Edited Fstab and now Ubuntu will not boot

[aideds]

As the title implies, I edited the fstab of my computer and now Ubuntu will not boot. I created a backup of my Fstab file prior to editing and when I placed that in the fstab folder, Ubuntu still does not boot.

Currently, my fstab reads as this:

#/dev/sda5
UUID=320ab1f7-a4a8-41c6-ba20-7f73bdd263e4 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
#/dev/sda6
UUID=66d4e3ec-efe9-4f77-9f49-8c776973b737 none swap sw 0 0

I'm not really sure what I did wrong so I would really appreciate any help.

[TheFu]

Please run boot-info and post the results. See my signature for links.

[aideds]

Please run boot-info and post the results. See my signature for links.

Here's the link to the boot-info.

[TheFu]

Well, the fstab does NOT appear to be the issue. Perhaps you did something else too?
According to the boot-info, running boot-repair should fix something.

If that refuses to boot after the repair, comment out the swap line and try to boot again.

[aideds]

Well, the fstab does NOT appear to be the issue. Perhaps you did something else too?
According to the boot-info, running boot-repair should fix something.

If that refuses to boot after the repair, comment out the swap line and try to boot again.

I didn't do anything except edit the fstab. I ran boot-repair but I still cannot boot successfully. Uh oh.

What swap line are you referring to?

[ian-weisser]

When you boot, please describe exactly what happens. In detail.

Do you see the BIOS or boot-setup prompt?
Do you see the grub prompt or timeout?
What does the screen show?
What text do you see?
When the boot fails, is there text? Image? Color? How do you know the boot has failed?

[aideds]

When you boot, please describe exactly what happens. In detail.

Do you see the BIOS or boot-setup prompt?
Do you see the grub prompt or timeout?
What does the screen show?
What text do you see?
When the boot fails, is there text? Image? Color? How do you know the boot has failed?

I see the BIOS prompt.
I see the grub prompt.
After it timeouts, it is a black screen with a blinking cursor in the top left. It stays on the screen for about five seconds.
After the boot fails, it displays:

General error mounting filesystems.
A maintenance shell will now be started.
CONTROL-D will terminate this shell and reboot the system.
root@hostname:~#

That's how I know the boot has failed.

[ian-weisser]

(Withdrawn) TheFu's response is more complete and concise than mine!

[TheFu]

I didn't do anything except edit the fstab. I ran boot-repair but I still cannot boot successfully. Uh oh.

What swap line are you referring to?

The swap line in the fstab, but it appears you need to manually update/install grub into the sda MBR. The exact steps are hard to explain, but the overall idea is simple.

1. Boot off a liveCD or into rescue-mode
2. mount the root-partition somewhere - under /mnt is a good place
3. run chroot so that the mount for /boot and / and /etc are now seen as / inside the liveCD environment
4. run grub-install /dev/sda

The boot-repair tool should be able to do these things, but I have seen it get confused when the liveCD environment orders mounted drives in odd ways. That happened here last month on a new server. Had to manually use grub-install.

[jamesisin]

Why are we having this user attempt to reinstall Grub rather than trying to fix the fstab? Wouldn't it be best advised to first check the information in the fstab for accuracy?

I would log into the LiveCD and run blkid to make absolutely certain that the UUID's listed in the fstab are identical to what is shown in blkid.

I might also attempt to revert the fstab (if that information is available).