Yesterday all of a sudden Ubuntu (14.04) refused to boot with a strange message that it could not mount /boot/efi.
Running fsck from GRUB (Advanced menu) revealed this error
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb1,
missing codepage or helper program, or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so
mountall: mount /boot/efi [771] terminated with status 32
mountall: filesystem could not be mounted: /boot/efi
Opened root shell and tried to find the boot partition
# parted
GNU Parted 2.3
Using /dev/sda
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
(parted) print devices
/dev/sda (1000GB)
/dev/sdb (120GB)
(parted) select /dev/sdb
Using /dev/sdb
(parted) print
Model: ATA Samsung SSD 840 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 120GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 1049kB 538MB 537MB fat32 boot
2 538MB 112GB 111GB ext4
3 112GB 120GB 8466MB linux-swap(v1)
Ok, so the boot partition is #1 on /dev/sdb, i.e. /dev/sdb1
Tried to mount it manually
mount /dev/sdb1 /boot/efi
Same error as above
Ok, let's see the syslog as suggested in the message
dmesg | tail
New error message
FAT-fs (sdb1): IO charset iso8859-1 not found
Searching for this error found this post that suggested it is a problem with the dependency database.
Tried running this as suggested in the post
sudo modprobe nls_iso8859-1
but it complained that it could not load /lib/modules/3.13.0-83-generic/modules.dep.bin. This file existed but it was empty. But the file of the same name was non-empty in an older kernel directory.
So back in GRUB and selected the previous kernel version and Ubuntu booted normally.
Then tried this in an attempt to fix the package database
sudo apt-get check
It complained with some error and suggested the following command
sudo dpkg --configure -a
This finally fixed the issue. Afterwards Ubuntu booted normally with the latest kernel.
Still not clear what caused this glitch. Didn't run any upgrades or so before it.
Luckily it resolved without reinstall.
Running fsck from GRUB (Advanced menu) revealed this error
mount: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sdb1,
missing codepage or helper program, or other error
In some cases useful info is found in syslog - try
dmesg | tail or so
mountall: mount /boot/efi [771] terminated with status 32
mountall: filesystem could not be mounted: /boot/efi
Opened root shell and tried to find the boot partition
GNU Parted 2.3
Using /dev/sda
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
(parted) print devices
/dev/sda (1000GB)
/dev/sdb (120GB)
(parted) select /dev/sdb
Using /dev/sdb
(parted) print
Model: ATA Samsung SSD 840 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 120GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: gpt
Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 1049kB 538MB 537MB fat32 boot
2 538MB 112GB 111GB ext4
3 112GB 120GB 8466MB linux-swap(v1)
Tried to mount it manually
mount /dev/sdb1 /boot/efi
Same error as above
Ok, let's see the syslog as suggested in the message
dmesg | tail
New error message
FAT-fs (sdb1): IO charset iso8859-1 not found
Searching for this error found this post that suggested it is a problem with the dependency database.
Tried running this as suggested in the post
sudo modprobe nls_iso8859-1
but it complained that it could not load /lib/modules/3.13.0-83-generic/modules.dep.bin. This file existed but it was empty. But the file of the same name was non-empty in an older kernel directory.
So back in GRUB and selected the previous kernel version and Ubuntu booted normally.
Then tried this in an attempt to fix the package database
sudo apt-get check
It complained with some error and suggested the following command
sudo dpkg --configure -a
This finally fixed the issue. Afterwards Ubuntu booted normally with the latest kernel.
Still not clear what caused this glitch. Didn't run any upgrades or so before it.
Luckily it resolved without reinstall.
