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I was copying around 750GB of files into my external hard drive, estimated time was 10 hours. It significantly slowed down my laptop. I wanted to check what is inside rubbish bin so I opened it, but it was taking a long time to open. I had hundreds files in that bin, so it could take some time. I clicked the bin icon again, which probably caused another window to load. After an hour it still didn't open any rubbish bin window and my computer was frozen. I decided to restart the computer, so I held the power button to turn it off and then turn it on again.

Since then, from the moment it goes through boot process it ends at black screen. It doesn't load the desktop. I left the laptop overnight to see if it will respond after that long time, but it didn't. I tried restarting it couple of times, without result.

What are my options in this situation? I cannot reinstall the system since I have a disk full of data that I need to keep.

UPDATE:

I was doing recovery files using photorec and I selected wrong partitions. I noticed it after it had filled the whole space. I did that with all the partitions. And I guess no space on root partitions could cause this kind of problem.

I deleted all the folders with files that I recovered trough photorec. It freed 10 GB of space. Now there is a space, but still the problem occurs - black screen, it doesn't display desktop.

I updated the system, but it didn't help either. I'm thinking about boot files, maybe they are corrupted and hence it doesn't load the desktop.

UPDATE:

I tried:

sudo apt-get install --reinstall unity

and now Instead of just black screen I can see the Ubuntu logo with loading bar. But it still doesn't go to the desktop.

Zanna
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draziw
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  • I looked at it, and the only fix I could find is the answer of Erick David Ruiz Coronel, however the problem are not graphic drivers, so I'm still trying to fix it. – draziw Oct 23 '14 at 08:32
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    You probably have a filesystem in bad state after the forced reboot during what seems a bad case of http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/107703/why-is-my-pc-freezing-while-im-copying-a-file-to-a-pendrive ; booting in recovery mode and waiting for a full fsck of the disks is the only thing I can think of (and hoping for the best). I am removing the duplicate, seems I was wrong. – Rmano Oct 23 '14 at 08:34
  • I noticed I have no free space on any partition, could that cause such problem? I will try solution you gave me. – draziw Oct 23 '14 at 08:51
  • Could be --- a very full disk can cause a lot of problems. Are you sure you were copying the file in the correct place? Maybe you thought you were copying them in the external disk and you have copied them in your main disk filling it... – Rmano Oct 23 '14 at 09:00
  • I was doing recovery files using photorec and I selected wrong partitions. I noticed it after It filled the whole space. I did that with all the partitions. The problem I have now, I can't delete those files from the root folders. – draziw Oct 23 '14 at 09:03
  • Please edit the question with this new information. I could try to answer; you should boot with a rescue disk, mount the partition from there, remove the file, reboot... – Rmano Oct 23 '14 at 09:06
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    Thank you. I updated question. I will do as you said with the rescue disk. I will post results once I'm done. – draziw Oct 23 '14 at 09:17
  • I burned Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS on DVD I changed boot priorities so that CD/DVD is at the top. But it doesn't want to boot the DVD. Nothing happens, it behaves as if DVD wouldn't be inserted. DVD was burned as ISO and it's treated as a installation DVD on my desktop. – draziw Oct 23 '14 at 10:36
  • This is a different question --- sorry, can't help, no idea on what is going bad. – Rmano Oct 23 '14 at 10:40
  • I tried your other suggestion to do full fsck in recovery mode. I got these two messages: "/dev/sda1: 6 files 857/124424 clusters" and "/dev/sda2: 9215917/60506112 files (0.1% non-contiguous), 240584303/241996544 blocks. When I reboot it doesn't solve the problem. – draziw Oct 23 '14 at 10:49
  • I deleted all the folders from the root. It freed 10GB of space. Recovered files are only in my home directory. Still the problem occurs. Black screen, it doesn't display desktop. – draziw Oct 23 '14 at 12:34

1 Answers1

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If the filesytems are completely full, you can have problems to boot the machine. So you need to remove some file to get some free space. A lot of info on how to do this is in https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCdRecovery

  1. Reboot with a rescue disk.

  2. Find and identify your "/" partition (in the link above it's explained how), let's suppose it's /dev/sda1

  3. mount it: mount /dev/sda1 /mnt (if /mnt does not exist, create it).

  4. now, with a LOT of attention, explore your partition which is under /mnt and delete the files that caused the mess. Errors at this stage can make your system completely unrecoverable.

  5. unmount it umount /dev/sda1.

  6. Repeat from point 2 with all other partitions that need care.

Now, the black screen and the desktop not entering is probably another problem, caused by the crash when the disk was full. But at least this is one step in the right direction.

Rmano
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  • I deleted all the files that went to the root by mistake. It freed 10 GB of space. Still the problem occurs: black screen, it doesn't go to the desktop. – draziw Oct 23 '14 at 12:40