Recovery Mode Freezes and no options turning up

Question

I am currently running a dual boot of windows 8 and ubuntu 12.04. I recently had several problems with ubuntu (like lost password etc) , so i tried booting through the recovery mode . But unfortunately, everytime i run the recovery mode it loads up some processes and then freezes , as in nothing happens after that , it just keeps on waiting there. my specs are:

ubuntu 12.04 LTS
Release 12.04 (precise) 64-bit
Kernel Linux 3.2.0-58-generic
GNOME 3.4.2

Intel® Core™ i5-3210M CPU @ 2.50GHz × 4

Solution

If normal booting works, just the recovery mode freezes then it is possible that the recovery mode's kernel command line is causing the problem. Either it has an option which causes this error or it is missing one.

By default the recovery mode's kernel command line doesn't contain the "quite splash" parameters but contain the "recovery nomodeset" parameters. If you added extra parameters to your normal boot in the /etc/default/grub file, then those are also missing from the recovery mode's kernel command line. Obviously the "quiet splash" is not needed in recovery but the "recovery" is needed.

So at first I advise you to remove the nomodeset parameter from the recover modes kernel command line and try to boot with that setup:

1. While in GRUB and on the recovery menu entry press E to edit the menu entry.
2. Remove the nomodeset parameter from the line starting with linux.
3. Press CTRL+X to boot with the modified kernel command line.

If this doesn't solve it please upload your /boot/grub/grub.cfg file so we can see what other options are present on your normal kernel command line what maybe necessary also in the recovery's. (Or you can examine it yourself and add them to your recovery command line.)

To make the changes permanent you will have to edit the /etc/grub.d/10_linux file, search for the nomodeset word in the file and delete them. (Best is to make a backup of this file before you edit it, just in case as always.) For me these two results showed up:

  if [ "x${GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY}" != "xtrue" ]; then
if [ -x /lib/recovery-mode/recovery-menu ]; then
  linux_entry "${OS}" "${version}" true \
    "recovery nomodeset ${GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX}"
else
  linux_entry "${OS}" "${version}" true \
    "single nomodeset ${GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX}"
fi
fi

So I would have to change this to

  if [ "x${GRUB_DISABLE_RECOVERY}" != "xtrue" ]; then
if [ -x /lib/recovery-mode/recovery-menu ]; then
  linux_entry "${OS}" "${version}" true \
    "recovery ${GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX}"
else
  linux_entry "${OS}" "${version}" true \
    "single ${GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX}"
fi
fi

Then run sudo update-grub.

Comments

[falconer]

So normal booting works, just the recovery freezes?

[nishkr]

yes , the normal mode always works but only the recovery mode freezes

[nishkr]

Yeah it worked !!! thanks a lot ! but the recovery mode options donot get saved , as in next time i boot , the "nomodeset" para is still there. How can i save the parametres so that at every recovery mode boot, i donot have to change the paras..

[falconer]

@killX I updated my answer.