Server stops during boot- needs control-D to go on

I was away from the office for a few days and came back to our NAS not being accessible. It is a small office, so I am also the "sys admin", but unfortunately, I am not a Linux shell wizard, more of a GUI guy.

The colleagues said that there was a power outage once, but we can't really tell if this was the problem.

When booting the server starts, but it is not accessible via the web interface. So I hooked the server up with a screen and a keyboard and there I could see that it stops somewhere during the boot process. There are quite a few complaints during the process, but they pass by so quickly and they are quite cryptic for me, so I can't really tell (Is there a way to access those messages once the process stopped for me to post here?).

One of the problems is that

At the end it says either to login as root to maintain or go with "control-D" to go on with the boot process. When I go on with the boot process the GUI is accessible and everything seems to be ok. So I ran the updates from the GUI, but still there

Good thing is, that the server (HP Proliant microserver) works and is also accessible via the network, so it shouldn't be a hardware problem.

However, there is some problem, because the boot process doesn't run through smoothly.

At the end fsdisk complains about 3 hard drives, but these are my data drives (raid1) and my backup drive that I took out while playing around so the data won't get destroyed. I don't think that these missing disks should stop the boot process, right? Because before, when they were in this was no problem either.

OK, read a little bit how to stop the screen from moving during the boot and here the error messages:

[ 1.424830] i8042.c: No controler found.
Laoding, please wait...
[ 2.052742] ata3.00: failed to enable AA(error_mask=0x1)
[ 2.053626] ata3.00: failed to enable AA(error_mask=0x1)
INIT: version 2.88 booting
using makefile-style concurrent boot in runlevel S.
Starting the hotplug events dispatcher: udevd.
Synthesizing the initial hotplug events... done.
Waiting fro /dev to be fully populated... [ 23.596396] Error: Driver 'pcspkr' is already registered, aborting...
done
Setting parameters of disc: (none)
Setting preliminary keymap... done.
Ativating swap... done.
checking root file system... fsck from util-linux-ng 2.17.2
/dev/sda1: clean, 25933/9666560 files, 888765/38635264 blocks
done.
Cleaning up ifupdown....
Loading kernel modules...done.
Generating udev events for MD arrays...done.
Setting up LVM Volume groups Reading all physical volumes. This may take a while.
No volume groups found
No volume groups found
No volume groups found
.
Activating lvm and md swap... done.
checking file systems ... fsck from util-linux-ng 2.17.2
fsck.ext4: Unable to resolve 'UUID=4107xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'
fsck.ext4: Unable to resolve 'UUID=67f4xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'
fsck.ext4: Unable to resolve 'UUID=490dxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'
fsck died with exit status 8
failed (code 8)
File system check failed. A log is being saved in /var/log/fsck/checkfs if that location is writeable. Please repar the file system manually. ... failed!
A maintanence shell will now be started. CONTROL-D will terminate this shell and resume system reboot. ... (warning).
Give root password for maintenance
(or type control-D to continue):

When I go in with CONTROL-D I can access the GUI, so now I need to figure out what holds Openmediavault from booting straight through. Any hints?

I am a little reluctant to put my raid disks in, because they contain my data.

OK, so I was sitting here, had not found anything on the net and I thought, I'd just give it a try and I booted the server with the hard discs.

So some of the errors disappeared.

but then I still have one of those left: "fsck.ext4: Unable to resolve 'UUID=4107xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx'"

I think it is one of the harddisks that I connect via the e-sata port to make external backups. I don't have it around.

How can I get rid of this problem? Before the server was booting without them as well. Shouldn't the server boot just like normal without the additional hard disks? OK, it needs the one with the OS, this is clear, but the others should not prevent it from booting, shouldn't it?

@Davidh2h: Thanks for your help! In the meantime I had put my hard disks in and found this out by seeing that some of the errors disappear.

So most of the errors disappeared, but there is one left. I assume it is from a hard-disk that was for external backup in my e-sata docking station. It is not here and I actually don't have this one at home. Is there any way I can "unmount" this disk without having it actually around? I am also a little suprised because while I was away this hard disc was not mounted. Any ideas?

I followed some info on how to delete a line in fstab on debian. I hope I did not destroy anything... currently rebooting...

WOW!

Problem seems to be solved for now, it just went straight through the boot process, I can ssh the server and I can access the GUI.

However, I am a little worried now that this will happen again. Which is weired because this external hard drive was connected long before and it was not connected when the problem occured.

Debian shouldn't complain about drives that were not mounted, right? Is there something I can do to prevent this? What could have caused this?

I thought I had it figured out, but when I used the USB Backup Plugin the same problem occurred again.

However, this shouldn't happen with a USB hard disk, as it should unmount automatically.

I think it was because there was still a left over of the hdd that I had attached via e-Sata and had put a shared folder on it for backup purposes. The disk always appeared as mounted but unavailable. I think this is what the problems had caused and when I used the USB HDD to make the backup the problem somehow reappeared (didn't have problems since my last post). Don't know why, but I think the problem has to do with this disk.

Because when I restarted with the e-sata dock and the hdd attached, the boot up when through smooth. I already understood that it is not a good idea to have this e-sata disk attached and mounted for backup, now I need to get it out of the system.

However, somehow I can't unmount the disk through OMV. the option is just greyed out. Any ideas what I can do?

And how do I best use my e-sata dock to make backups? USB 2 is so slow, so it would be great if I could use my e-sata dock somehow.

Thanks Davidh2k,

I need to delete the samba share, the shared folder and then I could unmount the hard disk properly.

Thank you for the help.

However, as the e-Sata port seems not be recognized by the USB Backup Plugin (sounds logical somehow... ), I don't see any practical way to use the e-Sata dock for backups, as I would always have to mount/unmount and create a new share, etc. This just doesn't make sense.

Any tips/ideas?