[Leaplist] Help! My Ubuntu partially freezes up *after* bootup

[Danny W. Burdick]

If it's a simple case of hard drive going south....
boot ubuntu live and move the women and children to the lifeboats (backup)
to an ext usb drive or something....then screw with the system.

* The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to number all the pieces

burdicda


andrei raevsky wrote:
> Thanks for the pointers!
>
> On Tue, Mar 4, 2008 at 5:50 PM, John Simpson <jms1 at jms1.net> wrote:
>   
>> On 2008-03-03, at 1551, andrei raevsky wrote:
>>  >
>>  > When this happens I can still move the cursor around, but I cannot do
>>  > anything else. Here is the output of /var/log/messages when this
>>  > happens:
>>  >
>>  > -------
>>
>>     
>>> Mar  2 08:37:27 Ubuntu2 kernel: [  427.737016]          res
>>>       
>>  > 51/40:08:87:00:88/00:00:00:00:00/e0 Emask 0x9 (media error)
>>
>>     
>>> Mar  2 08:37:39 Ubuntu2 kernel: [  440.095760]          res
>>>       
>>  > 51/40:08:87:00:88/00:00:00:00:00/e0 Emask 0x9 (media error)
>>
>>     
>>> Mar  2 08:37:51 Ubuntu2 kernel: [  452.465642]          res
>>>       
>>  > 51/40:08:87:00:88/00:00:00:00:00/e0 Emask 0x9 (media error)
>>
>>     
>>> Mar  2 08:38:04 Ubuntu2 kernel: [  464.824415]          res
>>>       
>>  > 51/40:08:87:00:88/00:00:00:00:00/e0 Emask 0x9 (media error)
>>
>>     
>>> -------
>>>       
>>  >
>>  > This goes on and on and on. The only thing I can do is reboot.
>>
>>  these message indicate an error with an ATA device, either the hard
>>  drive or the CD-ROM. and if you're not trying to read a CD, then it's
>>  the hard drive. and the phrase "media error" gives me the impression
>>  that the drive is getting ready to go south.
>>
>>  there may be more specific information within the messages themselves,
>>  but i'm not an expert with ATA devices or commands. maybe bryan can
>>  shine a brighter light on exactly what these messages are telling you?
>>  (i'm pretty sure the number in square brackets, the 427, 440, 452, and
>>  464, are timestamps- how many seconds since the kernel started
>>  running... but anything after that, i'm lost. maybe it's a physical
>>  location on the disk, and there's a bad sector there?)
>>
>>
>>
>>  > I would just add that this problem only occurs after bootup anywhere
>>  > from 1 to 3 times in a row and that after that everything works fine.
>>  > I have no reason to suspect a hardware failure.
>>
>>  it could be something heat-related... maybe the drive got bumped, and
>>  one of the internal components was knocked off of its normal
>>  alignment, and it's able to compensate when the system first boots up-
>>  but once it's been running for a few minutes and starts to build up a
>>  little bit of heat, that pulls it too far out of tolerance... i don't
>>  know, i'm just guessing.
>>
>>
>>
>>  > I have asked the same question elsewhere, and here is the only reply I
>>  > have received:
>>  >
>>  > -------QUOTE-------
>>  > This sounds like it could be your hard drive. Given that you are able
>>  > to boot and shutdown, I suggest going to an X terminal; logging in as
>>  > root (su); and entering /sbin/shutdown -r -F "now". This will force an
>>  > fsck on the next boot.
>>
>>  if you want to do an fsck, then do an fsck. no need to "trick" the
>>  system like this. it sounds like whoever told you this is either a
>>  windoze user who's relatively new to linux, because the only way to
>>  force windows to run chkdsk on boot is to trick it into doing so, or
>>  they don't feel like explaining how to do it by hand, which is:
>>
>>  assuming you're using grub as the boot loader... when it's booting,
>>  press an arrow key up or down to stop the timer, then move to the
>>  first option and hit "e"... then, move up or down (if necessary) to
>>  the "kernel" line, and hit "e" again. at the end of the line type "
>>  single" (i.e. a space, then the word "single") and hit ENTER. then hit
>>  "b" to boot. the machine will boot into single-user mode.
>>
>>  then just type "e2fsck -fy /dev/hda1" (or whatever device contains the
>>  filesystem.) the "e2fsck" command is for ext2/ext3 filesystems. the "-
>>  f" means to check even if it doesn't "look" like it needs it, and the
>>  "-y" means to answer yes to all of the questions.
>>
>>  if you're using some other filesystem, there should be a similar
>>  command with similar options- check the documentation on your system.
>>  "fsck" is a generic term, and "e2fsck" is the specific version for
>>  ext2/ext3 filesystems. some of the others may have names like
>>  "fsck.xfs", but as a rule they all have "fsck" in their names- so "man
>>  -k fsck" should give you a list of them (as long as "makewhatis" has
>>  been run on the system.)
>>
>>
>>
>>  > But why is that be a hard disk problem if the hard disk works
>>  > perfectly (except for right after booting up)? do you think that this
>>  > is a logical error or a physical one?
>>
>>  metal expands slightly as it heats up, and when that happens,
>>  something inside the drive is being pulled far enough out of place to
>>  interfere with data being read? maybe one of the chips on the drive's
>>  controller board is getting ready to go, and it's heat sensitive?
>>
>>  when i've seen cases like this in the past, where a drive works for a
>>  certain period of time but then stops, and where turning it off for a
>>  while allows it to come back again... it's almost always been heat-
>>  related in one way or another. i've seen people do crazy things
>>  like... if a drive gets really hot and stops working after a certain
>>  length of time, put it into a freezer to keep it cold, and be able to
>>  run it for long enough to copy the data off of it.
>>
>>  again, i'm just guessing here.
>>
>>
>>
>>  > Since I never had to use fsck in the past I also wonder whether
>>  > answering "yes" to all questions is safe.
>>
>>  if the problems are logical rather than physical, then answering "yes"
>>  to everything will result in your saving as much data as is possible-
>>  shy of manually checking and editing the sectors by hand (which
>>  requires you to know the low-level details of how the filesystem is
>>  stored on the disk. i tried it once, to un-delete a file, and it was
>>  some pretty hairy stuff.) anything it can't save is probably something
>>  which couldn't have been saved anyway.
>>
>>  and if the problems are physical rather than logical, it really
>>  doesn't matter either way- if the drive is gonna die, it's gonna die.
>>
>>  i think i would make it my first priority to get a full backup of
>>  what's on the drive, before it goes any further south... and THEN try
>>  the fsck thing.
>>
>>  --------------------------------------------------------
>>  | John M. Simpson  --  KG4ZOW  --  Programmer At Large |
>>  | http://www.jms1.net/                 <jms1 at jms1.net> |
>>  --------------------------------------------------------
>>  |   Hope for America  --  http://www.ronpaul2008.com/  |
>>  --------------------------------------------------------
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>>
>>     
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