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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](https://askubuntu.com/a/901343/518562) – 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
  • 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