Computer wont boot into Linux | Linux Mint Community🍵 | Page 1

pliant wasp Mar 7, 2026, 4:27 PM

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I recently upgraded to the latest kernal, and booted successfully this morning to find that steam wouldnt launch games, so I tried a quick reboot, and now my PC is saying all 916GB on the main drive is suddenly full when I had about 150GB free before the reboot, CUPS has been failing to run, along with Account Services, i cant even get in while trying to boot on an older kernal, and when I try to clean the files through recovery options and through the root terminal, it feeds back an error that says there isnt enough space

obsidian pebble Mar 7, 2026, 4:37 PM

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pliant wasp I recently upgraded to the latest kernal, and booted successfully this morning t...

Considering what you describes and shown errors, you probably better backup what you need and do a fresh install...

pliant wasp Mar 7, 2026, 4:42 PM

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I was afraid of that, thankfully its mostly just games I will have to re-download, but an absolute pain because I haven't been able to find my boot device and im afraid I lost it in my recent move

obsidian pebble Mar 7, 2026, 4:43 PM

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pliant wasp I was afraid of that, thankfully its mostly just games I will have to re-downloa...

If those are steam games, you can backup existing steam folder and restore it after

pliant wasp Mar 7, 2026, 4:43 PM

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Thankfully I have them all backed up, because I cant even get to a point to access any files

obsidian pebble Mar 7, 2026, 4:44 PM

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I think you can access emergency prompt

deep sigil Mar 7, 2026, 4:45 PM

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pliant wasp Thankfully I have them all backed up, because I cant even get to a point to acce...

you can probably delete some caches n junk by booting the Mint live USB up

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it should let you examine the main drive (even comes with "Disk Usage Analyzer" on the live environment)

pliant wasp Mar 7, 2026, 4:45 PM

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I would have to get a new USB and make one, im afraid it got lost in my move

deep sigil Mar 7, 2026, 4:46 PM

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well see if you can get one as it's indispensible in these situations

cunning token Mar 7, 2026, 4:54 PM

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Can you try to boot into previous kernel?

pliant wasp Mar 7, 2026, 5:23 PM

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No, it will not allow me to boot into past kernals, I found a flash drive and made it into a boot drive, but it still wont let me boot from the drive as well, although it is possible I am doing so.ething wrong with that

obsidian pebble Mar 7, 2026, 5:27 PM

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wait, you created a bootable usb and it don't want to boot this usb neither ?

deep sigil Mar 7, 2026, 5:28 PM

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pliant wasp No, it will not allow me to boot into past kernals, I found a flash drive and ma...

show a pic of where the live-boot is getting stuck

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you can press Esc during the big linux Mint logo to show loading texts

cunning token Mar 7, 2026, 5:33 PM

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Also see if you can boot into recovery mode - root shell

pliant wasp Mar 7, 2026, 5:33 PM

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This popped up when I hit ESC during the logo

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I can get into root shell in recovery mode as well, but I haven't been able to get any results while in there, but I may also just not be running the proper codes

cunning token Mar 7, 2026, 5:35 PM

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If you can get into root shell, show us what

df -h

say

deep sigil Mar 7, 2026, 5:36 PM

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pliant wasp This popped up when I hit ESC during the logo

are u showing the live ISO boot process here?

pliant wasp Mar 7, 2026, 5:38 PM

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Yes? I took those photos while it was spitting those codes out, the network one popped up for only a second before it moved on to a text only screen prompting me to login, which then acts as just terminal for the entire PC

deep sigil Mar 7, 2026, 5:38 PM

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hmm

pliant wasp Mar 7, 2026, 5:38 PM

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rn_image_picker_lib_temp_a9e9c532-f307-4c1a-b22b-5eea00c90498.jpg

cunning token Mar 7, 2026, 5:39 PM

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no free space on root

deep sigil Mar 7, 2026, 5:39 PM

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probably some massive error logs

deep sigil Mar 7, 2026, 5:40 PM

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pliant wasp Yes? I took those photos while it was spitting those codes out, the network one ...

try booting in compat. mode from the live usb

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especially if nvidia or extremely new AMD video card

pliant wasp Mar 7, 2026, 5:41 PM

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Its nvidia

cunning token Mar 7, 2026, 5:41 PM

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I'd just try to free some free space up first

obsidian pebble Mar 7, 2026, 5:41 PM

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pretty strange to have the SSD totally full

pliant wasp Mar 7, 2026, 5:42 PM

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I have not been able to access files, and my SSD had plenty of space, at least 150GB free when I first booted up this morning, didn't download anything new

cunning token Mar 7, 2026, 5:43 PM

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Do you have too many timeshift snapshots? what does

timeshift --list

say?

pliant wasp Mar 7, 2026, 5:48 PM

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It has a stroke

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rn_image_picker_lib_temp_0e5ca850-bf6a-4a48-b6ed-202ce4fc2528.jpg

obsidian pebble Mar 7, 2026, 5:50 PM

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try to delete content of your download folder...

