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet splash libata.force=noncq"

badblock

• Note: do NOT abort a bad block scan!
• Note: do NOT bad block a SSD
• Note: backup your important files FIRST!
• Note: this will take many hours
• Note: you may have a pending HDD failure

Boot to a Ubuntu Live DVD/USB in “Try Ubuntu” mode.

In terminal...

sudo fdisk -l # identify all "Linux Filesystem" partitions

sudo e2fsck -fcky /dev/sdXX # read-only test

or

sudo e2fsck -fccky /dev/sda5 # non-destructive read/write test (recommended)

The -k is important, because it saves the previous bad block table, and adds any new bad blocks to that table. Without -k, you loose all of the prior bad block information.

The -fccky means:

   -f    Force checking even if the file system seems clean.
-c    This option causes e2fsck to use badblocks(8) program to do
         a read-only scan of the device in order to find any bad blocks.
         If any bad blocks are found, they are added to the bad block
         inode to prevent them from being allocated to a file or direc‐
         tory.  If this option is specified twice, then the bad block scan
         will be done using a non-destructive read-write test.
-k    When combined with the -c option, any existing bad blocks in the
         bad blocks list are preserved, and any new bad blocks found by
         running badblocks(8) will be added to the existing bad blocks
         list.
-y    Assume an answer of `yes' to all questions; allows e2fsck to be
         used non-interactively. This option may not be specified at the
         same time as the -n or -p options.

Update #1:

When you were in the BIOS, you accidentally changed the boot order, and now you're getting the PXE boot error. Go back to the BIOS and change the boot order back to something like: DVD/USB/Disk/PXE

Answer 2

You must force fsck to run at system boot.

For that you must create a file called forcefsck in the root partition of the system with the following commands in a terminal:

cd /
sudo touch /forcefsck
sudo reboot