"General error mounting filesystems" after upgrade to 13.04

Question

I just tried updating to 13.04 from 12.10. When I restarted, it went to Grub even though there's no other OS on the computer. I clicked on Ubuntu to finish booting and I got a terminal with the error message:

General error mounting filesystems.
A maintenance shell will now be started.
CONTROL-D will terminate this shell and reboot the system.
root@mycomputer:~#

Reboot brings me back to the exact same place.

The only other options on Grub are Advanced options for Ubuntu and a couple of memory test options. I ran one of them and it came out fine.

I have no idea what to do next. Please advise.

EDIT:

Per request, here is the contents of /etc/fstab:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices 
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system>  <mount point>   <type>   <options>        <dump>   <pass>
# /was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=5b22f712-cd92-446e-8984-0c31ca17c02c /                ext4     errors=remount
-ro 0       1
# swap was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=86ea10b7-9309-4860-8ade-059f9d9fa328 none             swap     sw
  0       0

Did you create your /home directory on a separate partition. Probably your system couldn't mount the /home directory. So you're unable to log in with the user you created. — , May 01 '13 at 02:12
@Frank It's a standard install using the whole disc. No separate partitions. — jimchristie, May 01 '13 at 13:31
@thefourtheye How do I access the contents of /etc/fstab when I can't boot the computer? — jimchristie, May 01 '13 at 13:31
I see that you have a shell. I think, you can just do cat /etc/fstab — thefourtheye, May 01 '13 at 13:33
@thefourtheye Nothing jumps out at me but it's a lot of information and I don't really know what I'm looking at. — jimchristie, May 02 '13 at 03:01
After getting the shell, can you take a copy of that and upload it to a free file hosting service and share the link here? — thefourtheye, May 02 '13 at 13:33
@thefourtheye I'm not sure how I'd do that without the GUI... — jimchristie, May 03 '13 at 19:44

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited May 03 '13 at 01:24

2

May be the upgrade is'nt complete yet. I find same problem and trying this:

Boot on LiveUSB
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
chroot /mnt
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

edited May 03 '13 at 01:24

Eric Carvalho

54,385

answered May 03 '13 at 00:51

Sukmono

21
1

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered May 07 '13 at 15:06

2

I followed the steps in Sukmono's answer:

Boot on LiveUSB
sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
sudo chroot /mnt
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

That much got me an error and a suggestion that I run sudo apt-get install -f. I did so and that fixed the problem. After shutting down, removing the LiveUSB, and rebooting, Ubuntu 13.04 booted right up.

answered May 07 '13 at 15:06

jimchristie

4,867
5
24
35

When I do "sudo chroot /mnt" I get a message that says "chroot: failed to run command '/bin/bash': No such file or directory". Yet I can mount /dev/sda1 to /mnt – Patrick Sep 22 '13 at 15:24
I know this is about a year late, but if you're still running in to issues doing sudo chroot /mnt, then try following this to be able to do sudo chroot /mnt: http://askubuntu.com/questions/270753/how-to-delete-nomodeset-from-my-grub-file-in-order-to-boot-normally/270802#270802 – richsinn Jun 14 '14 at 07:30
I had an LVM, which was harder to mount than just mount /dev/sda1 /mnt. I followed the instructions here and successfully mounted it. – Duncan Jones Sep 16 '14 at 12:36

"General error mounting filesystems" after upgrade to 13.04

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