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When I start Ubuntu after it froze during an upgrade to 13.10, it says:

Filesystem check or mount failed.
A maintenance shell will now be started. CONTROL-D will terminate this shell and continue booting after retrying filesystems. Any further errors will be ignored.
root@Netbook:~#

When I use sudo apt-get update it eventually says:

E: dpkg was interrupted, you must manually run "sudo dpkg --configure -a" to correct the problem

When I run that command, it says:

dpkg: error: unable to access dpkg status area: Read-only file system

And then gives me the root prompt again. Please help! I'm a VERY basic user of Ubuntu.

Roger Light
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Kyle
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2 Answers2

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Try remounting your file systems read/write, as described here and here, and then rerunning dkpg. I.e., do

sudo mount -o remount,rw /
sudo dpkg --configure -a

See the linked answers for more info if this does not work.

Community
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ntc2
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Ubuntu usually remounts a file system as read-only if it detects an error with said system (this is done to prevent further file-system errors). To fix this, I would suggest you reboot your system. When the bootloader comes up, select the "Advanced options for Ubuntu" option. Select a kernel in Recovery Mode (generally, the newest one on the list should do). Select the option to boot into a root shell. Once in the root shell, run fsck -f -y /, and and restart the system using either reboot, or shutdown -r now. If after this, you still get the same above error, you may have a failing hard drive.

TSJNachos117
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