Boot up trouble

[Langstracht]

A couple of thoughts/questions:

1. What would happen if I installed (or tried to) Ubuntu from the bootable USB? Would it fail? If not, and it did install, would it erase everything on the HD. Indeed, would it do that anyway if it failed?

2. An earlier post to this thread suggested that had I used a GUI boot up on the USB I would have been able to access the HD without any problems. Is that true? And, if so, can someone please give me a URL where I can locate this GUI file.

TIA

[oldfred]

Because of the errors as shown by Boot-repair report nothing will show files.
You have to at least run the fixes suggested above.
Normally the file browser, or folder icon will open any partition and let you browse for files.

If fixes do not work then major repair tools like testdisk or photorec may be required, if worth the effort.
I used photorec and it took overnight to scan drive & write all found files to another hard drive. But I had old backup, and same files saved many times. Photorec found all the old (deleted) copies so I had many versions of same file. Photorec does not recover full filename either, so you have to work with extensions only & rename yourself.

[Langstracht]

I'll be happy to (try to) run the fixes suggested ... but first I think I need to deal with the (error?) messages:

"Re-reading the partition table failed.: Device or resource busy."

Followed by:

"The kernel still uses the old table. The new table will be used at the next re-boot or after you run partprobe(8) or kpartx(8)"

thrown up by the original "fdisk".

But how?

Thanks as always.

[oldfred]

First run the fixes in post #17, that may solve it.

[Langstracht]

So I ran the first CLI with the following result:

e2fsck: Bad magic number in super-block while trying to open /dev/sda6

/dev/sda6/: The superblock could not be read or does not describe a valid ext2/ext3/ext4 file system If the device is valid and it really contains an ext2/ext3/ext4 filesystem (and not swap or ufs or something else) then the superblock is corrupt, and you might try running e2fsck with an alernative super block:

e2fsck -b 8193 <device>

or

e2fsck -b 32768 <device>

thinking it might be helpful I ran another boot-repair status - paste.ubuntu.com/p/3H8M4YTDNr/

Look forward to your response.

Allan

[oldfred]

In #15 I said you probably have to reset sda6 to ext4.
You need to run the fdisk commands to set type 83 first.

Boot-Repair report still shows sda6 as unknown. Line 39.

[Langstracht]

You probably won't be surprised to learn that I'm confused again.

I'd be happy to reset sda6 to ext4, but I have no idea how to do that.

Is this:

sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda6

how I do that?
.
Did I not run run the fdisk commands to set type 83 first. Except I guess it didn't work ...

You'll recall I got the (error?) messages:


Re-reading the partition table failed.: Device or resource busy.

Followed by:

The kernel still uses the old table. The new table will be used at the next re-boot or after you run partprobe(8) or kpartx(8).

So maybe re-booting will instigate the "new" table?

[oldfred]

Use fdisk to set type to 83
If then still not seen
run the mkfs.ext4 command
Only run on your sda6 partition.

[Langstracht]

O.k. so I ran fdisk again. And, perhaps not surprisingly, got the same messages as the first time.

Seen? How would I know?

How should I proceed?

[oldfred]

And then you ran the mkfs command & rebooted?