Filesystem vanishes, kernel panic on next boot ?

Ubuntu Intrepid

I was working with an Adobe AIR application doing drag 'n drop stuff and when I went to test the application nothing happened so I clocked my system monitor to look if there was a process running and received a message telling me that the system monitor doesn't exist.

Strange. So I try a few other menu items with the same results then finally go to reboot via terminal and then I find out that sudo doesn't exist either. I couldn't even "ls /" without it telling me it didn't exist.

It's like the filesystem just vanished all of a sudden.

After killing the power and starting the system up the normal loading screen hangs with the progress bar stuck in the middle while bouncing back and forth.

After killing the power again and trying to boot into recovery mode this time it hangs on a message telling me /something/init dosn't exist, there's no previous session/image and finishes with a Kernel Panic not syncing message.

When I try to boot from a live CD it gets to the menu and when I try to run Ubuntu without any change to the system it hangs during boot.

The only thing else I can think of that was strange is that the update manager appeared to be working either when, or right after this all started, I saw the icon in the taskbar and that icon vanished right before I killed the power.

I'm on an older system I generally use as a server right now and appear to be stuck with a 640x480 resolution at the moment...

I'm nothing short of baffled.

I can use a live CD to get to an (initramfs) prompt, where I can mount /dev/sda1 and traverse through the filesystem.

I'd like to just move the drive into this system, copy all of my important files to another drive, and reinstall over the other drive, but the hang I get trying to start from a Live CD without altering the system worries me.

Wow, I think you managed to accidently kill a linux machine, thats cool.

GRUB problem? Something screwed up your MBR?

When I placed the disk in another system I could mount it and look through the filesystem just fine. I even reduced the size of the main partition by one Gig using parted thinking maybe it would repair something that had been corrupted, but that was a no-go.

"/" had no files nor links to "initrd.img" or "vlinuz" , just the usual folders. I'm writing down the targets of those links now because I have a hunch I may have been able to just create those missing links and been good to go, I have no idea what those two files/links are though.

I was able to put another disk in this system, get a Live CD to boot into a usable enviroment, transfer files/logs, unmount the primary drive and allow a fresh install to use the entire drive. I'm putting everything together on the fresh system now.

It was the strangest thing, one minute I was using the Adobe AIR SDK from the commandline to package an AIR file on my Desktop, the next minute I'm getting errors telling me files don't exist, like I'd accidently run something like "rm -r *".

I looked through the logs, here's the last part of bash_history.


That last ../../bin/adt/... was when it just didn't respond and I tried to look at the system monitor, then I kept getting non-existant file errors, even when I tried to restart from the menu, which is when I tried to restart via bash and got the error again so I tried to look in "/" and it didn't exist.

I still had a desktop and menus.

I had a syslog that didn't appear to have anything special in it with the exception of the last line being something about an "execl" function or something. Apparently it got overwritten while I was moving disks around though because the log entries have todays date.

In any event I have a usable system again and the only thing I've lost is time and part of my mind. Hell the cookies to log in to Ozzu for my Opera profile were still good just now heh.

I think it's time to invest in an external HDD considering a TB drive is roughly $100 and would be more than enough for me.
I can deal with reinstlling programs as I need them once in awhile since I tend to be lazy and don't uninstall stuff very often, but jumping through hoops to save my important files is getting old. It doesn't matter what OS I use, it's a pretty safe bet that I'm going to have something like this happen once in a blue moon no matter what.

Very strange. This "exact" problem happened to me when Adobe AIR asked for SU password to update itself. and I mean exactly the same behavior on Ubuntu 8.10, same error, same missing of files on root,... . I need to revive the PC w/o reinstalling b/c I have a licensed program installed on it which I am not a subscribed anymore so they will not give me the installation code until I pay again!

I searched the web and can say that once of files that /sbin/init calls are corrupted. I cannot find which one and of course I cannot find how to solve it!

Any help is HIGHLY appreciated.

I am not sure, I may be answering a different question.

To boot my computer like before; after the OS did not appear I went into the live Ubuntu CD and did this:

Alternately, other than going to my original partitioning diskmgmt.msc, I would use TeraBytes software to boot the CD. You may easily search it in Google and try it.

There is a PDF recording of my work but I think it is far too normal to share.

I hope it helps a little.

I tried that but Grub was okay and it didn't solve the problem. My feeling was one of the files of /sbin/init that reads to initiate the system was missing. I just restore an old backup and now it is up and running (and my paid program is working too - lucky me). Adobe needs to pay attention to its own update procedure and not screw ppl's computers.

I also had this exact error when upgrade Adobe Air. Apparently air screws up your libraries. It had somehow removed my /lib64 directory, so it broke almost every binary on my system. The solution was just to boot from a live cd, mount my root paritition somewhere, then make a symlink from /lib to /lib64. As soon as I did that and rebooted, everything came back up fine.

I wish I had this post a week ago, it would have saved me from ... But I should say thank you so much for sharing your experience with the rest. It clearly states something is wrong with Adobe AIR and Ubuntu amd64 (or maybe more). Somebody needs to file a bug report with Adobe!

Again thanks,