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It's the first time I ask something here and I'm a newbie in this Ubuntu world. If I don't explain myself in a proper way, please tell me and I'll try to provide more details.

Today I've been working with 12.04 and I got 3 crashes. The three of them have randomly occurred. I couldn't do anything, just to move the mouse but nothing worked. Then, I entered in Console Mode and I couldn't even log in or use CTRL+ALT+DEL, every time I hit Enter I got this message:

[ xxxx.xxxxxx] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector xxxxxxxxx

(The Xs are numbers). I had to use RSEIUB trick to reboot my pc, it's been the only thing that has worked.

I really want to know what is causing these crashes and I hope you could help me. For more details these are my PC's specs:

  • Processor: 2x AMD Athlon(tm) II X2 250 Processor

  • Memory: 4049MB

  • GPU: nvidia geforce 8600

Seth
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Gorka
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  • Something caused is disruption with the hard drive and it switched into read only mode, I guess. Have you run a fsck on the file system? What does S.M.A.R.T./the drive utility say about the hard drive? – LiveWireBT Aug 16 '12 at 21:39
  • How did that Ubuntu 12.04 get onto the disk? What kind of disk it is (internal, SSD, external USB, maybe a pendrive)? – karatedog Aug 16 '12 at 22:04
  • @LiveWireBT The S.M.A.R.T. utility says the drive is healthy, and I didn't run a fsck because I don't know how to do it, but I search on the web in order to run it. – Gorka Aug 20 '12 at 12:50
  • @karatedog That's my internal HDD and the only one I have. – Gorka Aug 20 '12 at 12:52
  • Could it be that this error was generated because of the high temperatures of the components? I live in southern Spain and the temperatures are very high in summer, and I have no air conditioner... – Gorka Aug 20 '12 at 13:01
  • possible duplicate of how to interpret these errors from syslog – Eliah Kagan Sep 09 '14 at 21:53

2 Answers2

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I hate to tell you this, but I think your drive is almost dead or you controller is going bad. I would recommend getting a backup of it ASAP. You can use Déjà Dup, its included in Ubuntu. Also you may want to run a disk utility to check you hard drive, depending on the manufacturer, most of them have testing utilities. Also you can try a different hard drive if you have one handy. Again make sure you get a backup ASAP, before the drive gets any worse. Good luck.

Déjà Dup is a simple backup software for Linux. It hides the complexity of doing backups and uses duplicity as the back end.

Déjà Dup takes the simplistic approach, and presents just two very large buttons - Backup and Restore. Swipe one (you really can't miss them) and Deja Dup will do the rest. Except, you probably do want to play with the configuration first, such as setting a backup destination, whether you want to encrypt the backups, and which folders to include or exclude (again, removing Downloads is probably a good idea). Note the preferences selection is a separate program to the main one.

Déjà Dup also makes it easy to set up a schedule and, conveniently, how long backups should be kept ranging from a week to indefinitely.

Under the hood Déjà Dup makes use of duplicity, which is a command-line based backup tool for creating encrypted, compressed, incremental backups based rsync (which, incidentally, you can also use to make backups but the programs covered here add extra features such as scheduling).. More info on Déjà Dup.1

1Source:APCMag

Mitch
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  • Thanks Mitch. I backed up all my info from my disc. The SMART utility says that my disc is healthy, but I didn't want to take risks and I followed your advice. I want to ask you something: could it be that this error was generated because of the high temperatures of the components? I live in southern Spain and the temperatures are very high in summer, and I have no air conditioner... – Gorka Aug 20 '12 at 12:56
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    That's possible. Heat and dust are the number one enemy for computers and electronics. – Mitch Aug 20 '12 at 13:25
  • Without direct exposure to sunlight a HDD will never overheat just because outside temperature (let's say 40 Celsius). – karatedog Aug 22 '12 at 08:21
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Using Ubuntu 14.04 LTS.

In my case the error

[xxx.xxxxxx] end_request: I/O error, dev sda, sector nnnnnnnnn]

was visible when I went to the terminal session (ctrl + alt + F2) and made attempts to log in. (Actually I got a volley of this messages with the same sector number [...nnn...], but different report codes [...xxx...].)

The early problems showed up in the graphics environment playing around with the terminal. Commands such as ls returned bus error, ls * did Killed, firefox &> Desktop/log did bash:Desktop/log: Read-only file system, and like oddities. Programs would not start from the desktop either.

Since both the bash and several desktop were unresponsive, I had to shut down the computer brutally via the power button.
In one case the computer restarted well at the third attempt.
In the last occurrence, sadly, it did not go any further than the BIOS with a Read error, i.e. the system could not detect the hard disk at all, as feared and anticipated.

However, I have extracted the hard disk from the computer and then from its casing, so exposing some circuits. These were covered by a thin layer of fine dust.
In this design, the hard-disk casing also holds the fan cooling the CPU underneath. So there is a chance that the fine particles sucked in by the fan deposit at the back of it, under the hard disk and on top of its circuits, because that's a low pressure zone.

I then gently dusted off those circuits with a microfibre cloth, remounted the HD on the casing, reconnected the casing to the computer, and it all worked again. I also have the impression that the computer is a tad faster.

Before the last salute to your hard disk, please control if dust has settled on its circuitry.
It might be that the fickle behaviour does not mean borrowed time, and that your hard disk is in fact healthy.

XavierStuvw
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