Read Only File System After Upgrade from Ubuntu 14.10 to Ubuntu 15.04

james Ubuntu 15.04

I just upgrade a server from Ubuntu from 14.10 to Ubuntu 15.04. The server started okay and I was able to ssh in. However, the login prompt said that is was a “Read only file system”. This means that I wasn’t able to run any commands to fix the issue.

After a bit of searching, I found that the problem was that the UUID was incorrect in the /etc/fstab/

Before upgrading the fstab was:

UUID=18254707-08e8-494e-b456-938592928a5e /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1

After upgrading the fstab was:

UUID=815063a9-c956-44a6-ab11-05e1d0bb3a58 /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1

To fix the issue:

1) You need to find what the correct UUID is. You find this using the command:

ls -al /dev/disk/by-uuid/*

2) You need to boot into the server in recovery mode and edit the fstab.

I hope this helps someone

6 thoughts to “Read Only File System After Upgrade from Ubuntu 14.10 to Ubuntu 15.04”

  1. I have this same issue, however my fstab doesn’t have the above entries in it, so I’m unsure what I should change? Should I add the lines for each of my filesystem partitions?

    Reply

    1. What lines do you have in your fstab? Also what is the output of the “ls -al /dev/disk/by-uuid/* command. Thanks, James

      Reply

  2. Hi James, Many thanks, but I have now resolved the issue. After searching around I found some other people with the same issue and I ended up switching from systemd to upstart (the service manager used by ubuntu 14.10). This resolved the read only file system issue and another issue I was having with xrdp.

    All my fstab has in it is some lines mounting a samba share network drive. The main HD’s must be mounted elsewhere.

    Reply

    1. Could you share the link of the location of the fix – so that other people might be able to find it. This post gets a reasonable amount of traffic.

      Reply

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