latest upgrade broke system

[michel]

Greetings. I spent the day running one update after the other in what seemed to be a repetition of the same update over and over. when I was prompted to update again. I canceled.

I tried to shutdown and the system would dim out but would not shutdown so I used the power button and now the system will not reboot.

I booted the cd to rescue the system and I asked to repair the installed applications and some action was taken until I got an error message.

I rebooted and got grub. I tried default boot but it did not work and now using the cd I cannot get back to a grub screen to try booting with am earlier kernel.

Am I trying to do the right thing? Any thoughts on how to save my working system and tons of applications and setups?

sorry for typos as I am using smartphone

Michel

[dmeyer]

You ever use chroot before? Might be a reasonable route to repairing your system

[vinnywright]

Greetings. I spent the day running one update after the other in what seemed to be a repetition of the same update over and over. when I was prompted to update again. I canceled.

with what ? this should have been a clue that something was wrong and droped to a CLI for some error output.

I tried to shutdown and the system would dim out but would not shutdown so I used the power button and now the system will not reboot.

this was a bad idea , if updates are not taking your system may be in a un or half configured state and restarting can leave you in trouble ,,,,,,as you see.

I booted the cd to rescue the system and I asked to repair the installed applications and some action was taken until I got an error message.

the error may have been useful hear?

I rebooted and got grub. I tried default boot but it did not work and now using the cd I cannot get back to a grub screen to try booting with am earlier kernel.

so you can not now boot without the cd and get grub?

VINNY

[michel]

I did use chmod a long time ago. Maybe just booting with the previous kernel might resolved the issue if i can be told how to get grub to load on boot up.

Thanks,

Michel

[michel]

I normally boot in without grub. How do I get grub to load so that I can use the previous kernel? Will using the previous kernel allow me to repair my system or is a reinstall in order?

Thanks,

Michel

[dmeyer]

I normally boot in without grub. How do I get grub to load so that I can use the previous kernel? Will using the previous kernel allow me to repair my system or is a reinstall in order?

Thanks,

Michel

What bootloader do you use then? I'm fairly sure you use Grub2 even if you don't know. When you boot do you get to a type of menu that you can navigate using the keyboard? It might only be on the screen for a few seconds before you auto-load something. That menu is the grub2 menu allowing you to select OSs and Kernels. If you get to that menu then you can try booting an older kernel.

If you can't get to it then we can use chroot to fix your issue by finishing the update and reinstalling grub2 for you.

P.S. Older kernels might be listed under advanced options or other or something in the menu. It is not called Memtest86+

[michel]

What bootloader do you use then? I'm fairly sure you use Grub2 even if you don't know. When you boot do you get to a type of menu that you can navigate using the keyboard? It might only be on the screen for a few seconds before you auto-load something. That menu is the grub2 menu allowing you to select OSs and Kernels. If you get to that menu then you can try booting an older kernel.

If you can't get to it then we can use chroot to fix your issue by finishing the update and reinstalling grub2 for you.

P.S. Older kernels might be listed under advanced options or other or something in the menu. It is not called Memtest86+

Thank you for your response. I know I am using Grub, but I either have set the timing so that it boots immediatelly or I have setup something in teh system to that effect. I would rather keep everything the way it was so please tell me how to use chroot to finish and install the updates.

Thanks,

Michel

[dmeyer]

Thank you for your response. I know I am using Grub, but I either have set the timing so that it boots immediatelly or I have setup something in teh system to that effect. I would rather keep everything the way it was so please tell me how to use chroot to finish and install the updates.

Thanks,

Michel

Well if you set the timeout to 0 then you can try holding/tapping shift while booting or maybe escape (Grub Legacy) to bring up the menu. If that's not successful then chroot might be the only way I know to fix your problem.

[michel]

Well if you set the timeout to 0 then you can try holding/tapping shift while booting or maybe escape (Grub Legacy) to bring up the menu. If that's not successful then chroot might be the only way I know to fix your problem.

I managed to boot in recovery mode and run apt-get update and then upgrade and I got a bunch of updates until I got a message telling me my system was uptodate. I tried apt-get dist-upgrade too and all seemed uptodate but when I try to boot the system starts running and stops at the following line "Stopping Sytem V runlevel Compatibility" with an OK at the end of the line so the system is stopping at the following command.

Any clues?

Thanks,

Michel

[dmeyer]

First things first. Remove any usb peripherals, cds, dvds memory sticks etc from the computer. Have just enough the essentials plugged in to work and this includes no mouse. Integrated stuff you can't help so live with that. Pull as much out as you can. Now try reboot. See how far you get this time.

If its the same error try the following:

http://askubuntu.com/questions/18441...-compatibility

[michel]

I removed everything and rebooted. The first three boots stopped at the same line, the fourth moved one line further to "Starting CUPS printing Spooler/server" with OK at the end of the line.

Thanks,

Michel

[dmeyer]

Hmm. This sounds familiar. What GPU do you have?

[michel]

I have an ATI Radeon 4500/5100 video card. What made you say this is familiar?

Thanks,

Michel

[vinnywright]

go back into recovery mode , select root shell with networking , do

apt-get -f install

errors/suggestions? yes/no
if no , do

dpkg -l | grep kubuntu-desktop

dose it output somthing like this

vinny@vinny-HP-G62:/usr/share/man$ sudo dpkg -l | grep kubuntu-desktop
ii kubuntu-desktop 1.263 i386 Kubuntu Plasma Desktop/Netbook system

note the 2 i's at the begining of the line this meens installed and configured if you any thing elce than this tell us !!
if this returns nothing then do

apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

do this then get back to us with the results for further work

VINNY

[michel]

go back into recovery mode , select root shell with networking , do

apt-get -f install

errors/suggestions? yes/no
if no , do

dpkg -l | grep kubuntu-desktop

dose it output somthing like this note the 2 i's at the begining of the line this meens installed and configured if you any thing elce than this tell us !!
if this returns nothing then do

apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

do this then get back to us with the results for further work

VINNY

1- I had already tried apt-get -f with no messages. apt-get -f install showed redundant packages that I removed.

2- dpkg -l | grep kubuntu-desktop gave no results

3- apt-get install kubuntu-desktop RETURNED EVERYTHING TO NORMAL !!! Thanks a lot Vinny.

Can you shed some light on what and why it happened?

Thanks,

Michel