Ufdjrw

TLDR;

• Clean install of Ubuntu 18.04


• Installed Nvidia NVS 510 drivers sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall -
  got 4 screens working as expected


• After rebooting I get an error flash up that says:

/dev/sda2: recovering journal

/dev/sda2: clean, 187162/30490816 files, 4536721/121965056 blocks

• After rebooting I randomly get 1 of 3 outcomes:
  
  
  • 1. signal lost to the screen, num lock light off and unresponsive - dead in the water
    
    
  
  
  • 2. boots normally
    
    
  
  
  • 3. picks up bootable USB and shows me that menu, booting into Ubuntu sometimes fails sometimes doesn't
    
    
  
  

LONG VERSION:

So I have a clean Ubuntu 18.04 install.

I then installed the Nvidia NVS 510 drivers to support 4 screens. I installed this using: sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall

After rebooting I get an error flash up that says:

/dev/sda2: recovering journal

/dev/sda2: clean, 187162/30490816 files, 4536721/121965056 blocks

And then the screen loses signal and the num lock light goes off and doesn't respond - dead in the water at that point.

I put a bootable USB stick in and tried to use fsck without any joy as I couldn't umount the /dev/sda2 partition (more on this in a moment).

I then just selected boot as normal and somehow it booted in me in as normal.

I then used the machine to do some work. Did sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade and rebooted.

This time the USB bootable didn't appear and I was dead in the water again. I went into the BIOS and moved the USB up the boot order (it had somehow moved down?!) but no boot menu.

I then just kept restarting every time I was dead in the water and after about 3-4 boots it booted into Ubuntu no problem - weird!!

So I then shut down and started the reboot cycle again, this time I got a USB boot menu! I just selected Ubuntu and it failed to boot. So I carried on restarting and after about 5 times it booted up like normal (still with the recovering journal etc.. messages but it boots into login and all 4 screens work).

What is going on?? The fact it's seemingly random what it does when it boots is making this very difficult to diagnose!

This is the out from sudo fsck -fn /dev/sda2:

e2fsck 1.44.1 (24-Mar-2018)
Warning! /dev/sda2 is mounted.
Warning: skipping journal recovery because doing a read-only filesystem check.
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Inodes that were part of a corrupted orphan linked list found. Fix? no

Inode 3276897 was part of the orphaned inode list. IGNORED.
Inode 3277117 was part of the orphaned inode list. IGNORED.
Inode 3277148 was part of the orphaned inode list. IGNORED.
Inode 3282800 was part of the orphaned inode list. IGNORED.
Inode 3300994 was part of the orphaned inode list. IGNORED.
Deleted inode 9175055 has zero dtime. Fix? no

Inode 9175069 was part of the orphaned inode list. IGNORED.
Inode 23857339 was part of the orphaned inode list. IGNORED.
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Entry 'Local State' in /home/adamdry/.config/google-chrome (3277619) has deleted/unused inode 3304382. Clear? no

Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Unattached zero-length inode 3303875. Clear? no

Unattached inode 3303875
Connect to /lost+found? no

Pass 5: Checking group summary information
Block bitmap differences: -609152 -610368 -(13193300--13193303) -(13197243--13197245) -(13407945--13407947) -(13435314--13435315) -13475158 -13550912 -(95532034--95532036) -(95549965--95549966) -(95549978--95549979) -(95550586--95550594) +(95579694--95579702)
Fix? no

Free blocks count wrong for group #402 (4, counted=0).
Fix? no

Free blocks count wrong for group #410 (23378, counted=23376).
Fix? no

Free blocks count wrong for group #411 (23122, counted=23121).
Fix? no

Free blocks count wrong for group #2915 (22180, counted=22171).
Fix? no

Free blocks count wrong for group #2916 (8904, counted=8913).
Fix? no

Free blocks count wrong (116975747, counted=116976177).
Fix? no

Inode bitmap differences: -3276897 -3277117 -3277148 -3282800 -3300994 +3303875 -3304382 -9175055 -9175069 -23857339
Fix? no

Free inodes count wrong (30249200, counted=30249649).
Fix? no

Inode bitmap differences: Group 403 inode bitmap does not match checksum.
IGNORED.
Block bitmap differences: Group 402 block bitmap does not match checksum.
IGNORED.
Group 410 block bitmap does not match checksum.
IGNORED.
Group 411 block bitmap does not match checksum.
IGNORED.
Group 2915 block bitmap does not match checksum.
IGNORED.
Group 2916 block bitmap does not match checksum.
IGNORED.

/dev/sda2: ********** WARNING: Filesystem still has errors **********

/dev/sda2: 249616/30498816 files (0.4% non-contiguous), 4989309/121965056 blocks

I've tried removing the -n option so it actually fixes the disk however I get

e2fsck 1.44.1 (24-Mar-2018)
/dev/sda2 is mounted.
e2fsck: Cannot continue, aborting.

And upon running sudo umount /dev/sda2 I get umount: /: target is busy. so I don't know how to run fsck and get it to fix the issues.

I'm going to leave the machine logged in and running so I can try and run things to help diagnose the problem.

Any help is hugely appreciated!! :)