upgraded to ubunyu 23.10 and exransion drives no longer works

[yancek]

The suggestion not to use a short term release like 23.10 is good advice for use on a primary system. The only reasons for going to a short term release would be if something does not work on the current system and you have good reason to believe it will on the new release. Updating it shortly after its release often leads to problems but in any case, I would suggest as above to stick with LTS releases.

I'm also curious as to why you have an ntfs filesystem on your backup drives. If you don't have windows and don't share with windows there should not be a need or use for windows filesystems. The problem you get when you do this is the possibility that the filesystem gets corrupted and you have no way to repair it. You need windows software to do that, for example running chkdsk /f from windows on the filesystem. You should be able to get windows as a free download or some windows repair software to do this. The fsck and ntfsfix options available for ntfs filesystems are extremely limited compared to the actual windows software chkdsk.

Since, if I understand your post, you still have earlier versions of Ubuntu, prior to 23.10 installed and are able to access those foreign filesystems (ntfs) on your external drives with them there would be no point in reinstalling 23.10. I don't know what the problem might be if that is the case as I don't use short term releases.

[MAFoElffen]

+1 --
I was planning to suggest that once he got this fixed and it mounts okay, that you think about a plan to convert the underlying filesystem of those two drive to ext4. ext4 is native to Linux, and has file journaling, which uses checksums in the journal to improve reliability. This feature can can also improve performance.

[TheFu]

That may be true for 50+ yrs and if I had placed the 2 or 3 backups on something that 23.10 would see as an accessible drive, I would be doing good. What I have verified is that the 3 previous versions (23.04, 22.04 and 20.04) all can see and mount my drives without any issues. Since 23.10 has the issue with mounting I can then deduct the problem is with the 23.10 version. No? When I brought the issue up on another site I was told that I jumped the gun and would need to do a fresh start, wiping my current hard-drive of the data on the partition the 23.10 created.

The first problem, appears (harder to tell with the incorrect format) to be that you have decided to use a non-native file system, NTFS. If those partitions had been formatted with a native Linux file system, we'd be passed that issue completely and could be looking at other things like USB controllers, USB cables, drivers, etc.

I can't imagine that wiping the OS would be needed to get this working.
Also, I'd guess that just the NTFS drivers weren't installed, so if you install those and run a mount command for each, that would make the storage available ... until you can wipe it and format to a native Linux, say ext4, file system.

I do appreciate instructional directions on the various commands in Terminal and have asked over the past posts where one might find a site, list or page explaining the various commands so I could assist myself with identifying problems with whatever version I happen to be running at the time. To which I have rec'd no response. So if I may appear unknowing of what is asked of me, that is because I have holes in my knowledge that others don't have. I really don't appreciate being talked down to or ridiculed or belittled for knowledge that have not been presented to me. Some say that words have no way of transmitting the senders emotions, I beg to differ on this.

Everyone has gaps in their knowledge. It is impossible to know everything. But with 10 yrs of use, that does go to say how intuitive things have become if you haven't needed to learn much more.

Nearly all commands are explained in the "man pages" on your system. It is all there already, unless you go out of your way to prevent that information from being installed.

$ man {name of command}

So,

$ man lsblk

will explain how to use lsblk.
To learn how to use the man pages, man man. I really wish we weren't disallowed from pointing people in this direction on this forum. manpages have so much useful information and it teaches people how to fish for themselves. To search the "summary" of a all manpages on the system, use the apropos command. To learn more about it,
man apropos

Any beginning Linux/Unix book would have this information, probably in chapter 1. It is embarrassing that it doesn't get explained. Also, use the manpages ON-YOUR-SYSTEM, not those on a website or another system. That's because manpage versions are tied to the specific version of the program on-your-system, which could be different from what's on my system.

As far as my Windows use, I switched over to Linux 10 yrs or longer, I'd say longer ago and have not had the issues with Linux in the past as I do today. In fact I have had to little terminal work in the past 5 years due to the dependability of Ubuntu. I have been with Ubuntu since it's start,that is how long I have been using Linux, a great product.

While I mostly use the CLI, not a GUI, it is good to have both methods. OTOH, 80% of the power in Unix comes from the CLI interfaces and having things automated. If you are happy using 20%, that's great too.

