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Re: can't boot Jessie since power drop-out (virtualbox on MacBook with SSD)



On 5/11/2015 10:09 AM, Charlie Kravetz wrote:
On Thu, 5 Nov 2015 09:59:19 +1100
"Brendan Simon (eTRIX)" <brendan.simon@etrix.com.au> wrote:

I was/am running Jessie 8.2 in a VirtualBox on my MacBook.  The MacBook
shutdown without warning while my Jessie VB was running, and now the VM
wont boot properly.  I get stuck in emergency mode.  Ctrl-D does nothing
- just cycle back to same message.

I googled a bit and found that if I comment out entries in /etc/fstab
for the cdrom and my home directory (on the mac) then it will boot fine.
Once booted I can uncomment my home directory entry and mount it ok, but
the system refuses to boot if it is left uncommented.

It used to work find before the power drop-out, so I'm presuming
something is corrupt on the filesystem somewhere.
I tried to boot a live image and do an "fsck /dev/sda1" but it said it
was clean.  Really ???

What's the best way to recover this so my system will boot properly?

I was going to do a reinstall but I couldn't find a way of doing that
without repartitioning the disk (which I didn't want to do as I don't
want to lose any of my data).
I could always create a new virtual disk for my home directory and just
reinstall a new debian system, but I figure there should be a better way
to recover.

Thanks,
Brendan.
Check the hidden files in your home directory. They should all be user
owned. If any are root owned, that can prevent the user from being able
to access the directory. 

The usual suspects are .Xauthority and .ICEauthority. I delete the
problem, usually. Then I can restart and the system will work again.It
recreates the missing file in the users name.

In linux home directory, I do not have a .Xauthority file, and my .ICEauthority is owned by me (uid=1001)
In Mac home directory, I do not have a .ICEauthority file, and my .Xauthority is owned by me (uid=501)

I don't see how those files would stop my linux system booting and entering emergency mode.  The system should be able to boot to a login prompt (console or graphical) without having to look into a user's home directory (the linux home directory is on the root filesystem)

I can mount the directory fine after the system has booted (comment out /etc/fstab entries, boot, uncomment /etc/fstab entries, mount).
Here is met /etc/fstab file.

# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>

# / was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=eee91f72-bc88-4877-9b98-7b10c7de2d9a /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1

# swap was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=331c2aba-e505-4d25-bb0b-863dfdb9eb8f none            swap    sw              0       0

#/dev/sr0        /media/cdrom0   udf,iso9660 user,noauto     0       0

#brendan /media/sf_brendan vboxsf uid=1001,gid=1001 0 0

Is there some dpkg command to reinstall al the installed packages (or base packages) so that it wont barf at boot time?


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