13.10 upgrade ends up with grub rescue

[Guest]

I just tried to upgrade from Kubuntu 13.10 to 14.04 using the Muon Upgrade Manager. That told me I needed 2.7 GB free space - I had 3.4 GB available so I proceeded. But the upgrade failed and I noticed afterward that there was no available space on my root partition. I exited the system and used gparted to increase the size of my root directory by 10 GB, intending to again try an upgrade. But now I only get a "grub rescue" prompt at power up.

My assumption is that I will need to completely re-install a new system (and grub). But if I must install everything from scratch, then I will switch from Kubuntu to Red Hat, since I've had continual problems with Ubuntu/Kubuntu following my switch to it (from Red Hat) in 2008. Still, that will require a re-install of all the software I've installed since 2008 which will be a royal pain so if possible I'd prefer to get my Kubuntu back. If anyone can tell me how that can be done, I will give it a try.

[Snowhog]

Take a look at http://askubuntu.com/questions/19783...b-rescue-crash

Welcome to KFN

[Guest]

That boot failure resulted from a very different cause (i.e. deletion of needed files, not from a failed upgrade) but nonetheless I tried to use its "grub rescue" technique to get a boot. However, I was not able to do so.

But I did manage to get a working 14.04 (so far as I can tell -I have gotten one "system error" popup, apparently from gaptworker2, so far but have not yet encountered any major problems. )

For anyone in a similar situation, here is what I did to get a working system

() Used a rescue CD to boot via the existing grub /boot partition. Based upon running "lsb_release -a" I was then running version 14.04 after the failed upgrade from 13.10 to 14.04.

() Then in a terminal I ran (with all exiting successfully, except as noted)
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -f
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
sudo apt-get autoremove
sudo apt-get autoremove (rerun since 1st run gave error message)
sudo apt-get clean
sudo update-grub

() Despite the latter, a restart failed to boot. I had a "Boot Repair" already installed in kubuntu from a use with a previous kubuntu version, but when I invoked it via application menu it aborted. So I created a "Boot Repair Disk" CD by downloading latest version from sourceforge, and running its "recommended repair" did produce a workable boot.

() Some non-fatal quirks
() "Qapt batch installer" ran with fatal error
() Starting "Synaptic Package Manager" failed with error message suggesting I run "sudo dpkg --configure -a" - following that suggestion did fix that problem

() Afterwards I had a working 14.04 but it was slow as molasses, almost unworkable, due to baloo running. I let it run overnight to see if it would finally get down to a workable usage but that did not occur. Searched for and found lots of people with same problem and multiple suggested solutions. Several did not work for me, including the one suggested by its developer. I ended up using the one which removed/renamed file /usr/share/autostart/baloo_file.desktop. I also noted the arrogant opinions of the baloo developers who don't provide any simple or obvious way of turning off their program: "we would like to promode the use of searching and feel that Baloo should never get in the users way. However, we are smart about it ...". Yet it DOES get in the way, big time, and they are NOT smart about it. Reminds me of why I had to stop using Kmail, after 9 years of use, and switch to evolution because the Kmail developers decided to produce an "improved" program, with database etc, which was in fact unusable. After several days trying to get it to work, and much pain, I decided my life would be much better without Kmail. Developers who don't have consideration for their users will find those users deciding not to use their product.