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Trying to figure out what this means:

enter image description here

I got into the GRUB menu, chose Advanced Options, boot in recovery mode, login as root, and I did:

root@xps:~# sudo fsck -f /
fsck from util-linux 2.27.1
e2fsck 1.42.13 (17-May-2015)
/dev/nvme0n1p2 is mounted.
e2fsck: Cannot continue, aborting.

Coincidentally, I am also seeing this fuzzy rainbow thing on the outside of desktop windows:

enter image description here

But now the machine won't even boot up at all.

Alexander Mills
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    Did you have a system crash or power failure or something that? "recovering journal" probably indicates that the filesystem is cleaning itself it up have not been marked as closed cleanly. That should complete and allow normal startup. If you're not able to complete bootup, post more details - do you get a grub menu? How far does bootup progress? – Joe P Jun 10 '17 at 21:50
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    The fsck message in your first image is a normal message that indicates that your file system is clean. That's a good thing. It's hard to figure out your second image, but I suspect that you've got a Nvidia video card, and have installed drivers from the Nvidia web site, and you should be using the Nvidia driver from the Ubuntu repositories instead. The journal thing could be a problem... do you have any drivers installed in Windows that allow you to access EXT4 partitions? Do you know how to manually run fsck? Is your system crashing? – heynnema Jun 11 '17 at 00:08
  • Yeah this is not a dual boot machine, it's all Ubuntu, if that adds any info...not sure how to manually run fsck...system is not crashing, but today I turned it off, and it won't boot up again, the "recovering journal" message stays on the screen. – Alexander Mills Jun 11 '17 at 01:30
  • Please see my partial answer. – heynnema Jun 11 '17 at 13:50
  • note that I had to take a photograph with my mobile phone since a screenshot from the machine would have been impossible lol – Alexander Mills Nov 07 '17 at 18:35
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    FYI - the fix for the "fuzzy rainbow thing" can be found here – You'reAGitForNotUsingGit Jan 20 '18 at 19:45

1 Answers1

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Let's first check your file system for errors. To check the file system on your Ubuntu partition:

  1. Boot to the GRUB menu.
  2. Choose Advanced Options.
  3. Choose Recovery mode.
  4. Choose Root access.
  5. At the # prompt, type sudo fsck -f /.
  6. Repeat the fsck command if there were errors.
  7. Type reboot.

If for some reason you can't do the above:

  1. Boot to a Ubuntu Live DVD/USB.
  2. Open a terminal window.
  3. Type sudo fdisk -l and determine which /dev/sdaX is your Ubuntu Linux filesystem.
  4. Type sudo fsck -f /dev/sdaX # replacing X with the number you found earlier.
  5. Repeat the fsck command if there were errors.
  6. Type reboot.
Pablo Bianchi
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heynnema
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    thanks working on it now. shift did not work to get into GRUB menu, but esc key did work. – Alexander Mills Jun 12 '17 at 03:27
  • Ughh, I tried fsck, and I got to an impasse it seems - see updated question, thanks. – Alexander Mills Jun 12 '17 at 03:41
  • ok somehow the fsck command seemed to fix things, so was able to reboot and it worked. Strangely, though, in the intermediate, it would log me as a guest, and no password I tried would work for the guest account, even an empty password..pretty annoying. – Alexander Mills Jun 12 '17 at 04:02
  • Did you really get the fsck to run? Your update to your question shows that it didn't because the / disk was still mounted. If that's the case, I can give you a command which will allow you to get past that. Are you fully booted up then? Let me know. – heynnema Jun 12 '17 at 09:39
  • yeah I got fsck to run (I think). It seems to work fine now, but if you have any other useful commands, I might end up needing it sometime soon, so feel free to dump anything useful below. Thanks again for your help. – Alexander Mills Jun 13 '17 at 06:38
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    Did fsck print out pass 1, pass 2, etc., or give you the "disk is mounted" error as the edit to your question indicates? – heynnema Jun 13 '17 at 13:10
  • If I recall correctly, I believe it gave me the disk is mounted error, yeah – Alexander Mills Jun 13 '17 at 18:48
  • Can you please retry the first part of my answer, following the instructions exactly, and lets see how it goes. If you DO get the disk mounted error, type sudo mount -o ro,remount / and then try sudo fsck -f / again. Report back. – heynnema Jun 13 '17 at 18:51
  • @heynnema I have the same issue as OP, but in a VirtualMachine, I runned sudo fsck -f / after unmounting, it showed me the 5 steps, but after rebooting the system will still freeze in the "recovering journal" message. Do you have any more advices? This occurred after I tried to backup the virtual disk to modify it to a fixed size disk. All my files are still accessable by the command line in recovery mode. – Vinícius Figueiredo Aug 26 '17 at 20:12
  • @ViníciusAguiar please start a new question. Thanks. – heynnema Aug 26 '17 at 20:58
  • @heynnema I had the exact same issue as OP and ran "sudo fsck -f /" and got the exakt same results as OP saying it is already mounted. It still worked somehow though – Kleysley Oct 08 '21 at 15:22
  • @Kleysley You can't fsck a mounted disk. You have to boot to a Ubuntu Live DVD/USB and do it from there. – heynnema Oct 08 '21 at 20:54
  • @heynnema I mean it did work though... IDK how – Kleysley Oct 10 '21 at 09:46
  • Thank you seems to have worked – GILO Jan 14 '22 at 13:34
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    I had this issue and what worked for me was booting into grub CLI like above, but running sudo apt autoremove sudo apt-get update which prompted me for some --fix-[something I can't remember] flag which I ran and it fixed. Maybe dpkg --configure? Bottom line: try apt commands and you'll be prompted to fix it. My issue was with nvidia-driver-470. – Joshua Aug 10 '22 at 02:01