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Thread: Ubuntu 12.04 x64 won't boot after using PYDSM

  1. #1

    Angry Ubuntu 12.04 x64 won't boot after using PYDSM

    ...the noob I am!!!

    Last night I've decided to add an extra data drive to my desktop. My normal setup is one 1TB drive divided into a 100GB ext4 system partition, 16GB swap space and circa 850GB NTFS partition with all my media. The largest part is a remnant of my previous Windows installation, which I never had time to convert to ext4. This NTFS partition was normally automatically mounted on boot using PYDSM setting. After adding the addional drive (which still contained Windows system files from my old laptop), my original NTFS partition failed to boot automatically. After that I have formatted the new drive as ext4 and for some silly (noob) reason went to play with PYDSM. I've set all available partitions (except swap) I could find on both sda and sdb (I think there was only sda before) to mount automatically on boot and to allow all users mount and unmount partitions at will. From then on my memories are a bit foggy but I think I remember wondering why was PYDSM displaying my original NTFS partition as sdb instead of usual sda.

    Then after reboot the system went through GRUB but no further. Did not display the OS loading logo, only flashing cursor in upper left corner. I could hear some disk activity but that ceased after a moment and then nothing.

    I've tried to change SATA settings in bios from AHCI to IDE and back. Tried to remove the new drive and connect the old one to a different controller, but no joy. I did a boot from the boot-repair-disc and attempted the 'recommended' repair and then also tried to specify which partition to boot from but without any success. I don't think it's a hardware failure because both drives show as healthy and I can se all my files from the boot-repair-disc file manager. Also when I boot to recovery from GRUB and try to work with existing partitions, I get lots of access denied errors.

    So far it looks that I have the only (rather painful) option of reinstalling the whole system :'(

    Does anybody have any good ideas how to avoid that?

  2. #2
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    Re: Ubuntu 12.04 x64 won't boot after using PYDSM

    Quote Originally Posted by morningstar.fallen View Post
    ...the noob I am!!!

    Last night I've decided to add an extra data drive to my desktop. My normal setup is one 1TB drive divided into a 100GB ext4 system partition, 16GB swap space and circa 850GB NTFS partition with all my media. The largest part is a remnant of my previous Windows installation, which I never had time to convert to ext4. This NTFS partition was normally automatically mounted on boot using PYDSM setting. After adding the addional drive (which still contained Windows system files from my old laptop), my original NTFS partition failed to boot automatically. After that I have formatted the new drive as ext4 and for some silly (noob) reason went to play with PYDSM. I've set all available partitions (except swap) I could find on both sda and sdb (I think there was only sda before) to mount automatically on boot and to allow all users mount and unmount partitions at will. From then on my memories are a bit foggy but I think I remember wondering why was PYDSM displaying my original NTFS partition as sdb instead of usual sda.

    Then after reboot the system went through GRUB but no further. Did not display the OS loading logo, only flashing cursor in upper left corner. I could hear some disk activity but that ceased after a moment and then nothing.

    I've tried to change SATA settings in bios from AHCI to IDE and back. Tried to remove the new drive and connect the old one to a different controller, but no joy. I did a boot from the boot-repair-disc and attempted the 'recommended' repair and then also tried to specify which partition to boot from but without any success. I don't think it's a hardware failure because both drives show as healthy and I can se all my files from the boot-repair-disc file manager. Also when I boot to recovery from GRUB and try to work with existing partitions, I get lots of access denied errors.

    So far it looks that I have the only (rather painful) option of reinstalling the whole system :'(

    Does anybody have any good ideas how to avoid that?
    Shouldnt have used PYSDM in the first case,itseems to be an old app with no official support,i also had trouble with it,but the forum members solved it(thank god!!!),i am sure they will come to ur rescue also,wait for some time..

  3. #3

    Re: Ubuntu 12.04 x64 won't boot after using PYDSM

    Is there any tool that could manage the setting of a dead OS? Mainly the mounting and permissions options?

  4. #4

    Re: Ubuntu 12.04 x64 won't boot after using PYDSM

    Or anything I could do to avoid having to reinstall the whole system?

  5. #5
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    Arrow Re: Ubuntu 12.04 x64 won't boot after using PYDSM

    Hello
    PYDSM is very old (last version is 2006), i am not sure why it is still available in the Ubuntu Software Center.

