3mo ago

Sudden emergency

I am a Linux beginner but I really enjoyed it so far. So far. Since yesterday, my Linux (pop OS) only wants to boot into emergency mode. I have a suspicion, even though my Linux and Windows are located on different physical disks, somehow Windows does it's toxic ex lover things and somehow broke my Linux I assume. It's there a terminal command to somehow reorganise my boot files?

4 comments

The only interaction Windows would have with a Linux partition is fudging the boot record. If it's booting to emergency mode, you likely got a bad update. It should give you the option to boot to a previous working kernel if you hold down the shift or an arrow key while booting to grub. Just pick a previous known good version and start repair from there.
It probably gives some useful info. What does it say? Also, what changed between now and the last time it worked?
Bummer. Pop os is as bulletproof as any non immutable operating system i can imagine. I have booted into pop many times without experiencing this once and same goes for others i know.
Most likely, it really is windows messing with your stuff or the ssd is on its way out. Only time I did experience similar things was when the ssd was becoming unreliable.
I did recently hear of hybernation being a problem when dual booting when someone booted into windows in between while linux was hybernating.
I'd suggest booting a boot stick with a live stick and try from there. Since pop os is made by a company selling hardware, they have a pretty strong motivation to make their distro work. Check their website too https://support.system76.com/articles/bootloader/
Let me know if you need more help.
Windows can't read your linux partitions, it doesn't support them, so it's almost impossible for it to damage your installation. It used to be that it could mess with the bootloader, but since UEFI got implemented, that' become less likely.
What does it do when you boot into normal mode? Does it get to the login screen or not? Do you see error messages?
If you get to login but no further, it could be a problem with your user, like a bad shell setting, since rescue mode logs you in as root usually (I'm not very familiar with debian/ubuntu based distros), otherwise it could be you installed/updated/removed the wrong package(s), unfortunately as far as I'm aware apt doesn't have history rollback capabilities, so undoing that is going to be difficult.
This is an unpopular opinion, but when you're still inexperienced with linux, the quickest way to fix your system is just reinstalling. Back up your whole home dir beforehand and you'll just have to drop it back in place to get all your data and settings back. If you have more than one user you may want to be careful with the UID, you may have to chown -R the whole directory.