Gutsy upgrade broke my system. Rescue anyone?

[Guest]

Cue sad violin music...

So I attemted to uprgade from 7.04 to 7.10 today. The upgrade had a few bumps (upgrade assistant hung at software management stage, apt-get dist-upgrade returned 1500+ broken packages) but I finally was able to use aptitude to finish upgrading and fix the broken packages. So I rebooted and hoped for the best....
...and got the worst.
First the system wouldn't reboot properly (had to hard reboot) then grub wouldn't start (returned error 5). Tried Knoppix 5.1 to recover and found that it could not recognize the filesystem types of my disks (kubuntu is hdb1-6 which wouldn't mount, hda1 is Win 2k/xp and mounts read/write just fine).
My old Knoppix 4.0 disk identifies and mounts the disks just fine, however I was unable to rescue the system even though I can chroot into it just fine.
Initiate ROUND 2!
Downloaded the Kubuntu Gutsy alternate install cd, tried rescue mode. Rescue mode find hda1 (my win disk) but can't find hdb. The partitioner finds the drive, but not the partitions (finds hda partitions just fine).
My last resort is to reinstall 7.04 and then attempt the upgrade again, but I don't want to have to do that. Anyone have some insight on how I can rescue this broken system?

Hard drive configuration:
hda1 - NTFS WIN 2K/XP Master
hdb1 - /boot ext3 ~74mb
hdb2 - / ext3 ~20gb
hdb6 - /home ext3 ~130gb

[dibl]

Re: Gutsy upgrade broke my system. Rescue anyone?

74MB looks pretty stingy for /boot. Can you

df -h

and make sure it is not full? That would definitely cause trouble.

[0ttoNo5sun]

Re: Gutsy upgrade broke my system. Rescue anyone?

On SuSE 10.1, I have /boot at about 98MB and only 30% is used. Does Kubuntu require more?

I'm considering switching when the 7.10 furore has died down or, maybe, when 8.04 becomes available.

[dibl]

Re: Gutsy upgrade broke my system. Rescue anyone?

I checked my /boot partition and, with a freshly installed (last week) Gutsy Kubuntu, it is 24MB used, out of 200MB.

But, I don't know how long the OP has been accumulating files, via upgrades, in his /boot partition.

[Fintan]

Re: Gutsy upgrade broke my system. Rescue anyone?

My last resort is to reinstall 7.04 and then attempt the upgrade again, but I don't want to have to do that. Anyone have some insight on how I can rescue this broken system?

Why reinstall 7.04 when you ca just install 7.10.

My old Knoppix 4.0 disk identifies and mounts the disks just fine, however I was unable to rescue the system even though I can chroot into it just fine.

That is strange. I would have expected 5.1 to see them as well.
Are your /home/usename files still there? Can you edit them? Like backing up your settings for kontact, etc. in /home/username/ .kde and then installing 7.10.

As for your partitions get yourself gparted live:
http://gparted.sourceforge.net/download.php

and have a look what it tells you about your partitions on both drives.

Of course there alway is supgrub:
http://supergrub.forjamari.linex.org/

and

Trinity rescue kit:
http://trinityhome.org/Home/index.ph...=1&front_id=12

I don't think it is the size of your /boot although that is a bit small.

Why not go through the alt install routine and see if it sees your hdb partitions? You can always exit.

Sorry I can't be of more help. Good luck
Cheers
F

[Guest]

Re: Gutsy upgrade broke my system. Rescue anyone?

Forgot to mention I did try supergrub, it didn't work at all.

My boot partition is not full, its only using a little more than half the partition.

I tried the alt install and the reason I can't just install 7.10 from it is because it can't see my partitions on hdb, which means it wants to create an empty partition table, which would result in the loss of my /home partition, I would really prefer not to have to run a restore on 120gb+. Ideally I'll have to see if a 7.04 install disk can see those partitions.