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Sammy Barasa
Sammy Barasa

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mount: /mount/path: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda3, missing codepage or helper program, or other error.

I changed from Windows Desktop to Ubuntu almost a year ago due to blue screen errors that damaged my productivity. Prior Linux environment experience was on deployment servers, cloud containers and WSL. My other 3 partitions on the hard disk are still NTFS after installing the Ubuntu desktop. I document the issues I face and how I overcome them.

Background

Upon upgrading from Ubuntu 23.01 to Ubuntu 23.10, I encountered a strange error when the Ubuntu desktop GUI file explorer Icon was active and I rushed to check my three partitions. The error read "wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda3, missing codepage or helper program, or other error". You can imagine how terrified I was!

Problem

mount: /mount/path: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/sda3, missing codepage or helper program, or other error

Research
Listing all the block devices showed two device partitions with no mount path with the following command:

lsblk
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Listing all the block devices
navigating to the media folder to check the available directories, the two media paths were missing

kesa@KESA-DESKTOP:/$ cd media/
kesa@KESA-DESKTOP:/media$ ls
kesa
kesa@KESA-DESKTOP:/media$ cd kesa/
kesa@KESA-DESKTOP:/media/kesa$ ls
XYZ
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Solution

Manually mount the device or partition. Create mount paths with the label of the partition that can be found using lsblk -f

list block devices towith -f flag to see device labels

In my case:

kesa@KESA-DESKTOP:/media/kesa$ sudo mkdir WORKSPACE
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mount the device partition using the mount command to the newly created mount path

kesa@KESA-DESKTOP:/media/kesa$ sudo mount /dev/sda3 /media/kesa/WORKSPACE
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mount device command

kesa@KESA-DESKTOP:/media/kesa$ sudo mount /dev/sda1 /media/kesa/New\ Volume
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change the device name and path in your scenario. Ensure you use the root user when you encounter permission issues. Check final block devices with the list block command.

manual mount successful

Using disks application

disks application option

turn off user sessions defaults

Turn User Session Defaults Off and click OK

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