That is OK. I thought you had no grub menu and were only able to boot using the grub prompt.
Right, you have control of your machine. … can you identify
(in gparted) all the partitions that still exist?
Probably the Mint partition will be missing or empty
Then decide how to get it back… do you lose a lot if you do a fresh install?
Sorry, I just noticed there is further progress.
I think so… Testdisk is a last resort. Have faith in Timeshift.
Nothing to lose.
A lot more apps to install/customize maybe (I’m getting to old to remember…lol) but I just finished the Timeshift attempt of today’s Boot/Hourly restore (it took forever…) and it did not boot to grub. Something"FAILED" flashed so fast I couldn’t read it, then it tries to log me into a web console? Why? Is it because I set up SSH for use with the server?
I may have to do the Timeshift restore from one that is an entire backup (maybe as long ago as Oct 2023) in order to get everything working, but then I can probably move forward from there with a more current restore.
At this point, I can’t hurt anything 
I am still sitting at the web console login prompt and have tried everything I know to login, but its not working.
It can wait. Before closing Timeshift, it shows a message that if it fails to boot, come back and try a different snapshot restore. I will try that next.
Thanks,
Sheila
Try booting kubuntu now, and doing update-grub.
Grub may boot it better than timeshift
You may get back to my vote yet!
Kubuntu is gone since using Timeshift to restore LM. It did boot to the LM logo, then that error message in red said FAILURE: failed to detect available GPU card and “failed to start light display manager”.
Not sure how that is not restored from a backup snapshot. Since the web console for mint-desktop login is what it goes back to each time, I cannot update-grub from the current install.
I will boot up the live LM session and maybe I can figure out how to do it from there? Or try a different timeshift snapshot.
Thanks,
Sheila
I did find one forum where someone was getting the tty web console login after restoring one system Timeshift backup to a different one (which I did) and the solution was:
No wonder you can’t boot. Your UUIDs (Universally Unique Identifiers) may all be mismatched. If I’m right in my assessment, then you’ll have to load up a Live CD/USB, go to the new SSD, open up the ‘etc/fstab’ file on it, then change the UUIDs to the correct values for the filesystem(s) on the SSD. You can get the UUIDs with blkid or sudo blkid if it doesn’t work.
I guess I could run the live session and compare what I get in terminal with the fstab file and at least see if this is the case for me.
Sheila
I checked and that is not my issue. blkid shows the UUID in fstab is same as terminal output.
Sheila
Not sure how to do this in live session, but can I update-grub from here? I ran sudo os-prober and got
/dev/sda2: Linux Mint 21.3 Virginia (21.3):LinuxMint:linux
And even though it shows as mounted, running update-grub from “live” returns:
/usr/sbin/grub-probe: error: failed to get canonical path of ‘/cow’
I do not know how to get into that mounted volume in terminal. It’s currently mounted at:
/media/mint/UUID (/dev/sda2)
Thanks,
Sheila
You could run update-grub, but what it writes in grub.cfg will not persist… so there is no point.
I dont get it. If Timeshift does a proper restore, it should boot.
It clearly copied all the root filesystem back. What else could be wrong?
Only option would be to go to the grub> prompt and try and boot it with grub commands.
or
Use the live CD, mount the LM root filesystem, you have already checked fstab, but maybe you should check
/boot/grub/grub.cfg.
look at the lines starting with linux and see what the root=
parameter is set to. It should point to the root filesystem partition.
If you cant see anything, you could hide the grub.cfg file, and see if it will boot without it.
mv grub.cfg grub.cfg.hide
will hide it, and you can get it back if necessary
Sorry out of ideas.
Afterthought
If timeshift restored LM onto the Kubuntu partition, that is a different partition from where LM originally was?
Check your UUID’s again.
linux–
set root= ‘hd0,gpt2’
That looks right as the linux partition would be gpt2.
So get to grub prompt, are you talking grub shell or terminal in live session? I have chrooted after mounting the boot and sys, but I too am out of ideas…other than to attempt another Timeshift restore.
Thanks,
Sheila
I am still bothered by that GPU message. Why would it do that?
Sheila
Yes. You can get it from the grub menu… do you get a grub menu?
No. I get the normal messages at boot including those 2 Failure lines, then it goes to the tty1. And no matter that my login is Sheila Flanagan and I know my password, it fails to login to console. And I have even tried ALT-CTRL-F7, F1, they do nothing. So only choice is to reboot at that point.
So I have no grub shell.
Sheila
Strange. Lightdm failing is most likely because it could not
start the Xorg server. But cant detect the GPU card… that is
weird.
Can you boot in recovery mode?
Is all your LM on one partition? It is like it left something behind.
Since i deleted the partition with LM and gave space to Kubuntu, there is only one drive with the boot and linux partitions.
Without grub, I do not know how to get into recovery mode. Since I only get the tty1, I cannot get to anything without live session.
Sheila
Is there anything that can scan the current LM install and find errors? I tried using Rescuezilla, but I think it only looks at saved images when you use Verify. But I am unaware of any other tool to analyze the system for issues.
Sheila
Hey, I remembered how to get to recovery mode: hold down right shift while booting. So now I can select cuurent kernel recovery mode. Or should I get to grub shell?
Sheila
Okay. I used recovery to repair broken packages. It did. Rebooted back to recovery to use fsck and that failed with:
line 80: /et/default/rcS: No such file or directory
e2fsck: cannot continue, aborting
And in recovery mode I found what I suspected, and that was since installing cockpit for server control from linux mint, that is why we are getting that tty1 at startup, although Lord only knows why.
I will attempt another restore from Timeshift to see if that fixes it. At least if I go back farther than installing Cockpit, we might get rid of that tty1 prompt and get directly to grub (at least holding right shift, as it is hidden with only one OS).
Sheila
How are you booting without grub?
Grub was hidden with one OS. Holding right shift unhid it.
Sheila
