Recently, I upgraded my Ubuntu from 9.04 to 9.10 from the desktop in my office. When I checked later from home using ssh connection, I saw the message saying that a restart is necessary. So I issued a "shutdown -r" command and waited and waited and...
When I went back in the office, the following message was shown on the screen:
One or more of mounts listed in /etc/fstab can not yet be mounted
(esc for recovery shell)
/: Waiting for UUID={some UUID here}
/tmp: waiting for (null)
swap : Waiting for UUID={some UUID here}
General error mounting filesysterms
A maintenance shell will now be started
ctrl-D will teminate this shell and retry
Give root passwd for maintenance (or type ctrl-D to continue):
My usual password was never accepted, and certainly Ctrl-D never helped. Google pointed to many directions, so I was not alone. Good. But which is the right one?
After trying many different solutions, here is one that worked for me.
- Download the Ubuntu Alternate install CD (found here: http://mirror.anl.gov/pub/ubuntu-iso/CDs/karmic/, scroll down a page). Burn and use it to boot. Select the language and select REPAIR A BROKEN SYSTEM. Follow all the way to choose a partition with system to be mounted (in my case, /dev/sda1). Then, there is the shell!
- Do the following:
- apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get -f install
- dpkg --configure -a
- apt-get update
- Reboot.
- Still, the problem of root not mounted and the root password not correct remain.
- Boot from the CD again to get the shell. Edit /etc/fstab and replace "UUID={Some UUID Here} / ext3" by "/dev/sda1 / ext3" (for example), and other UUID items by appropriate /dev/xdxx's. Save and Reboot.
- IT WORKED.
- Log in and fix the package problems.
It is now fully functional as you can see. Thanks to all the people who contributed their directions on the web.