cunning token Mar 7, 2026, 5:52 PM

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let's see.... first you type

mount -o remount,rw /

then type

timeshift --delete

when asked what to delete, type 0 and press enter

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After it's done deleting, run

df -h

again

pliant wasp Mar 7, 2026, 5:57 PM

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Well, it threw errors, but seems to be attempting to still execute the command, but its just sitting at 0.00% complete

cunning token Mar 7, 2026, 5:57 PM

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photo it

pliant wasp Mar 7, 2026, 5:58 PM

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rn_image_picker_lib_temp_37638ffc-9796-4bcc-8c07-5f5953d70a67.jpg

obsidian pebble Mar 7, 2026, 5:59 PM

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maybe disabling access time write could help ?

pliant wasp Mar 7, 2026, 5:59 PM

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Im also having trouble getting it to boot from the USB, even changed the priority in the BIOS so it should be the first thing it boots from

obsidian pebble Mar 7, 2026, 5:59 PM

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pliant wasp Im also having trouble getting it to boot from the USB, even changed the priorit...

what problem ?

cunning token Mar 7, 2026, 6:00 PM

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I guess it needs some space to work. press ctrl+c to cancel

pliant wasp Mar 7, 2026, 6:00 PM

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It doesnt seem to do anything different, so im not sure if it is even booting from the bookable device I made

cunning token Mar 7, 2026, 6:01 PM

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Then what's your home folder?

pliant wasp Mar 7, 2026, 6:01 PM

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Normally its just the default home folder

obsidian pebble Mar 7, 2026, 6:01 PM

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pliant wasp It doesnt seem to do anything different, so im not sure if it is even booting fr...

probably not, or your problem is VERY serious

cunning token Mar 7, 2026, 6:03 PM

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pliant wasp Normally its just the default home folder

I meant the name

pliant wasp Mar 7, 2026, 6:03 PM

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The only change I made was updating to the newest kernal yesterday, I couldnt imagine that would basically brick my PC, which would be annoying, would have to recount my second drive and get everything set back up again for gaming

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I think i left the name as just home tbh

cunning token Mar 7, 2026, 6:04 PM

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you can see it with

ls /home

pliant wasp Mar 7, 2026, 6:05 PM

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Huh, guess I just named it after myself instead

obsidian pebble Mar 7, 2026, 6:06 PM

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yes, it's usually /home/<username>

cunning token Mar 7, 2026, 6:06 PM

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Ok, then type

du -h --max-depth=1 /home/polymorph/ | sort -hr

or however your home folder named

pliant wasp Mar 7, 2026, 6:07 PM

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I mean, I have 2 that pop up, but the second is my second disk I installed

cunning token Mar 7, 2026, 6:09 PM

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we need the one on the same disk as the system

pliant wasp Mar 7, 2026, 6:09 PM

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Says im only using 624G of that drive, which it is 1T

cunning token Mar 7, 2026, 6:11 PM

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How big are Downloads and .cache folders are?

pliant wasp Mar 7, 2026, 6:15 PM

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Oh, it sent me up, my bad

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Cache is 4.5G and Downloads is 4.3G

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cunning token Mar 7, 2026, 6:18 PM

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Ok, 4.5gb should be plenty, let's delete cache.

rm -rf /home/polymorph/.cache/*

pliant wasp Mar 7, 2026, 6:20 PM

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Ran the command, had to step away to answer the door, and my screen is now black

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Oh, just asked if I want to empty the trash

cunning token Mar 7, 2026, 6:21 PM

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If rm command had no errors, then try

timeshift --delete

again

pliant wasp Mar 7, 2026, 6:22 PM

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Okay, it just booted to the desktop finally, just opening up terminal

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I apparently have 6

cunning token Mar 7, 2026, 6:23 PM

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Alright, if you're at the desktop, open timeshift and delete old snapshots, leave 2 or 3 latest, also set the schedule to not take as many

pliant wasp Mar 7, 2026, 6:29 PM

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Oh my, its saying its going to take an hour to delete them, and the timer just keeps going up, hopefully it doesnt take that long

obsidian pebble Mar 7, 2026, 6:31 PM

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the timeshifts are stored in .local ?

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because 549GB for .local... it's huge

pliant wasp Mar 7, 2026, 6:33 PM

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I also have some games there as well

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Well, it says its almost done deleting them, but it always seems the last 1% is what takes the longest

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Timeshifts are deleted, guess I will go in and trying to figure out what is taking up unnecessary space

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Computer wont boot into Linux [Solved]

pliant wasp Mar 7, 2026, 7:36 PM

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So, I deleted some more files and everything, rebooted to free those files, and now it is right back to the same issue, just with only 2 timeshifts

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Computer wont boot into Linux

obsidian pebble Mar 7, 2026, 7:40 PM

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pliant wasp So, I deleted some more files and everything, rebooted to free those files, and ...

You should investigate why your home .local folder is take so much space...

pliant wasp Mar 7, 2026, 7:42 PM

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Yeah, im trying to get back in so I can go through it some more, but as I was permanently deleting files, I noticed that it would immediately fill right back up on the storage although the files were being completely purged through terminal

obsidian pebble Mar 7, 2026, 7:43 PM

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better to do a fresh install...

pliant wasp Mar 7, 2026, 7:44 PM

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If that is the case, since I primarily use my pc for gaming, would there be a different distro i should look into?

deep sigil Mar 7, 2026, 7:45 PM

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perhaps Pika OS, based on Debian unstable

wary leaf Mar 7, 2026, 9:46 PM

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pliant wasp If that is the case, since I primarily use my pc for gaming, would there be a di...

mint works well with the HWE stack

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you can also try fedora

#Computer wont boot into Linux