"General error mounting file systems"

Question

No idea what I've done, but I just started getting this error everytime I boot.

Running Ubuntu 12.04.

I was able to see more of the boot log by removing splash and quiet from grub. I believe this is the culprit:

init: mountall main process (306) terminated with status 1

I've done as NikTh suggested, however my fstab is present and has the correct UUID:

ubuntu@ubuntu:/mnt/etc$ cat fstab
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
proc            /proc           proc    nodev,noexec,nosuid 0       0
# / was on /dev/sda5 during installation
UUID=8f1d7319-7383-4151-bb2b-db84fd079d50 /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1
# swap was on /dev/sda6 during installation
UUID=5dc94483-0bad-4afe-9b46-96ba0fb83b3c none            swap    sw              0       0

blkid:

ubuntu@ubuntu:/mnt/etc$ sudo blkid
/dev/loop0: TYPE="squashfs" 
/dev/sda1: LABEL="System Reserved" UUID="005C1A835C1A741E" TYPE="ntfs" 
/dev/sda2: UUID="4CFA26FDFA26E2C6" TYPE="ntfs" 
/dev/sda5: UUID="8f1d7319-7383-4151-bb2b-db84fd079d50" TYPE="ext4" 
/dev/sda6: UUID="5dc94483-0bad-4afe-9b46-96ba0fb83b3c" TYPE="swap" 
/dev/sdb1: UUID="BE98191D9818D5AD" TYPE="ntfs" 
/dev/sdc1: LABEL="MULTIBOOT" UUID="3226-D49A" TYPE="vfat" 

Also, fsck does not seem to find any problems:

ubuntu@ubuntu:/$ sudo fsck /dev/sda5
fsck from util-linux 2.20.1
e2fsck 1.42 (29-Nov-2011)
/dev/sda5: clean, 211250/8994816 files, 2044589/35973120 blocks

How can I fix this? If additional information is required, I can provide.

Answer 1

This error is usually related to a missing fstab file. Probably you delete it by accident or something.

Boot from a LiveCd/Usb and mount the partition with Ubuntu. The root partition (if you have separated /home and /root partitions). You can see in which partition Ubuntu is installed with this command

sudo fdisk -l

search for the Linux system with id: 83

Then connect and search for the fstab.

This is an example if your Ubuntu root partition is on /dev/sda2. Open a terminal and

sudo mount /dev/sda2 /mnt 
cd /mnt && cat etc/fstab

If the result is similar to "/etc/fstab: No such file or directory" then you must create another /etc/fstab file.

If the fstab file opens , then check there for mistakes (you made) in the UUID's... etc. You can see the current UUID's with the command sudo blkid

If you were prudent and you have a fstab.bak (backup) file then you can easily restore it with this command

sudo cp /mnt/etc/fstab.bak /mnt/etc/fstab

Good Luck.

EDIT due to new info

Boot from a Live CD/USB of Ubuntu. Same architecture (32bit or 64bit) as your corrupted system. Then follow this procedure to chroot to your corrupted system. The chroot procedure ends with sudo chroot /mnt command.

After chroot successfully full update your system with following commands

apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade 

sudo not needed here, because you are already root.

Answer 2

It looks like you may have a failing hard drive. I hope that you have your data backed up!

You have to fsck the drive manually, preferably from a LiveCD, just press Ctrl+Alt+T on your keyboard to open Terminal. When it opens, run the command(s) below:

sudo fsck -fv /dev/sdaX

Make sure that you replace the X with the partition number.

Note: When using fsck, or any other utility that deals with partition make sure that you hace an up-to-date backup.

-f Force checking of file systems, even when they are marked clean.

-v Causes more extensive messages to be displayed during the file system checks (verbose mode).

To answer geezanansa last comment, of a root-kit possibility. To check for possible root-kit, you can use rkhunter