Misko, on 2019-08-31: > After upgrading the old laptop from jessie to strech, it worked > well for few days (although more slowly than it was with > jessie). But after last proper shutdown, it does not boot > anymore. In fact, it starts to boot until it comes to a point > where it says: > > "You are in emergency mode. After logging in, type "journalctl -xb" to view system logs, "systemctl reboot" to reboot, "systemctl default" or ^D to try again to boot into default mode. > > Cannot open access to console, the root account is locked. > See sulogin(8) man page for more details. > > Press Enter to continue." > > > Ok, when I press Enter it says: > > "Checking in progress on 2 disks (0.0% complete)" > > ... it takes 1-2 seconds .. while it changes to: > > "Checking in progress on 1 disk (11.0% complete)" > > ... and returns back to the first message: > > "You are in emergency mode. After logging in, type "journalctl -xb" to view system logs, "systemctl reboot" to reboot, "systemctl default" or ^D to try again to boot into default mode. > > Cannot open access to console, the root account is locked. > See sulogin(8) man page for more details. > > Press Enter to continue." > > ... and further pressing Enter seems to go nowhere and repeat > endlessly. Ctrl-Alt-F* does not open any new console. This one > with error doesn't accept anything but Enter. > > I do not have any rescue/emergency media because it was an old > installation, started several years ago with squeeze, and > upgraded over time to wheezy, jessie, .. > > Any idea what to do? Thanks. Good day, Perhaps you can attempt a boot in "Recovery Mode", see the "Advanced Boot Options" at the Grub menu stage of the boot. It could have a positive effect if a faulty kernel module is loaded and causes this loop in the boot sequence. Maybe a check of the memory and SMART data, if those options are available from your BIOS, could be welcome, especially SMART since some messages were mentioning checking the disk. If operations here over do not make any difference, then you really should consider creating a Rescue drive on an USB thumb. I have had a good experience with SystemRescueCD over the years: http://www.system-rescue-cd.org/ But if you have a Debian installation media, you can also achieve a thing or two by booting on the "Rescue Mode". If you absolutely positively do not want to build a rescue media, last chance option would be to edit the Grub menu entry, and in the linux line, edit (or append if non-existent) the following "init=" option (hit 'e' to edit the menu entry and F10 to boot): linux root=UUID=[...] ro init=/bin/bash This is a last chance option, do not expect your system to operate properly without a regular init process. Boot in this mode only to proceed to your investigations as of why the machine fails to spawn the login process. Quitting this shell hangs the machine; you have to hard reset. Kind Regards, -- Étienne Mollier <etienne.mollier@mailoo.org> Fingerprint: 5ab1 4edf 63bb ccff 8b54 2fa9 59da 56fe fff3 882d
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