linux - Ubuntu error "Gave up waiting for root device" on 9.10 Netbook Remix

So I installed Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.10 onto my Asus EeePC 1008HA netbook.

It worked perfectly and was pretty quick. Restarting, suspending and hibernating worked just fine but the very first time I shut it down, I can no longer boot back into Ubuntu.

I created 3 partitions.
/
/home
swap

All using the default filesystem (I'm still new but, I believe, it was EXT4?).

Anyway, now I only get this error stating "Gave up waiting for root device" when I attempt to boot.

I've tried typing in "exit" at the initramfs prompt as suggestions but it never works.

So I booted off of the USB stick I used to install and I took a look at my partitions. My boot partition now says "unknown" instead of the filesystem I used. So I used fsck on it which seemed to do something (it asked about future dates which it fixed). Then I attempted to use e2fsck but I always get the error "Invalid non-numeric argument to -P ("/dev/sda1")".

What can I do to attempt to resolve this? It's such a shame because everything worked perfectly and I had no problems with multiple restarts, hibernates and suspends but the first time I shut it down this starts happening. I didn't even hold the power button.

Answer

I think it's quite similar to this (Deleted a partition, now getting 'Gave up waiting for suspend/resume device' message during boot).

I gave the answer below as it worked for me.

In my case, the boot message looked like this. The swap partition was deleted.

Gave up waiting for suspend/resume device
/dev/sda4 ... ...
[***] A start job is running for dev-disk-by\...\...\...\.device
...
...
...

First, look at the content of your fstab file,

cat /etc/fstab

will return this kind of output

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
#                
# / was on /dev/sda4 during installation
UUID=8c1977eb-ac90-426b-bc9b-a7fb2ec8d760 /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1
# swap was on /dev/sda3 during installation
UUID=00fd67-123DE-4b98-aa17-2d4025aed54 none            swap    sw              0       0
/dev/sr0        /media/cdrom0   udf,iso9660 user,noauto     0       0

Then you notice , "swap was on /dev/sdax during installation".

Recreate the deleted partition (fdisk or Gparted for instance), then
use this command to find the new uuid of the partition.

ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid/

This outputs:

total 0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 févr. 19 07:18 00151dcd-2bf5-4b98-aa17-8f40ef4cfd86 -> ../../sda4
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 févr. 19 07:18 6C5A1AC45A1A8B4A -> ../../sda2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 févr. 19 07:18 8c1977eb-ac90-426b-bc9b-a7fb2ec8d760 -> ../../sda3
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 févr. 19 07:18 C064106664106188 -> ../../sda1

Update your fstab with the correct uuid that were displayed by the last command by copy/pasting the adequate uuid of the swap in the fstab file.
Then reboot, It should correct the problem.