Unable to boot after upgrade

[axioma06]

Today I wanted to upgrade from 13.04 to 13.10 using Muon package manager.

After the download was finished and rebooted Grub went well but I got stuck after the initial Kubuntu screen with the following message:

mountall start/starting
Filesystem check or mount failed.
A maintenance shell will now be started.
CONTROL -D will terminate this shell and continue booting after re-trying
filesystems. Any further errors will be ignored
root at(me):~#

Does anyone have an idea what to do?

Thanks!

[Snowhog]

From that prompt type:

apt-get install -f

When that finishes type:

apt-get update && apt-get dist-upgrade

If no errors are identified after that finishes type:

shutdown -r now

This will shutdown and reboot your PC.

[GreyGeek]

mountall start/starting
Filesystem check or mount failed.

IF what Snowhog recommends doesn't seem to help then you may be experiencing hard disk problems.
From the Grub menu boot into the recovery mode and on that Red/Blue console menu arrow down to the line that says it will check the hard disk, then hit the tab key to jump to the "OK" button at the bottom. Hit enter. When it is done the recovery menu will return. Do a reboot.

[axioma06]

First I have tried Snowhog's solution and get the following:

W: Not using locking for read only lock file /var/lib/dpkg/lock
E: Unable to write to /var/cache/at/
E: The ackage lists or status file could not be parsed or opened


Next I tried GreyGeek's advice and got the following:

First I can't find 'check hard disk' I get the following:

resume, clean, dpkg, fsck, grub, network, root, system-summary:

For any of those I get the following:

Continuing will remount your / filesystem in read/write mode and mount any other filesystem defined in /etc/fstab.
Do you wish to continue?

After pressing

I get:

/lib/recovery-mode/recovery-menu: line 76: /etc/default/rcS: No such file or directory
fsck from util-linux 2.20.1
/dev/sda5: 726824/16826368 files (o.5% non-contiguous), 27096889/67286272 blocks

[GreyGeek]

Running fsck (checking the filesystem on the hard disk) from the recovery menu should run on the UNMOUNTED hard disk without problems since the filesystem (usually EXT4) hasn't been mounted yet. Your msg suggests it has. Did you take the recovery option from the grub menu AFTER a reboot?

[axioma06]

Probably the answer should be, yes, because I have rebooted several times now. After starting in recovery mode is seems to start the boot process before giving the recovery mode menu.
I have also tried root. Here fsck gives: /dev/sda5: clean 726824/16826368 files, 27096889/67286272 blocks

[Teunis]

W: Not using locking for read only lock file /var/lib/dpkg/lock

This means a previous upgrade was interrupted and a stale 'lock' file is preventing further upgrades.

Remove the file by:

sudo rm var/lib/dpkg/lock

If successful you should be able to complete the upgrades.

There can be a second lock file, remove it in a similar fashion.