Computer won't boot anymore, /dev/shm and /boot won't mount

**Stonecold1995** · December 13th, 2012

My computer's no longer booting. I rebooted because of a kernel update after 12 days of uptime, and for seemingly no reason I now get this error:

I usually get an error saying /dev/shm is already mounted, but it continues booting, but now nothing is booting! It just hangs as you see in the screenshot.

I am not able to choose any options when it says:

Code:

keys:Press S to skip mounting or M for manual recovery

about /boot because it immediately shows the password prompt for my second disk.

EDIT: If I rapidly press "S" after entering my first password but before my second one apparently skips mounting /boot and my computer is able to boot, but the boot partition (/dev/sdb1) has to be mounted manually if I want to access files in /boot. And when I boot up apparently my computer will try creating /boot (because it isn't mounted it thinks it doesn't exist) and puts the directory "grub" in there.

Why isn't /boot mounting correctly at startup anymore?

**duke.tim** · December 13th, 2012

This is what the man page states about system error 2. Maybe someone out there will know what to do with this.

2

system error (out of memory, cannot fork, no more loop devices)

**SeijiSensei** · December 13th, 2012

Have you run fsck against the partition where boot is located? Do that in recovery mode or after booting from a CD/USB drive.

**Stonecold1995** · December 14th, 2012

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

Have you run fsck against the partition where boot is located? Do that in recovery mode or after booting from a CD/USB drive.

Yes, and /boot is not corrupt. From what I can tell, it mounts very early on in the boot process (which is why GRUB works and the kernel can start its thing), but as soon as the computer begins to mount / and /home (and /tmp, etc), /boot is unable to mount, so I have to rapidly press "S" to skip mounting it.

**Rexilion** · December 14th, 2012

I see that it trips over (possible stale) entry's in /etc/mtab.

Try removing the references to the troubled mountpoints located in /etc/mtab and try again.

**Stonecold1995** · December 14th, 2012

Originally Posted by Rexilion

I see that it trips over (possible stale) entry's in /etc/mtab.

Try removing the references to the troubled mountpoints located in /etc/mtab and try again.

Code:

/dev/mapper/sdb5_crypt / ext4 rw,noatime,discard,errors=remount-ro 0 0
proc /proc proc rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0
sysfs /sys sysfs rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0
none /sys/fs/fuse/connections fusectl rw 0 0
none /sys/kernel/debug debugfs rw 0 0
none /sys/kernel/security securityfs rw 0 0
udev /dev devtmpfs rw,mode=0755 0 0
devpts /dev/pts devpts rw,noexec,nosuid,gid=5,mode=0620 0 0
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs rw,mode=1777 0 0
tmpfs /run tmpfs rw,noexec,nosuid,size=10%,mode=0755 0 0
none /run/lock tmpfs rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,size=5242880 0 0
tmpfs /run/shm tmpfs rw,nosuid,nodev 0 0
none /run/user tmpfs rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev,size=104857600,mode=0755 0 0
/dev/mapper/sda1_crypt /home ext4 rw,noatime,errors=remount-ro 0 0
binfmt_misc /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc binfmt_misc rw,noexec,nosuid,nodev 0 0
/dev/sdb1 /boot ext2 rw 0 0

Is there anything wrong with my /etc/mtab?