Broken /boot partition: input/output error
Solution 1
"Input/output error" indicates a reading/writing error, possibly caused by a disk defect. It seems not being able to read/write blocks, and so it can't modify the partition.
I recommend backing up all your personal data on the disk and checking the filesystem with a tool of your choice.
-- Update --
for filesystem-check you could use
fsck.ext2 -p -f -C0 /dev/sda2
It will check the filesystem (-f), give you some information what's going on, show a progress bar (-C0) and ask you, whether it should try to fix major problems (-p).
If you got a lot of problems, I'd advise to install
smartmontools
and run
sudo smartctl -H /dev/sda
for a fast test
sudo smartctl -t long /dev/sda
check the hard disk thoroughly
sudo smartctl -a /dev/sda
to show hard disk state
sudo smartctl -A /dev/sda
to show hard disk attributes.
Solution 2
I'm back in!
Using fsck.ext2 really made the deal. After sudo fsck.ext2 -f -C0 /dev/sda2
and answering everything with "yes" (see in the question) the filesystem was fixed.
After that I unlocked my encrypted partition, mounted everything and chrooted into my system. There, I ran apt-get dist-upgrade
. After that, grub went into the grub command line on startup.
I went back into the live system and ran boot-repair afterwards. After that I had to reconfigure my encryption setup, see EncryptedFilesystemsViaUbiquity.
Now, I am able to use my system again. The network is somehow broken, it connects nicely but I cannot use the internet in programs. sudo dhclient wlan0
fixes this for one session.
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Joshua Gleitze
Updated on September 18, 2022Comments
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Joshua Gleitze over 1 year
The Problem
The issue I am facing is that I get the following error on boot, after I select Ubuntu in GRUB:
Error: File "/vmlinuz-3.13.0-24-generic.efi.signed" not found. unaligned pointer 0xd0a26c68 Aborted. Press any key to exit.
I already posted a question regarding this issue here, but as a lot of things changed, I set up this question.
My Setup
I had some different troubles to play around if during installation, as I have a setup with a fully encrypted root. Plus, there were issues with the UEFI and GPT, especially to get everything work with Windows. As the install was a long time ago, I don't remember any details.
On my Ubuntu harddrive, I have three main partitions:
- /dev/sda1: fat32, boot flag.
This should be the EFI partition (/boot/efi, isn't it?) - /dev/sda2: ext2
Should be /boot - /dev/sda3: crypt-luks
The encrypted container, contains root and swap
Troubleshooting
In a live system I started from a USB, I found the following issues:
Error in nautilus
Clicking on the mounted boot-Partition (/dev/sda2) in nautilus gives the following error:
Sorry, could not display all the contents of “boot”: Error when getting information for file '/media/ujosh/root/boot/System.map-3.11.0-17-generic': Input/output error
Error updating initramfs
Nevertheless, I could mount all three partitions and bring them together via mount --bind in the right constellation so I could chroot into my system. There, I ran
apt-get update apt-get dist-upgrade
Everything worked as expected until
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-3.13.0-24-generic cat: /proc/cmdline: No such file or directory gzip: stdout: No space left on device E: mkinitramfs failure cpio 141 gzip 1 update-initramfs: failed for /boot/initrd.img-3.13.0-24-generic with 1. dpkg: error processing package initramfs-tools (--configure): subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1 No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already Errors were encountered while processing: linux-image-3.13.0-24-generic grub-efi-amd64 grub-efi-amd64-signed linux-image-extra-3.13.0-24-generic linux-signed-image-3.13.0-24-generic linux-signed-image-generic linux-signed-generic initramfs-tools E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
boot-repair doesn't help
I as well ran boot-repair on the setup, which eventually triggered the same errors while updating the initramfs as above.
Running file system checks
By the help of @zoid, I used the following tests on my /boot-partition:
enter code here
sudo fsck.ext2 -p -f -C0 /dev/sda2 /dev/sda2: Inode 29 has illegal block(s). /dev/sda2: UNEXPECTED INCONSISTENCY; RUN fsck MANUALLY. (i.e., without -a or -p options)
sudo fsck.ext2 -f -C0 /dev/sda2
sudo smartctl -H /dev/sda smartctl 6.2 2013-07-26 r3841 [x86_64-linux-3.13.0-24-generic] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-13, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org === START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION === SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
sudo smartctl -A /dev/sda smartctl 6.2 2013-07-26 r3841 [x86_64-linux-3.13.0-24-generic] (local build) Copyright (C) 2002-13, Bruce Allen, Christian Franke, www.smartmontools.org === START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION === SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 1 Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds: ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE 5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 0 9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 2869 12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 098 098 000 Old_age Always - 1836 177 Wear_Leveling_Count 0x0013 098 098 000 Pre-fail Always - 48 179 Used_Rsvd_Blk_Cnt_Tot 0x0013 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 0 181 Program_Fail_Cnt_Total 0x0032 100 100 010 Old_age Always - 0 182 Erase_Fail_Count_Total 0x0032 100 100 010 Old_age Always - 0 183 Runtime_Bad_Block 0x0013 100 100 010 Pre-fail Always - 0 187 Uncorrectable_Error_Cnt 0x0032 100 100 000 Old_age Always - 0 190 Airflow_Temperature_Cel 0x0032 062 050 000 Old_age Always - 38 195 ECC_Error_Rate 0x001a 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0 199 CRC_Error_Count 0x003e 253 253 000 Old_age Always - 0 235 POR_Recovery_Count 0x0012 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 128 241 Total_LBAs_Written 0x0032 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 6450810314
My question
How to recover my /boot-partition? I think that it's broken is causing the whole issue.
What is wrong with my /boot-partition and how could this happen? My whole productive OS is broken and I would like to know how to avoid this in the future.Any help is highly appreciated!
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oldfred about 10 years"No space left on device" - so is /boot full? You show errors on signed version but update uses unsigned and another error is on an old 3.11 version. Check how fill partition is.
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Joshua Gleitze about 10 years@oldfred /boot has 57.8MB of 247.8 MB free. I guess that's enough isnt' it? I cleaned the kernels before the error occured, so I think the "no space left error" is because of the broken file system. I cannot comment on the signed / unsigned issue. What's the difference? The nautilus error is triggered by the version 3.11. in my /boot partition, the initramfs error is triggered by the updated 3.13 version. I think that does make sense.
- /dev/sda1: fat32, boot flag.
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Joshua Gleitze about 10 yearsThanks for your help, how would you recommend to check / fix the file system?
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vishal about 10 years@zoig: welcome to ask ubuntu. While it is correct, this answer would be more useful if you describe how to check the filesystem.
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Joshua Gleitze about 10 yearsI ran the tests, you can see the first results above.