Failed to start systend-fsck-root

ReillyBrogan

The most important thing is to clone your partition to another disk and perform any file recovery operations against that clone. Don't do any recovery operations against the original partition since the wrong command can make it worse or data recovery impossible. There's a fair bit of recovery information on the Arch wiki here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/file_recovery

Mick

ReillyBrogan alrighty thanks. Ill take a closer look at the wiki here. i plan on getting a new drive but id prefer to get all the data i can off it to make cloning as easy as possible. My hardest thing is going to be making the drive talk so i can do a transfer. While we're here, do you know any programs to make complete backups, kind of like time machine on mac? I usually have timeshift set up but it does no good if the hard drive fails lol

ReillyBrogan

TBH if there's nothing on the drive you really care about I'd just buy a new drive and re-install Solus onto it. That's going to be the most reliable way forward. I'd only attempt data recovery if you absolutely need some file or data that is stored on the old drive.

I definitely wouldn't continue to use the old drive now that it's showing signs of failing. SSDs like to fail hard and fast and even if you're able to fix the partition somehow it'll probably just happen again.

BuzzPCSOS

Although I have not had reason to use it (thankfully!) Dr.Parted is a bootable OS designed with many recovery options built in. Listing the installed features may help you to find the tool you need to use.
I know it seems silly, but have you tried booting from the original Solus install media as this would give a good indication of the viability of your laptop hardware. All versions of Solus have some tool that will allow you to access hard drive SMART information which can give an indication of the health of the SSD.
I hope you manage to get your system up and running again soon.

Mick

BuzzPCSOS Thanks for the suggestions! I am going on a business trip so I wont be able to tackle this for several days. I have tried to boot a Ventoy USB stick but for some reason its not working, even with USB in the first boot order. But I havent tried to do that with the hard drive removed yet. That is on the list of things to try!

BuzzPCSOS

Mick If Solus wont boot from a USB stick then a quick check on RAM health could be worth a try as the Live environment loads into and runs from RAM.
Some computers have a RAM check tool (and a comprehensive hardware test) in the BIOS which is a good place to start, otherwise a mix and match of RAM sticks might be the way to go if you can't boot into a 3rd party diagnostic tool instead.
The ram thing might be a red herring here, definitely worth trying to boot to Solus Live with the hard drive removed as a badly messed up hard drive can stop a successful boot from other media..

Mick

BuzzPCSOS Good idea. Before i left home, I put the hard drive into another laptop. I tried booting a live environment with the same laptop to make sure Ventoy wasn’t broken. Well, the hard drive is still throwing the same errors and the stick works. So i have a bad hard drive and bad laptop. 🙃

Maybe the RAM was failing that was allocated to the VM and subsequently it failed and the corruption bled over to the hard drive? I’m no computer engineer but this is interesting.

BuzzPCSOS

Mick

Mick So next you need to check hard drive SMART status. Depending on which version of Solus you are using the System Info program, the Discs program or KDE Partition Manager can be used to check hard drive status. Generally SMART status can give a good indicator of wether the drive is failing or just has data corruption. Drives with data corruption have a better chance of repair and file recovery whereas a failing SSD is likely to fail completely when data recovery is attempted, hence the suggestions to clone the main partition by @ReillyBrogan.

Mick

Got home and i managed to get the ol laptop to run a live instance of Solus. Changed a setting in the BIOS. In the live environment, got this output on Disks:
Filesystem Damaged. Filesystem ext4 on SATAFIRM S11 needs repairing.

SMART data & self tests say: Self-assessment : Threshold not exceeded. Overall Assessment: Disk is OK

I’m thinking its corruption, not hardware failure. Its giving me good information on the disk size usage. So now I’m waiting on my new hard drive to come in the mail so i can clone it and perform recovery.

Bear with me, its giving me errors when i try to upload a picture off my phone.

Mick

BuzzPCSOS

Taking a partition image is definitely a good start if you can afford the luxury of time to do it. After that there should be a disc check option on KDE Partition Manager (Plasma) or Discs (Budgie or Gnome) where you can scan and repair hard drive corruption / Filesystem damage.

Mick

BuzzPCSOS yes indeed. I’m definitely going to wait until i can make an image, I’m in no rush to screw up my drive and for sure lose my data. Though, it is mighty tempting to give the scan and repair button a bit old press! I didn’t take a close look when i was on the live instance, which menu has the option to make a clone?

BuzzPCSOS

Your best bet would be to use a bootable environment like Dr.Parted which has many tools to deploy partition backup or maybe GParted .
As I have mentioned before, thankfully I have never needed to use these tools as I keep multiple backups of everything. So I am afraid determining the best tool to use and how to use it will mostly be a matter of searching the internet. Dr.Parted covers a good range of the most popular options.
Creating a reliable and removable backup (disc caddy drive) for your files would be a good thing to do with any SSDs that are spare after your recovery is done.
There could be some tools that can be utilised from the live boot version of Solus. Included software varies depending on which version of Solus you are running and I don't know which version you are using which is why I have suggested 3rd party tools.

Mick

BuzzPCSOS I just downloaded DrParted. I'll be using that once my drive comes in, and in the meantime I will be researching those tools. Soon I think I will be setting up a home server with a RAID for my important data. I have my backups and flashdrives of data. As far as images of the entire system, man, I would love something that is intuitive and easy to use like Apples Time Machine. Plug and play. I havent found anything that really replicates that. Timeshift is enabled on my other machines but it does no good with hardware failure or corruption.

Mick

Is it possible to put a clone on a flashdrive for the recovery? My order has been delayed. Which is kinda annoying. Just shipped today.

BuzzPCSOS

Mick I don't think this would be a great idea. Generally USB sticks have slower read and write speed than a hard drive. Also as it is the entire hard drive that can't be accessed the backup would need to be as big as all the data on the corrupted drive. Some snapshot tools will create an image the same size as the hard drive.
Note. This information may no longer be completely accurate as I attempted this many years ago (Win XP Days). As I remember I decided that it all took too long so took a chance on disc repair which was successful. New tech is a wonderful thing.

endumiuz

I just skimmed through this, so I might have missed something, but it seems you tried running the fsck on the wrong partition in your first post. According to the output of fsck and your screenshot from Disks, that was your swap partition. Your ext4 partition seems to be at /dev/sda3.

Mick

endumiuz that is correct. I did that after a brief search online on different places for similar kinds of hard drive corruption and then I decided I wanted to seek professional advice before making the situation worse. I also, got confused on which partition was which. Thank you for pointing that out!

Mick

Success! I got my new hard drives, and i booted up Drparted and copied the main partition /dev/sda3 onto the new hard drive. Then, i ran a file recovery and it granted me access to everything once complete. Then, on another laptop, i mounted the new drive and have now copied all the data i need! Well, except for things that i can’t access without sudo privileges. EDIT:running the file browser in root let me copy these files 🙂

So i have my files! A whole copy of the hard drive. So, now, the question is, can i do a fresh install of solus and just copy/paste the files over? In other words, is it possible to do a full restoration to get things back the way they were? In the meantime since i have all my files, i think I’m

gonna try to repair the old disk.

BuzzPCSOS

A disc repair definitely sounds in order now!
The Solus live session has GUI tools to check and repair the faulty partition. Discs on Budgie or Gnome, KDE Partition Manager on Plasma.
Also a ram test could be a good plan now things are working well.
Edit: Spelling correction.

Mick

BuzzPCSOS i will provide updates as we go along! For now, I’ll be looking into the disk repair and ram check.