root partition not unmounting cleanly on reboot

[Jani F]

After upgrade form 10.04 to 12.04 my root partition needs recovery on every reboot. I suspect it doesn't get unmounted cleanly.

Description: Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS
Release: 12.04

[Jani F (j-frilander)]

I found a workaround that has worked 2 times out of 3.

Bring the system to single user mode and then reboot.
sudo telinit 1
sudo shutdown -r now

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.

To change the source package that this bug is filed about visit https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1064185/+editstatus and add the package name in the text box next to the word Package.

[This is an automated message. I apologize if it reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[Fabio Marconi (fabiomarconi)]

Hallo
Is this issue reproducible again ?
---
Ubuntu Bug Squad volunteer triager
http://wiki.ubuntu.com/BugSquad

[Jani F (j-frilander)]

Yes, it's happening on every reboot.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for Ubuntu because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[steffmeister (steffed)]

This is also a problem in 12.10

[Jani F (j-frilander)]

Affects also Linux Mint 14

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Urop (urop)]

I get the same thing on three machines runnning Quantal.

[Boris Gjenero (boris-gjenero)]

I was getting this problem in 12.10 and I continued to get it after an upgrade to 13.04.

Today in 13.04 I edited /etc/rc6.d/S90reboot to run sh and examined the situation. (If I simply ran sh, I got no output, just like other messages in that script aren't displayed. I ended up using "sh < /dev/console > /dev/console 2>&1" and then repeatedly trying to run commands because something was taking some of the input. You may want to just add a lsof command redirecting to a file followed by a sync instead.)

I ran lsof and got the attached output. Please ignore references to /o because that is the lsof output file. The output shows one file being written: /var/log/upstart/ureadahead-other.log by init. I don't need that service, so I solved the problem by disabling it:
sudo sh -c "echo 'manual' > /etc/init/ureadahead-other.override"

I guess the proper solution would be to add a stop condition to /etc/init/ureadahead-other.conf, for example:
stop on runlevel [06]

[Paul F (boxjunk)]

See also LP: #1073433. Looks like a duplicate. Reporter @Jani F please mark as duplicate if agreed.

[Jani F (j-frilander)]

Not reproducible in 14.04 LTS. Seems it's fixed.