    I prefer to use Disk-Manager instead. It's last DEB is here,: https://launchpad.net/disk-manager/+download (see also https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...r/+bug/1002281 )


    Please could you indicate your BootInfo URL?
    Last edited by YannBuntu; May 21st, 2012 at 01:52 PM.

  6. #6
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    Re: Ubuntu 12.04 x64 won't boot after using PYDSM

    From then on my memories are a bit foggy but I think I remember wondering why was PYDSM displaying my original NTFS partition as sdb instead of usual sda.
    Because PySDM, mountmanager, disk manager, whatever else is out there left the building before the memo got out about using UUID's instead of /dev/sdxy.

    I would suggest using templates instead. For ntfs:
    Code:
    UUID=DA9056C19056A3B3 /media/WinD ntfs defaults,nls=utf8,umask=000,uid=1000,windows_names 0 0
    For ext4:
    Code:
    UUID=076426af-cbc5-4966-8cd4-af0f5c879646 /media/Data ext4 defaults,noatime 0 2
    ** To find the correct UUID for your partitions:
    Code:
    sudo blkid -c /dev/null
    ** You will have to create the mount point yourself, for example:
    Code:
    sudo mkdir /media/WinD
    ** Then add the template with the correct UUID and mount point to fstab:
    Code:
    gksu gedit /etc/fstab
    ** And when you are done editing fstab and saving it run the following command to test for errors and mount the partitions without requiring a reboot. You will know before you reboot if something is amiss. :
    Code:
    sudo mount -a
    If there are no errors it just comes back to the prompt.

    It's a lot easier and as you have found out a lot safer to do it this way and you don't end up cluttering fstab with a lot of useless ( user ) or absurd ( users ) mount options in fstab.

    But this is just my opinion
    Last edited by Morbius1; May 21st, 2012 at 02:35 PM. Reason: I simply cannot spell

  7. #7
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    Lightbulb Re: Ubuntu 12.04 x64 won't boot after using PYDSM

    (FYI Disk-Manager manages UUIDs)

  8. #8
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    Re: Ubuntu 12.04 x64 won't boot after using PYDSM

    Okey dokey, I installed it on a VBox guest I have set up for this type of thing. I unleashed it on a NTFS partition since that is where the most options can be used or abused. This is the entry it created in fstab:
    UUID=40F76A4E40B0C5CB /media/DataN ntfs-3g defaults,locale=en_US.UTF-8 0 0
    ** You are correct it did get the memo about UUID

    ** It will also give you an error message if you add a file and then try to send it to the trash. Why? Because although permissions have been set to 777 so everyone can access the partition the partition is owned by root and it's his trash can not yours. Setting uid=1000 fixes that.

    ** I can add a file to that ntfs partition with a name that has "special" characters in it. Characters that a Windows OS cannot read and interpret. Adding the option "windows_names" fixes that.

    ** It's somewhat fixated ( just like ntfs-config was back in its day ) on ntfs vs ntfs-3g. In Ubuntu they are one in the same since one is linked to the other. But that's a minor thing.

    So without any kind of adjustment that line will induce one and possibly 2 visits to the forum to explain / resolve. If I use the template approach I would have automatically eliminated both problems.

  9. #9
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    Re: Ubuntu 12.04 x64 won't boot after using PYDSM

    Thanks Morbius. I suggested these options to the app devs: https://bugs.launchpad.net/disk-manager/+bug/1002444

  10. #10
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    Re: Ubuntu 12.04 x64 won't boot after using PYDSM

    Wouldn't make any sense to add it to the defaults since an application like this has to run on all installs and not all of them have uid's in the 1000 range depending on which branch of Linux is being used and how old it is.

    And since it differentiates ntfs and ntfs-3g it's not clear to me that it's still being actively developed only repackaged. EDIT: Actually I don't know if that's true. THere may be some distro out there that actually does separate the old ntfs from ntfs-3g.

    What makes sense is to avoid ntfs-config, mountmanager, disk-manager ( although it's not in the repos as far as I can tell so for the average user this may never come up ), .. oh ... and PySDM and ....
    Last edited by Morbius1; May 21st, 2012 at 08:38 PM.

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