upgrade reboot freezes

[oldhippy]

Hi Guys

First post - first major problems hope someone can help!

Finally thought I'd better upgrade to Jaunty - been using 8.10 for some time without problems.

Now the problems

When I upgraded (direct download) everything was fine until Kubuntu restarted to complete the installation. Then after the initial splash screen (with slider bar) graphics flashed weirdly 3 times and then system freezes.

Yes, I have got an ati radeon (x600 to be precise).

I am conviced its either the ati driver and/or legacy settings from Intrepid causing problems. (willing to be corrected)

There are a number of other posts which highlight problems with the ati cards one post suggests using EnvyNG to remove drivers causing problems. Have tried downloading Envy (with sudo get) but without success as I don't seem to be able to obtain DCHP when in recovery mode so unable to connect to repositories.

Some questions:
1. Is there any way to boot into 'safe video mode'? I mean directly from the grub loader.
2. Is there another way to remove ati driver and boot with vesa maybe through the command line in recovery mode?
3. I am willing to go for the nuclear option of reformatting and reinstalling but like an idiot I only backed up my documents and would like to get hold of my email files and address book. I know where they are but when running kubuntu from the live cd I can't access them. Is there any way of accessing them and copying them?

Any help appreciated.

Oldhippy

[russlar]

Re: upgrade reboot freezes

>1. Is there any way to boot into 'safe video mode'? I mean directly from the grub loader.

Yes. There should be an potion for each kernel in Grub that says "Recovery Mode" at the end. Boot to that. It'll let you drop to a root shell, reset X11 (I think it runs dpkg-reconfigure -phigh xserver-xorg), and other stuff that'll probably help you out.

>Have tried downloading Envy (with sudo get) but without success as I don't seem to be able to obtain DCHP
>when in recovery mode so unable to connect to repositories.

Are you trying the option for a root shell with network?

[oldhippy]

Re: upgrade reboot freezes

Thanks for the reply

Firstly re DCHP - yes I am using the option for a root shell with network.

Could you explain a bit more about booting into safe video mode (not so hot with linux commands) I know how to get to the root shell - what next to boot into safe video mode?

oldhippy

[oldhippy]

Re: upgrade reboot freezes

Not exactly solved but workaround found.

Couldn't figure out the xorg stuff (like mud to me - not too bright)

So I did a clean install from cd to a new partition no problems this time. That gave me access to the files on the problem kubuntu partition and was able to backup important stuff (address books, emails, calendar). I then deleted the old kubunu partition etc. etc.

Moral of the story - 1. back-up ALL the important stuff and 2. don't trust that an upgrade is going to work even if you've got a cute little message popping up every time you switch your computer on tempting you to upgrade

Think I'll clean boot all up new versions of Kubuntu in future - I'll keep more hair that way.

Just one thing though - even ms realise that video cards are problematic and allow an easy to figure out 'safe mode' option - could you Kubuntu developers out there do something similar? Please...it would be very helpful.

oldhippy

[kevinc]

Re: upgrade reboot freezes

3. I am willing to go for the nuclear option of reformatting and reinstalling but like an idiot I only backed up my documents and would like to get hold of my email files and address book. I know where they are but when running kubuntu from the live cd I can't access them. Is there any way of accessing them and copying them?

What email program are you using - Thunderbird, Kmail, or something else?

Thunderbird keeps everything in your /home/agedhippy/.mozilla-thunderbird folder
you can see this in dolphin by selecting in view show hidden files
If you back up the whole folder, you have your e-mail and address books backed up.

Kubuntu keeps the xorg files in /etc/X11 and the important one is xorg.conf - the configuration details
In Kubuntu 9.04 there is not much there, but older files usually have a name such as xorg.conf.2009mmdddd
If you ran your machine without ATi driver, then installed it, there should be a copy of your old xorg.conf with the other name. Save your current xorg.conf with a name such as today's date appended, then copy the old one to xorg.conf Reboot and see if that helps.