HELP! How to restore kubuntu?

[allspiritseve]

Long story short, I can't start up kubuntu anymore. I can boot on my old 6.10 cd, and access the internet. However, I don't know what to do from here to fix my installation. Any ideas?

Thanks,

Cory

[rothchild]

Re: HELP! How to restore kubuntu?

It depends how you installed Kubuntu in the first place, if you have everything all on one partition (which if you took the default options at install you probably have) you are going to have to back up your home folder and start again.

When you reinstall I would suggest creating seperate folders for / (the root file system) and /home this means if you manage to really bork the OS to the point where you cant fix it you can just reinstall the bits on / and not touch /home

I'd suggest that it might be worth telling us a bit more about what is wrong with the system and seeing if we can't fix it with you first though.

Child

[The Liquidator]

Re: HELP! How to restore kubuntu?

Hi

I agree with Rothchild, please can you be a bit more specific..

When you say "I can't start up kubuntu anymore" at what point do things fail? Do you get for example the grub boot menu and then when you make a selection you see sone disk activity but ultimately arrive at a blank screen?

Assuming you do see the grub menu, what happens when you select the recovery option? Do you get any error messages?

Ian

[allspiritseve]

Re: HELP! How to restore kubuntu?

I can get through GRUB fine. When I select the normal option, the blue progress bar appears and then the screen goes black after a minute or so. If I do the recovery option, everything seems to go fine until the last couple lines of errors:

exec: 7: /etc/init.d /rcS: not found
init: rcS main process (2505) terminated with status 2
sulogin: cannot open password database!
segmentation fault
init: rcS _sulogin main process (2511) terminated with status 139

I have 6.10 and 7.04 disks to boot from, though I can't boot from the feisty disk because of a graphics problem with my inspiron 6400. I also have windows on a different partition.

My installation home on a separate partition. I'd like to be able to simply restore any files that are missing or corrupt if possible. Otherwise I guess its ok to erase my root partition and install feisty again. I would rather not lose all the programs I have installed though.

Cory

[The Liquidator]

Re: HELP! How to restore kubuntu?

Hi

Not sure about the error message here. I was hoping it would be an x-server problem but it seems to be something else. Is this something that happened after you made some sort of change or was it out of the blue? I am sure someone will see this post who will have a real idea what has gone wrong.

I'm afraid if you need to reinstall you will lose all the programs you had installed unless there were any specifically installed in /home. Your /home partition should be OK but to be safe you might care to use a live distro such as knoppix and copy the contents of /home onto the Windows partition or burn it to DVD/CD assuming you have the hardware to do it.

Before doing this however I would wait a while as it may well be that reinstating a backup init file (beyond my immediate knowledge) may solve the problem for you.

Ian

[dibl]

Re: HELP! How to restore kubuntu?

Two thoughts --

(a) if the only problem is the " can't open password database" error -- I'm not the guru to tell how to fix it, but I seem to recall seeing posts in the last 6 months on that subject -- I don't think that's a fatal situation. I would Google "ubuntu linux password database" to learn more about where that file may be located.

(b) If you want to save your data and then re-install the OS, it seems like a Knoppix live CD or maybe even a Kubuntu live CD should be able to mount your messed-up drive and see the /home directory there, and let you save it to CDs or DVDs.

[Fintan]

Re: HELP! How to restore kubuntu?

I am no guru but it seams you tried to make yourself a boot script for a revision control system.

I don't know if this will help but have a look here:

http://www.faqs.org/docs/pocket_linux/x1017.html

and here:

http://linuxgazette.net/issue49/misc...-HOWTO-10.html

You could use a live cd to edit your /etc/init.d file so that you can at least boot in recovery mode. You can use the Kubuntu live cd and go to K->system setups->advanced->harddisks and mount your root partition and edit from thee.

Another thought would be to start with another post with "/etc/init.d /rcS: not found" or something along those lines as a title. That might get the attention of the real gurus around here.

sorry I can't be of more help. Good luck.

Cheers
Fintan