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I broke Windows 7 and can't fix it, Windows 10 on my laptop broke itself. Decided I'd leave Windows behind and give Linux a test drive since my laptop's OS is pretty ruined. I did the install, my laptop restarted, and now it's perpetually in a thing that calls itself BusyBox v1.30.1.

Every solution I looked up on the Internet Useless Highway (seriously, SEO has made browsers worthless) said to use do an 'exit'. So I did an exit, and it says "Alert! /dev/mapper/data-root does not exist." Every fix I've found says to do 'fsck' followed by a bunch of different things, but typing anything starting with fsck returns 'sh: fsck: not found'.

I've searched everything from "fsck not found" to "fsck doesn't exist" to "file system check doesn't real" to no avail. Someone in some forum of some kind said to another user "You need to boot from a Ubuntu Live USB" so I was up til 4AM last night flashing Ubuntu Live to a USB, and all that wants to do is install Ubuntu on my computer, when I was aiming for Pop_OS.

Another said to set something to something else, and I don't know how because all I see is BusyBox, and the command to do it wasn't found, and 'root=/dev/sdax' did nothing useful.

If this was supposed to be the most 'beginner friendly' Linux distro, then maybe I should just baah along with the other little sheep and settle for Windows 10, and the inevitably-trash Windows 11, because this is the age if incompetence and no one anywhere can get anything right, least of all Microsoft on a post Win7 OS. But I figured I'd ask for help first.

What do I do? I can't find a solution to fsck that up and escaped its tank.

I'm by no means the average consumer computer user, but my knowledge is fairly limited, so please keep that in mind. I've never buntu'd before and still don't know what 'kernal' or 'shell' means.

If you have any questions or solutions, I'll be over in the corner trying hide my tears behind baahs of brand obedience.

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  • If it can't find the rootfs, something went wrong with the install, maybe you want to try reinstalling it? Otherwise maybe try cat /proc/partitions, lvm vgs, lvm lvs, lvm vgchange -a y, before you exit... but that's guessing blindly
    – frostschutz
    Feb 23, 2022 at 22:34

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The BusyBox just doesn't include the fsck command. That's why you should boot from a LiveImage. Then you run Linux (i.e. Pop or Ubuntu) from Stick. With this running Linux you should have all the tools (like fsck) you need.

But you still have to find your way around and be able to fix the root cause, which - in my opinion - fsck won't.

I suspect some installation issue and it should be much quicker to just re-do the Linux installation.

To be more percise:

  • "run Linux ... from stick" should read "Load Linux from stick and run in RAM"
  • BusyBox usually includes fsck

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