Ubuntu stuck at /dev/sda3:clean message

 

Introduction to the error 

As soon as I came home I turned on my Ubuntu machine.  The boot process didn't take place in a normal way.  A text interface showed up and it got stuck. No Desktop environment. No shell.

dev/sda3: clean, 552599/6111232 files, 7119295/24414464 blocks

Suggestions for the problem on the forums

Never having encountered such an error during my experience with Ubuntu, I started searching for a solution. Someone suggested entering the GRUB and performing a fix on the hard disk with the command-line tool fsck.

Unfortunately, the tool wasn't available. Although I managed to enter the GRUB interface. 


Someone else suggested booting Ubuntu in live mode through some type of media and performing the fix from there. I managed to create a fresh bootable flash drive with Ubuntu loaded, but no results.

The following command didn't fix it for me.

fsck -l /

Others suggested removing the entire Nvidia files. It didn't fix the problem.

The fix 

After hours of frustration and continuous research, I managed to operate my Ubuntu machine from the command-line interface.

 
Pressing the following keys provided me Ubuntu in CLI mode.

CTRL + ALT + F1 + F2

From there I installed tasksel.

sudo apt-get install tasksel

With the help of tasksel, I installed the ubuntu-desktop package.

sudo tasksel install ubuntu-desktop

I rebooted my machine and the login showed up. 

reboot

Final thoughts

When it seems and feels impossible, it's the time to push it to the limits. I didn't stop. Although more than five hours went without a fix, I continued researching and trying.