0

I have a Dell Inspiron 5521 laptop running Ubuntu 15.10 and Windows 8.1 on dual boot. I was moving some files in the terminal when i did sudo mv /* to an external SD card. I immediately realized that I made a mistake and cancelled the operation and in panic, I powered my system off. Now the system will not boot, it shows a Checking Media [Fail] messages. I checked the BIOS settings and te boot options are empty.

I then loaded the boot-repair disk and it showed everything as normal but gave the following message when I used the "Fix common issues" option.

GPT detected. Please create a BIOS-boot partition (>1MB, unformatted filesystem, bios_grub flag) This can be performed using tools such as Gparted. Then try again.

The output of ls -lah on the SD card is: output of ls -lah on SD card: 

ubuntu@ubuntu:/media/ubuntu/SETTINGS$ ls -lah
total 16K
drwxr-xr-x  4 root root 1.0K Jan  1  1970 .
drwxr-x---+ 5 root root  100 Jan  7 05:03 ..
drwxr-xr-x  4 root root 1.0K Jan  1  1970 cache
drwx------  2 root root  12K Jan  1  1970 lost+found
-rw-r--r--  1 root root   56 Jan  1  1970 noobs.conf
-rw-r--r--  1 root root   78 Jan  1  1970 wpa_supplicant.conf

The output of ls- lah on the hard disk is:

ubuntu@ubuntu:/$ ls -lah
total 2.0K
drwxr-xr-x   1 root root  240 Jan  7 04:57 .
drwxr-xr-x   1 root root  240 Jan  7 04:57 ..
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root 3.4K Oct 21 16:07 bin
drwxr-xr-x   1 root root   60 Oct 21 16:07 boot
drwxr-xr-x  13 root root 2.0K Jan  1  1970 cdrom
drwxr-xr-x  20 root root 4.9K Jan  7 05:03 dev
drwxr-xr-x   1 root root  640 Jan  7 04:57 etc
drwxr-xr-x   1 root root   60 Jan  7 04:57 home
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root   32 Oct 21 15:59 initrd.img -> boot/initrd.img-4.2.0-16-generic
drwxr-xr-x   1 root root   60 Oct 21 16:04 lib
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root   43 Oct 21 15:49 lib64
drwxr-xr-x   1 root root   80 Jan  7 05:00 media
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root    3 Oct 19 09:14 mnt
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root    3 Oct 21 15:49 opt
dr-xr-xr-x 229 root root    0 Jan  7 04:56 proc
drwxr-xr-x  21 root root  338 Oct 21 16:07 rofs
drwx------   2 root root   46 Oct 21 16:06 root
drwxr-xr-x  28 root root  860 Jan  7 04:59 run
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root 4.7K Oct 21 16:08 sbin
drwxr-xr-x   2 root root    3 Oct 21 15:49 srv
dr-xr-xr-x  13 root root    0 Jan  7 04:57 sys
drwxrwxrwt  10 root root  260 Jan  7 05:05 tmp
drwxr-xr-x   1 root root  100 Oct 21 15:58 usr
drwxr-xr-x   1 root root  160 Oct 21 16:07 var
lrwxrwxrwx   1 root root   29 Oct 21 15:59 vmlinuz -> boot/vmlinuz-4.2.0-16-generic

Please help. This has been driving me crazy.

Edit: I tried Reinstalling Ubuntu from the live disk, it was going ok unity I encountered the error: The 'grub-efi-amd64-signed' package failed to install into /target/. Without the GRUB boot loader, the installed system will not boot. I am not sure why this error would occur.

Nitin Kashyap
  • 56
  • 5
  • So what you're saying is you did `mv /* /media/username/sdcard` , something like that,right ? I'd say reinstall, overwrite your Ubuntu partition with new Ubuntu partition. It's going to be the easiest solution to repair the system. If `mv` didn't get as far as your `home` directory, you could still recover those files with a bootable USB drive and USB disk to save files there. But simplest , less painful solution - erase the old stuff with new stuff. – Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy Jan 07 '16 at 04:27
  • The home directory with all my files seem intact but I am unable to recover those as I cannot move the files to another storage device because I keep getting a "Permission Denied" when I try to move files. – Nitin Kashyap Jan 07 '16 at 05:18
  • what command did you type prior to "Permission Denied" ? – 16b7195abb140a3929bbc322d1c6f1 Jan 07 '16 at 05:20
  • For example if I try to move a file named 2_node_addition.png using this: `ubuntu@ubuntu:/media/ubuntu/a7089b2c-2748-4b9d-8f17-02169bb0402a/nitin$ cp 2_node_addition.png /media/ubuntu/SETTINGS cp: cannot create regular file ‘/media/ubuntu/SETTINGS/2_node_addition.png’: Permission denied` – Nitin Kashyap Jan 07 '16 at 05:22
  • try using sudo to backup the home folder from your hard disk, then try following this - https://askubuntu.com/questions/362689/gpt-detected-please-create-a-bios-boot-partition-while-using-boot-repair – 16b7195abb140a3929bbc322d1c6f1 Jan 07 '16 at 05:24
  • if that fails, you can do as @Serg suggested and reinstall ubuntu then copy your home files back to your hard disk. sounds like the easiest way to go. – 16b7195abb140a3929bbc322d1c6f1 Jan 07 '16 at 05:24
  • Well, you're booting from live USB , right ? The user there is `ubuntu` and your files are owned by your original username. What you need to do is use `chroot` which basically is using system on hard-drive through live usb, sort of connecting to it. Follow the [chroot instructions](https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCdRecovery#Update_Failure) , then connect another usb disk, mount it (easiest with `udisksctl mount -b /dev/sdX`, find out X number with `lsblk` ), and then copy your files from home to usb. After all done, wipe that partition and install new ubuntu partition – Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy Jan 07 '16 at 05:35
  • I could post a more detailed procedure in the answers section, but the main idea is in the comment i posted just now. Let me know – Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy Jan 07 '16 at 05:37
  • Ok this seems to work now. I'm backing up just the deja-dup files so that I can restore all my files from that. – Nitin Kashyap Jan 07 '16 at 05:38
  • But just curious, does the absence of any boot options in the BIOS not indicate a more serious problem? – Nitin Kashyap Jan 07 '16 at 05:43
  • Don't worry about the BIOS. Your HDD is booting fine and there has been no indication that your HDD is not booting. – 16b7195abb140a3929bbc322d1c6f1 Jan 07 '16 at 08:59

1 Answers1

0

Try this:

  • Boot from an Ubuntu Live CD
  • Move all of the files from the SD card back to your hard disk
  • Reboot

Your next issue is probably going to be permissions but we can work that out after the files are back on your hdd

16b7195abb140a3929bbc322d1c6f1
  • 196
  • 6