Upgrading to Ubuntu 24 on my dual-boot laptop broke my filesystem table. Help!

[dragonfly41]

I can write what I would do. Cut your losses, lick your wounds and start again.
Buy a brand new SSD in an external powered container (not touching your current failed setup).
Create LiveUSB to install Ubuntu into your external container (best to use USB 3.0 port if you have one since USB 2.0 port is slow to run Ubuntu in an external SSD caddy).
Partition your external caddy for modern day EFI usage (not legacy).
Optionally install rEFInd (my favourite) so that in a GUI you see the various options.
Set your BIOS to boot into rEFInd (if you agree to install this grub manager).
Boot up your fresh Ubuntu. Remember no Windows at this stage just pure Ubuntu.
If you need Windows create a VM. Or buy modern Microsoft Windows. Or use your old system.
Start scavenging the files and applications from the old carcass. Your fresh Ubuntu can be setup to hunt for assets from old internal drive and pull into your reincarnated external Ubuntu in SSD/caddy. A long process and I recommend Recoll to index internal/external assets.
You can still retain the old internal system but your laptop is just the mothership and the real action is now in your new Ubuntu.
Look to Crucial.com to see external USB plugin SSD's working.

[ajgreeny]

We seem to be going round in circles here and getting no clues from the information you've given us so my suggestion, though probably not what you wanted to hear is this:-

Do you have backups of your personal files?
Assuming you do, (and if not why not?), the best way to proceed may be to reinstall your Ubuntu system and then restore your files.

Windows 7 should not be used online any more as it's been out of support now for a long time and is not secure so using a version of the Ubuntu family that requires lower resources may be your best choice in view of what I assume is a fairly old computer.

If you can run a live version of, for example Xubuntu, run terminal command
sudo fdisk - l
and show us the output here using code tags please, which will give us more detail of your disks and current partitions.

[yancek]

Do you have a current fstab file you are trying to use? If you have the line below you posted earlier in it you need to comment it out as it won't work. You can't have a / filesystem mount point on an ntfs partition so put a # at the beginning of the line as shown.

#UUID=7A7405AA70AE9E28 / ntfs defaults 0 1

In your last post, you indicate there was no separate /home partition which means the only possibility for the / filesystem is sda5. If you get the error you report in post 10 "Timed out waiting for device /dev/disk/by-uuid/9ce87bbe-ecfb-4856-96bc-2635c7d4a3b1" that is completely illogical unless that UUID changed for some reason and that would likely be bad news.

If you get the error you report "Dependency for SSSD Failed", have you done an online search for it? Take a look at the link below which has some suggestions. If you are making changes, keep notes of what you do.

If you want to continue trying to resolve this, post the output of fdisk -l suggested above as well as blkid and the current fstab file.

[machinus]

Do you have a current fstab file you are trying to use? If you have the line below you posted earlier in it you need to comment it out as it won't work. You can't have a / filesystem mount point on an ntfs partition so put a # at the beginning of the line as shown.

In your last post, you indicate there was no separate /home partition which means the only possibility for the / filesystem is sda5. If you get the error you report in post 10 "Timed out waiting for device /dev/disk/by-uuid/9ce87bbe-ecfb-4856-96bc-2635c7d4a3b1" that is completely illogical unless that UUID changed for some reason and that would likely be bad news.

If you get the error you report "Dependency for SSSD Failed", have you done an online search for it? Take a look at the link below which has some suggestions. If you are making changes, keep notes of what you do.

If you want to continue trying to resolve this, post the output of fdisk -l suggested above as well as blkid and the current fstab file.

There was only one line in the fstab file each time I tried to boot. There were no other lines in the file.

Using this line

/dev/sda5    /    ext4    defaults    0    1

gives the error "Timed out waiting for device" on boot.

fdisk shows the hard drive, the USB drive, and a bunch of /dev/loops.

Hard disk:

Disk /dev/sda: 232.89 GiB, 250059350016 bytes, 488397168 sectors
Disk model: Samsung SSD 840
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xdfed2d2c


Device     Boot     Start       End   Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sda1  *         2048 146802687 146800640    70G  7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3       146802688 163579903  16777216     8G 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda4       163581950 488396799 324814850 154.9G  5 Extended
/dev/sda5       163581952 488396799 324814848 154.9G 83 Linux

Live USB:

Disk /dev/sdc: 29.3 GiB, 31457280000 bytes, 61440000 sectors
Disk model: UDisk          
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x069140b2


Device     Boot    Start      End  Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sdc1  *         128 61439839 61439712 29.3G  c W95 FAT32 (LBA)
/dev/sdc2       61439931 61439993       63 31.5K ea Linux extended boot

[yancek]

/dev/sda5 / ext4 defaults 0 1

Is that what you have in your fstab file now?

Timed out waiting for device /dev/disk/by-uuid/9ce87bbe-ecfb-4856-96bc-2635c7d4a3b1

If you change your fstab to use the UUID example above instead of /dev/sda5, do you still get the above error? Have you run blkid again. That's the correct UUID from your earlier posts. Did you look at the /boot/grub/grub.cfg file and check your menuentry for Ubuntu?

[machinus]

Did you look at the /boot/grub/grub.cfg file and check your menuentry for Ubuntu?

The grub.cfg shows that UUID is the device for all the Ubuntu options.

If you change your fstab to use the UUID example above instead of /dev/sda5, do you still get the above error? Have you run blkid again.

If I boot with the file

UUID=9ce87bbe-ecfb-4856-96bc-2635c7d4a3b1 /home ext4 defaults 0 1

I get "Failed to start service for snap application cups" and then dropped a console where I have no network access or access to system utilities.

In the fdisk output I posted earlier, sda1 is indicates as the boot drive by the asterisk. Does that mean anything?

[Quarkrad]

As ajgreeny said - have you any backups? I don't think you have answered that question yet. I think your first move is to boot via a 'live cd' and drag off all your personal files, if you have no backups. At least you will have the piece of mind that if things go horribly wrong you have your personal files.

[dragonfly41]

+1 ... I offered same thoughts in post #11 but it falls on deaf ears (or is it eyes).

[oldfred]

You keep posting a mount of /home, but not / (root).
And you say you do not have a /home as a separate partition which would be the only way fstab would have a line to mount /home.

[yancek]

You need to change the entry you have show and been told to several times from /home as a mount point to / which it likely was originally.

[UUID=9ce87bbe-ecfb-4856-96bc-2635c7d4a3b1 / ext4 defaults 0 1