To sum up what I am experiencing today with 23.10:
-- I am unable to access drives all other versions of Ubuntu can mount

Can you please post the exact mount command that isn't working or the fstab entry that you think should mount the storage?
BTW, to learn about the mount command, use

$ man mount

To learn about the fstab file, use

$ man fstab

When it comes to system problems, note the time that you try something which fails then look at the system logs at that time to see the errors they show.

[wss7819]

"sudo: fsck.ntfs: command not found"

I was instructed to run the 'ntsffix' program to repair errors with the drives. The result was they were successful.

The reason to go with the 23.04 from 22.04 was to correct a NVIDIA issue with resolution of my display and there was something else and I would need to go through my old notes for that.
I had done some research before upgrading and it was explained that the issue would be resolved. I found a few references to resolution issues and 23.04 helping to fix the problem.
I didn't study enough on whether or not the new version would cause other serious issues as well. As the lady said 'looks like you jumped the gun.'
I ended up removing myself from the site as it was no longer helpful.

Up and until 22.04 I never had issues with the drivers for my monitor. After going to 22.04 I only had 2 options for resolution and neither had a refresh rate listed.
22.04 removed all stored data on my display and manually adjusting/Increasing magnification just caused more visual problems.
Hope that helps.

[MAFoElffen]

Can you mount your two drives now?

[wss7819]

When I am in the drives program or when I try to mount from the side menu of the desktop I am unable to mount the drives.
Thank You for the response.
The drives are still unavailable to me.

[TheFu]

If you have NTFS corruption, use MS-Windows to resolve it, not Linux. All non-native file system tools are hacked together, reversed engineered, to get something working. How well that "something" works is mostly chance. About once a month, my only NTFS file system gets corrupted and I'm forced to reformat it, losing all data is contains at the time. OTOH, I haven't had any major data loss with ext4 in over a decade - perhaps 2 decades.

I don't think fsck.ntfs exists. I always use fsck -t and don't call the direct programs. Just never got into the habit. Most of the time, I don't need to specify the type (-t) of file system, since the header for the file system knows that information already.

I'm still waiting to see the mount command used that you claim worked before.

[MAFoElffen]

'fsck.ntfs' used to be just a symlink to 'ntfsfix'... Which 'ntfsfix' is an utility from the package 'ntfsprogs' that is a default installed package...

You are right, that symlink is no longer there. Dang. LOL.

+1 with TheFu...

As I mentioned earlier, usually if a NTFS filesystem goes awry, I fix that directly with Windows, which that is native to it, BUT... You haven't had Windows in 10 years. Why still have a filesystem that is not native to anything you have? I suggested that when you do get access to the data, you should make plans to get it onto an ext4 filesystem...

---

Back to looking at it. You said this started when you upgraded the release to 23.10...

If you boot from an Ubuntu Installer 23.04 or 22.04 LiveUSB, can you mount it and see your data?

If not, then I'll give you directions to repair the filesystem from a Windows 10 install disk...

[wss7819]

william@william-FK522AA-ABA-a6544f:~$ mount /dev/sda1/
mount: /dev/sda1/: can't find in /etc/fstab.
william@william-FK522AA-ABA-a6544f:~$ mount /dev/sda/
mount: /dev/sda/: can't find in /etc/fstab.
william@william-FK522AA-ABA-a6544f:~$ sudo mount /dev/sda1/
[sudo] password for william: 
mount: /dev/sda1/: can't find in /etc/fstab.
william@william-FK522AA-ABA-a6544f:~$

When I try to open from the sidebar or drives program I receive a message stating

"error: Failed to mount “Seagate Expansion Drive”: Error mounting /dev/sda1 at /media/william/Seagate Expansion Drive: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda1, missing codepage or helper program, or other error"
A catch all explanation.

NOTE: I have been replying to last message and I receive message stating duplicate posts.So here it is here:

When I use the mount script for both drives:
-Icon drops off desktop and file manager
-Disks program show as mounted
-unable to locate disks
-unable to access drives


Using the umount script:
-the icons return to
-receive error message when I try to open disk

[MAFoElffen]

Try these commands to mount them:

sudo mkdir /mnt/drive1 /mnt/drive2
sudo mount -t ntfs -o defaults,windows_names,uid=1000,gid=1000,fmask=0002,dmask=0002,rw /dev/sda1 /mnt/drive1
sudo mount -t ntfs -o defaults,windows_names,uid=1000,gid=1000,fmask=0002,dmask=0002,rw /dev/sdb1 /mnt/drive2

When you go to unmount them, then do

sudo umount /mnt/drive1
sudo umount /mnt/drive2