[SOLVED] error: unknown filesystem. grub rescue.

[davideluque]

Hello.

I have Debian 9 and Windows 10 installed in my computer.

My computer's battery does not work and someone disconnected it while it was frozen.

When I turn it on, it appears on the screen:

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error: unknown filesystem
grub rescue>

I have read on many pages solutions for this problem but apparently everyone can access the partition where the system is, I do not.

Even when I try to do

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sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt/linux

The terminal says: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda5 ...

I have a LiveUSB with Debian that I can use to fix the system, I just do not know how.

Thank you.

If this is not the right place to post this, please tell me where I can do it.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

I have a LiveUSB with Debian that I can use to fix the system, I just do not know how.

https://www.debian.org/releases/stretch ... 07.html.en

[kedaha]

Hi
Looks like the file system got corrupted due to pulling out the battery.
From the grub rescue prompt I reckon you can run fsck /dev/sda5
fsck must be run without mounting the partition.
I suppose fsck will have to be run manually without appending the -a (for automatic) flag.
But you should take a look at the fsck utility first so you know what you're doing.

[davideluque]

I have a LiveUSB with Debian that I can use to fix the system, I just do not know how.

https://www.debian.org/releases/stretch ... 07.html.en

Hello.

Thank you for your response.

I have taken a look on this page and it does not work for me. I did the following:

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grub-installer /dev/sda5 #returns: ls: /dev/sda5/proc: Not a directory.

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grub-installer '(hd0,msdos5)' #returns the same.

'
I am using the shell in the installer environment.'

Any ideas?

[davideluque]

Hi
Looks like the file system got corrupted due to pulling out the battery.
From the grub rescue prompt I reckon you can run fsck /dev/sda5
fsck must be run without mounting the partition.
I suppose fsck will have to be run manually without appending the -a (for automatic) flag.
But you should take a look at the fsck utility first so you know what you're doing.

Hello and thank you for your response.

The grub rescue prompt does not have the command fsck. However, the debian installer system does and when I do it I get the following:

fsck.ext4: Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read while trying to open /dev/sda5 Could this be a zero-length partition?

Two facts that may be useful:
1. With lsblk I know that Debian is installed in sda5 because that has the same space I allocated for it.
2. I am able to see Windows partition and other two partitions with the LiveCD but I can not see Debian (sda5).

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Try the top voted answer from this thread: https://unix.stackexchange.com/question ... -partition

[davideluque]

Try the top voted answer from this thread: https://unix.stackexchange.com/question ... -partition

Thank you so much, it worked!

For others who might have the same problem.
First you have to identify which is the block where the system is mounted, for this, I used the lsblk command. I knew that my block was /dev/sda5 because I recognized it by its size. If you are not sure, you can boot with gparted live and see the partitions with errors.

Then start the system with Debian live install, follow the steps of the most voted answer (not the one that was accepted).

Notes

I was never able to run the following command:

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mount -o sb=32768 /dev/sdxx /mnt/sdxx

Since the output was always about bad superblock/short read.

So what I did was go straight to run:

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e2fsck -fy -b 32768 /dev/sdxx

And my file system was working again.

I can not guarantee that this works equally for everyone as others may have different configurations, as mentioned in the most voted answer, fs superblocks size may be larger than 4096, or it may not be in 32768.

If you can try to recover your files with ddrescue first, I think it's the best idea. I couldn't do it (I didn't have an external disk) so I took a chance.