Stuck in emergency mode, cannot restore snapshot with Timeshift

[Susorodni]

So yesterday I was playing a game when all of the sudden my computer completely freezed up. I restarted my computer and was stuck with this text left on my screen:

[        3.773317] ldm_parse_tocblock(): Cannot find TOCBLOCK, database may be corr
upt.
[        3.773326] ldm_parse_tocblock(): Cannot find TOCBLOCK, database may be corr
upt.
You are in emergency mode. After logging in, type "journalctl -xb" to view
system logs, "systemctl reboot" to reboot, "systemctl default" or "exit"
to boot into default mode.
Give root password for maintenance
(or press Control-D to continue)

Now, I've seen this screen before and I had just simply restored a backup using timeshift. However, when I attempted to restore a snapshot from a Live USB, and Timeshift gives an error when I select my drive

There are no snapshots on this device

...which can't be true because I can access the folders of all my snapshots at @/timeshift-btrfs/snapshots. However, when I open info.json on each of them, it is corrupted and filled with squares.

Could someone please help me fix this problem so I can access my computer? I would greatly appreciate it!

[filo]

Maybe you could try to chroot from the live USB into your system and launch
sudo btrfs check
In case of errors then you could try
sudo btrfs check --repair

[Susorodni]

I ran the

sudo btrfs check

command and it found no errors. Should I try running the

sudo btrfs check --repair 

command as well?

[filo]

No, I think the repair is always a bit risky...

[regularCoder]

At the "recovering journal" error, hit the Enter key to enter maintenance mode, then at the # prompt, type:

journalctl -xb

And post the output

[Susorodni]

The output was over 1000 lines long, so I got some pictures of colored errors that I thought were important:

Let me know if I need to post more information

[regularCoder]

Ah, I cant find the order of the images. Go through the logs and post anything looking like errors.

[Susorodni]

Okay so I was able to check the @log directory of my boot device with a live USB and this was what the output was for boot.log:

e%G[e[0;1;31mFAILEDe[0m] Failed to start e[0;1;39msystemd-guest-user.servicee[0m.
[e[0;1;31mFAILEDe[0m] Failed to start e[0;1;39msystemd-guest-user.servicee[0m.
[e[0;1;31mFAILEDe[0m] Failed to start e[0;1;39msystemd-guest-user.servicee[0m.
[e[0;1;31m TIME e[0m] Timed out waiting for device e[0;1;39m/dev/disk/by-uuid/9c11b4d9-dc2f-4167-bc12-76b80a3e5b53e[0m.
[e[0;1;38;5;185mDEPENDe[0m] Dependency failed for e[0;1;39m/mnt/timeshift/backupe[0m.
[e[0;1;38;5;185mDEPENDe[0m] Dependency failed for e[0;1;39mLocal File Systemse[0m.
[e[0;32m OK e[0m] Finished e[0;1;39mTell Plymouth To Write Out Runtime Datae[0m.
[e[0;32m OK e[0m] Finished e[0;1;39mCreate Volatile Files and Directoriese[0m.
Starting e[0;1;39msystemd-guest-config.servicee[0m…
Starting e[0;1;39mNetwork Time Synchronizatione[0m…
Starting e[0;1;39mRecord System Boot/Shutdown in UTMPe[0m…
[e[0;32m OK e[0m] Finished e[0;1;39mRecord System Boot/Shutdown in UTMPe[0m.
[e[0;32m OK e[0m] Finished e[0;1;39msystemd-guest-config.servicee[0m.
[e[0;32m OK e[0m] Started e[0;1;39mNetwork Time Synchronizatione[0m.
[e[0;32m OK e[0m] Reached target e[0;1;39mSystem Time Sete[0m.

[filo]

Maybe, instead of launching timeshift from the live USB, you could use the USB to chroot into your system, then launch timeshift from terminal with
sudo timeshift --restore

[Susorodni]

It has the same error again, it either displays no backup devices when I use

sudo garuda-chroot

or it just says that there are no snapshots.
It also doesn’t work when I use

sudo chroot

[SGS]

Grub fails after update

chroot steps in garuda linux from live garuda usb sudo mkdir /mnt sudo mount /dev/sdxy /mnt sudo garuda-chroot /mnt/@ now you should be chrooted in garuda if the system is installed in legacy bios then do the following in the chroot grub-install /dev/sda if its installed on efi first mount the efi partition ie fat32 partition from inside the chroot mount /dev/sdxy /boot/efi then grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=garuda --recheck then updat…

[Susorodni]

I followed those instructions and it still showed no snapshots for me:

[fbodymechanic]

To be honest - it sounds like you're having a hardware issue - your SSD/NVME or whatever you have sounds like it could be about to die and that's why you aren't seeing any snapshots.

This may suck to hear - but I hope you've got backups.

[Susorodni]

Well I thought that I did have backups with Timeshift up until the info.json file got corrupted. However, I found another similar thread were someone mentioned replacing the corrupt info.json: Json files describing the snapshots messed up · Issue #313 · teejee2008/timeshift · GitHub

It should be possible to create new snapshot. Then you can use the info.json from there. If not: here is one of mine. For me it worked just replacing the damaged json with a working one.

  "created" : "1544955020",
  "sys-uuid" : "46b1f5a5-00b4-4ce1-a181-dc815668c599",
  "sys-distro" : "arch",
  "app-version" : "18.9.1",
  "file_count" : "0",
  "tags" : "ondemand",
  "comments" : "",
  "live" : "false",
  "type" : "btrfs",
  "subvolumes" : {
    "@home" : [
      "@home",
      "839",
      "291924873216",
      "5621964800",
      "46b1f5a5-00b4-4ce1-a181-dc815668c599"
    ],
    "@" : [
      "@",
      "838",
      "18277564416",
      "239136768",
      "46b1f5a5-00b4-4ce1-a181-dc815668c599"
    ]
  }
}

The only thing is that I do not know what to replace in this new info.json file. What do I need to change in order to make this work with mine?

[fbodymechanic]

Good luck. You're WAY over my expertise on that one.

[filo]

Maybe you could try creating a dummy snapshot from the USB and use the relevant info.json created there to replace the others.

[Susorodni]

That's something that I tried to do, but for some reason Timeshift won't let me make a backup; it has the "create" option greyed out and it said that it's "restore only"

[SGS]

Do you walk through the settings?

Damn, not possible in live mode.

[Susorodni]

What? Which settings? Do you mean the setup through Timeshift? If so, yes I did and it said that there were no snapshots detected

[SGS]

@SGS

Damn, not possible in live mode.

°°° ^^^^ again,