Linux Repeated problems with XBMCbuntu
#1
Sad 
Hi guys,
I recently rebuilt my media centre with all new parts except for the case:
CPU - intel G1610
Mobo - ASRock H77 Pro-M
RAM - 4GB Crucial DDR3 PC-10600
SSD - Crucial v4 64GB SATA 3GB/2.5" SSD
HDD - 1TB WD green thingy
PSU - Antec VP 350W PSU
Case - Antec Veris Fusion Remote black

Installed XBMCbuntu. Video output is set to use hardware acceleration and to sync with framerate. Audio is via toslink S/PDif optical to my AV receiver, so I've set XBMC to output audio using coax/optical and enabled passthrough etc. Set up a SAMBA share to access my windows network, which works fine.
Tried to get my remote working (the antec case comes with an iMon type receiver built in plus a remote) and tried to get the LCD display working, but neither works yet.

It was kind of working, except periodically it was not finding the audio device and when this happened it would also struggle to play video files (major slowdown and stuttering video). Occasionally it also struggled to go through the menus, and would take 30 s between screens. The movie library sometimes is very slow to display thumbnails.

The biggest problem is it now fails to boot properly, giving me this message:
Code:
Quote:Filesystem check or mount failed. A maintenance shell will now be started. CONTROL -D will terminate the shell and continue booting after retrying sulogin: cannot open password database!
Segmentation halt.
Start: Did not receive a reply. Possible causes include: the remote application did not send a reply, the message bus security policy blocked the reply, the reply timeout expired, or the network connection was broken.

Anyone got any ideas what is going on? When i restart it just boots into some GRUB menu, but none of the options seem to work.
Pretty much the same thing happened a year ago when I last tried to set up a media centre. It had the same case, but with AM2+ components, and used XBMCbuntu 'Eden'. Could it be something to do with me trying to get the remote to work?

I don't understand why sometimes it all just works fine, but then i come to turn it on another day (or just reboot it) and it doesn't work. I also have no idea how to get it to boot into XBMC or XBMCbuntu now as the GRUB menu options don't seem to work.
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#2
Hi, it's booting into GRUB as there is a flag set on the disk to indicate it hasn't booted correctly previously.

When you say that none of the GRUB options seem to work, what options do you get exactly ? You should get at least one option with "(recovery mode)" at the end. Use the cursor keys to highlight that entry, and hit return to start booting. You should get a load of scrolling text as Linux starts to boot, and then arrive at a Recovery Menu. Can you get that far ?
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#3
Were you messing with your /etc/passwd file? Is only xbmcbuntu installed on this machine? Booting the live CD to mount / and inspect /etc/passwd /and /etc/shadow may help. Also I'd advise running fsck on that partition while you have the live CD going. Did you possibly hard reboot the machine?
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#4
Thanks for the replies!

Black_eagle - it gives me two options first: boot into ubuntu, or advanced options. Advanced options leads to 4 more options of ubuntu and ubuntu recovery for one version, then the same again for another version number. I'll try them all later this evening.

Doug piston: yes! that is a good point. To set up the SAMBA share I might have edited my password file. I'm very much a beginner with linux so not really sure how to do stuff and just follow guides i find on the web.
And yes i did hard reboot the machine.
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#5
OK, I understand you are new but NEVER touch the /etc/passwd file. That file has nothing to do with samba. Depending on what you've done and your skill level a simple re-install might be your best option here.

Isn't the Windows machine the server with the files you want to share files to the XBMC box? I
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#6
Agree with doug about a re-install, although if you can get to the recovery menu, you can choose to fsck (File System ChecK), reply yes to the question, and let it do its stuff. Once back at the recovery menu, choose the option for a root console, and type in the following:- passwd xbmc

when it prompts for the password, type in xbmc

If you're lucky, it won't error and will say that the password was sucessfully changed. If so, type reboot and see if gets to a gui login. For XBMCbuntu to boot straight into XBMC it needs to be shutdown/restarted from inside XBMC itself, otherwise you will end up with a login screen.
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#7
Thinking about it, i edited the smbpasswd file, not the passwd file, but IIRC both are in the etc/ folder so it's possible that i edited the wrong file (but i'm pretty sure I did not do this).

The files are on the xbmc box, so acting as the server. I want my windows machine to be able to read & write to the xbmc movies folder, but this needs to be by password. It worked fine after i got it set up, even after several reboots.
Turned the XBMC box on this morning and audio wasn't working and menu's were very slow to load, so I (hard) rebooted and then got error quoted above, and booting into the GRUB menu.

OK, thanks. Will try the suggested and re-install if it doesn't work.
Very tempted to try OpenElec instead of XBMCbuntu as I've read it's much easier to use.
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#8
For setting up Samba follow this. https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Samba/...erverGuide

Any other questions, feel free to ask.
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