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Asked: 2024-09-25T04:07:47+05:30 In:

I’m encountering an issue when booting up my Ubuntu system, where it gets stuck attempting to recover the journal. What steps can I take to resolve this problem and successfully start my operating system?

So, I’ve been having this really frustrating issue with my Ubuntu system lately, and I’m hoping someone here can help me out. I usually boot up my laptop without any hiccups, but recently, it’s been getting stuck on this screen that says something like “Recovering journal” during startup. I honestly have no idea what’s causing it, but it just hangs there for ages, and nothing happens. It’s kind of annoying because I rely on this machine for work and personal projects.

I’ve tried a few things already—I formatted the journal file system with a command that I found online, but it hasn’t made a difference. I even thought about booting from a live USB to check if my hard drive was acting up, but that didn’t yield any results either. I suspect it might be something significant with the ext4 filesystem since I’ve heard that can sometimes cause issues, but I’m not very technical when it comes to Linux internals.

There was a moment where I thought it could be related to an improper shutdown that I may have had a while back, which could have led to file system corruption. Are there any specific tools or commands that I can run from a live session to check the health of the file system? I just want to make sure that I’m not compromising my data or settings while trying to fix this.

I’ve also seen some folks suggest booting into recovery mode, but I’m not entirely sure what steps I should be taking from there. Should I try running fsck, or is it better to take a different approach? And if fsck is the way to go, can someone explain the best way to execute that without messing anything up?

I’m definitely open to any advice or suggestions you might have. I just want to get my system up and running again without losing any of my important files. Thanks in advance for any help!

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    2 Answers

    1. Ubuntu Stuck on “Recovering journal” – Help!

      It sounds like you’re dealing with a pretty frustrating issue, so let’s see if we can get your system back on track.

      When you see “Recovering journal”, it usually means that the system is trying to fix some issues with the filesystem. Since you mentioned that you suspect an improper shutdown, that could definitely be a culprit!

      Check Your File System Health

      Booting from a live USB and running some commands can help. Here’s how you can check the health of your ext4 filesystem:

      1. Boot from your live USB.
      2. Once in the live session, open a terminal.
      3. Run sudo fdisk -l to find your hard drive’s partition (like /dev/sda1).
      4. To check and fix the filesystem, run sudo fsck /dev/sda1 (replace with your actual partition).

      This command should help fix any errors it finds. Just follow the prompts!

      Using Recovery Mode

      If you prefer to boot into recovery mode:

      1. Restart your laptop.
      2. Hold Shift during boot to access the GRUB menu.
      3. Choose the recovery mode option.
      4. From here, you might see options like fsck or root (to drop to a root shell).
      5. If you select fsck, it will check for issues on your root filesystem.

      If you’re going to use the root option, remember to run fsck /dev/sda1 (substituting your drive information).

      Be Careful with Important Files

      Make sure to back up your important files before you start messing with system commands. It’s always better to be safe than sorry!

      Hopefully, one of these methods will help you sort out the problem. Don’t hesitate to ask if you have more questions or run into any issues. Good luck!

    2. It sounds like you’re experiencing issues with the ext4 filesystem, specifically related to journal recovery, which could be caused by an improper shutdown or corruption in the filesystem. Since you’ve already formatted the journal file system and attempted booting from a live USB without success, I recommend using fsck (file system consistency check) as the next step. To do this from a live session, first, boot into the Ubuntu live environment and open a terminal. You’ll want to identify your disk partitions by running sudo fdisk -l. Once you have identified your main partition (for example, /dev/sda1), you can run sudo fsck -f /dev/sda1. This command forces a check and attempts to fix any detected errors without altering data unnecessarily.

      If you’re able to boot into recovery mode, you can also run fsck from there. Restart your laptop, hold down the Shift key after the BIOS screen, and select the recovery mode option in the GRUB menu. Once in recovery mode, you can access a root shell and run fsck directly on your partitions in a similar fashion (fsck -f /dev/sda1). Make sure to unmount the filesystem before doing so—typically, you can run umount /dev/sda1 if it’s mounted. Remember, though, that performing filesystem repairs can sometimes lead to data loss, so back up any critical data when possible before executing these commands. After running fsck, reboot your system to see if the issue has been resolved.

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