Public bug reported:

As still happens reasonably often with Ubuntu, when my laptop locks up
and I am forced to power-cycle it, the system (by default) comes back in
an unusable state:

1. It skips fsck on startup because I'm on battery.  
2. My root filesystem (JFS) is apparently detected as not having been cleanly 
unmounted, so the system mounts it read-only
3. Naturally, X refuses to start, but worse
4. I can't even log in at a virtual terminal to fix things because... the 
filesystem is read-only.

The only fix is to boot up in single-user mode, drop to a root shell
prompt, do

 #mount -o remount,rw /
 # fsck /

Then I can resume the normal boot process.

Apparently according to
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/e2fsprogs/+bug/89752 a lot of
people thought that skipping fsck when not on AC power was a wonderful
idea, but it is the beginning of a perfect storm of hassle on my system.
The fsck, once I manage to get to a root shell, only takes a couple
seconds, and it would be infinitely better for me if that were done
automatically regardless of A/C power state.  I don't know why people
use ext3 on laptops anyway; it takes forever to fsck
(http://www.sabi.co.uk/Notes/linuxFS.html#fsFeats).

So there are two serious problems here:

1. fsck is skipped
2. can't login if the root FS is mounted read-only

and a couple suggestions:

3. Ubuntu should probably not install ext3 by default on laptops :-)
4. The installer should probably partition the disk by default so that whatever 
part of the disk that needs to be writable for login is probably writable even 
in case of an unclean shutdown.

This is ubuntu 8.10

** Affects: ubuntu
     Importance: Undecided
         Status: New

-- 
System unusable on battery after incomplete shutdown
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/316200
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu.

-- 
ubuntu-bugs mailing list
ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs

Reply via email to