Mint not booting- again

[Orton Rd]

Only been using it a few months had to re install it once already after updating 19-19.1 after that it would never boot so went back to 19. Been fine but suddenly will not boot. Booted from a USB and tried the time shift re set, no good, tried running a disk repair utility always recommended that did not work but did run through everything. When booting it just gives a screen with busybox and initramts, typed in a few suggested commands starting with fsck, no good

Obviously do not fancy re installing the OS every few months but would like to know why it's fallen over again, Have to go back to windows at this rate.

[VBF]

I'm a newbie to Mint, having just installed it on my old Netbook which isn't really up to Windows 10.

 

I suggest you look here https://forums.linuxmint.com/index.php 

I've found them to be a friendly bunch and there is loads of info on there.

[Orton Rd]

Yes they are very good, they suggested the cmos battery is the problem as date and time will not keep in the bios. My model does not have one though, seems to be built into the main battery so will look into that

[VBF]

50 minutes ago, Orton Rd said:

Yes they are very good, they suggested the cmos battery is the problem as date and time will not keep in the bios. My model does not have one though, seems to be built into the main battery so will look into that

If it was me, the next time it fails to boot, i'd go into the BIOS, check to see if the date/time has reset. If it has, set it and everything else in the BIOS correctly, power cycle, check it again and then try and boot again. However, if the time is still correct, then it's probably not the cause.

 

OOI...what sort of a device is it that doesn't have battery unique to the BIOS? That's most odd, IME.

[4675636b596f75]

44 minutes ago, Orton Rd said:

Yes they are very good, they suggested the cmos battery is the problem as date and time will not keep in the bios. My model does not have one though, seems to be built into the main battery so will look into that

Why would it not boot?  I've never heard of software refusing to boot (IPL for your old ....) because it had the wrong date. 

 

I have to cry <deleted> on that one.  Did I use <deleted> right?

[VBF]

6 minutes ago, 4675636b596f75 said:

Why would it not boot?  I've never heard of software refusing to boot (IPL for your old ....) because it had the wrong date. 

 

I have to cry <deleted> on that one.  Did I use <deleted> right?

It's possible, that @Orton Rd is just using the date and time as an example of the BIOS losing its settings. Hence my suggestion to check everything in the BIOS - we cross-posted, by the way as I just added that bit in my post #4. If a disk drive setting was incorrect, that could affect the boot.

[Orton Rd]

7 hours ago, VBF said:

If it was me, the next time it fails to boot, i'd go into the BIOS, check to see if the date/time has reset. If it has, set it and everything else in the BIOS correctly, power cycle, check it again and then try and boot again. However, if the time is still correct, then it's probably not the cause.

 

OOI...what sort of a device is it that doesn't have battery unique to the BIOS? That's most odd, IME.

Toshiba satellite c50-b well known for not having one but I forgot about it. Somehow it is built into the battery which looks like an ordinary one, but cannot be as when it has run flat the bios setting have not been affected. Pretty sure that is the problem as the date resets to the year of manufacture and time to zero.

[VBF]

20 minutes ago, Orton Rd said:

Toshiba satellite c50-b well known for not having one but I forgot about it. Somehow it is built into the battery which looks like an ordinary one, but cannot be as when it has run flat the bios setting have not been affected. Pretty sure that is the problem as the date resets to the year of manufacture and time to zero.

If you say so, but, with respect, are you entirely sure?

https://www.eehelp.com/question/location-of-battery-cmos-c50-b-satellite/ 

[Orton Rd]

4 minutes ago, VBF said:

If you say so, but, with respect, are you entirely sure?

https://www.eehelp.com/question/location-of-battery-cmos-c50-b-satellite/ 

In the comments everyone is asking where the battery is as it does not appear in the film. I watched that before at the end I think that is the one where he states there is no cmos battery on the C50-b.

[UKresonant]

I've just started experimenting using Mint, as I have a random problem with windows 10 crashing (AM3+ MB, ddr3 etc), sometimes it will go for 3 hours sometimes 30mins. I'll have to admit defeat in tracing the cause of the error code.

 

So far (a few days) it has been perfectly stable.

 

I'm trying to ensure a resilient availability, by using the Yumi bootloader onto a fast-ish 3.1 usb mini /fit drive, and running it live (with persistence), Cinnamon 19.1.

 

So far no crashes, so I'm thinking this is the way ahead. (not tried printing yet though).

 

Will build a socket AM4 and transplant WIN10 hopefully, and leave this one with win7 & linux....

 

Hope you can trace probable cause!

 

 

 

[Tayaout]

It's difficult to help anyone without any logs. If you are using Grub bootloader: before it boots automatically, press "e" for edit then remove the "quiet" line if any and optionally add "debug" then press F10 to resume booting. If there is a problem you can read the logs on the screen or take a picture of the logs and post it here.

 

If the operating system boot but the screen blank then try adding a "1" or "nomodeset" after "debug". In most case it will prevent the system to load the graphical interface and drop you to a command shell.

If you understand a little bit what is going on and want a shell before loading the kernel and you are using systemd then try: "systemd.unit=rescue".

If you can get a command shell try "dmesg" in a command shell. If you are not root then do "sudo dmesg". If you want to pipe the content of the logs to a file do "sudo dmesg > dmesg.log". Post the log content here.

Other shell commands that may help to debug are "sudo lspci -k" and "sudo lsusb -v".

 

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/kernel_parameters

[Orton Rd]

I reinstalled it again and no problems apart from the usual annoying firefox is already running

[Tayaout]

32 minutes ago, Orton Rd said:

I reinstalled it again and no problems apart from the usual annoying firefox is already running

Install Firefox developers edition.