[SOLVED] Laptop overheated during upgrade; hilarity ensues!

[KeithZG]

I actually kindof mean it, I'm trying to fix this problem but I'm not too serious about it It's a spare laptop that I intend on using for testing stuff anyways, first up was upgrading it from 9.04 to 9.10....oops! Apparently I wasn't paying attention and it overheated during the upgrade.

I already posted this on the Ubuntu forums, but I figured the community here is different and I wonder if anyone has any ideas. Here's the actual resulting problem:

It'll seem to boot just fine, but it stops just short of any prompts or GUI. Even if I chose recovery, you can switch to each VT just fine, but everything is just a blinking underscore, no login prompts or anything. If I go ctrl-alt-del it briefly gives me the recovery terminal, but of course it's in the process of rebooting at that point so it's a Catch-22.

I guess my next step is to try booting from my network or something and chroot into it, but I figured I'd pose this question here in case someone had other or more specific ideas about what exactly is going wrong and how it might be fixed.

And, is there something wrong with me that I find all this rather fun? :P

[Snowhog]

Re: Laptop overheated during upgrade; hilarity ensues!

And, is there something wrong with me that I find all this rather fun? :P

KDE is after all, 'bleeding edge,' so if one likes the occassional cut ....

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Laptop overheated during upgrade; hilarity ensues!

When you boot the system, in the grub menu, highlight the item you want to boot from, and hit 'e' to edit.
Make sure on the 'kernel' line that there are no splash or vga=### or quiet entries; if there are, edit them out. Then hit 'b' and see if you can boot into a console then.

[KeithZG]

Re: Laptop overheated during upgrade; hilarity ensues!

When you boot the system, in the grub menu, highlight the item you want to boot from, and hit 'e' to edit.
Make sure on the 'kernel' line that there are no splash or vga=### or quiet entries; if there are, edit them out. Then hit 'b' and see if you can boot into a console then.

Well, for one, using the "recovery" option built-in to (K)Ubuntu's GRUB setup there's definitely no vga=###, splash, or quiet entries; furthermore, when I try editing them out of the normal boot and then hitting "b" to boot the entry it tells me it's loading from the main ext3 partition...and then promptly restarts the computer! (Takes about 2-to-4 seconds).

I finally figured out how to tell the wonky Dell BIOS to network boot, though, so right now I've loaded Slitaz from my PXE/tftp server and I've chroot'd into the laptop, running "dpkg --configure -a" to finish up the install...hopefully then things are all fixed.

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Laptop overheated during upgrade; hilarity ensues!

running "dpkg --configure -a" to finish up the install...hopefully then things are all fixed.

Yep, that could be a problem...

[KeithZG]

Re: Laptop overheated during upgrade; hilarity ensues!

Failure remains :P

Do you want to continue [Y/n]?                 
Can not write log, openpty() failed (/dev/pts not mounted?)  
Setting up mono-gac (2.4.2.3+dfsg-2) ...            
* Installing 6 assemblies from libart2.0-cil into Mono     
E: installing Assembly /usr/lib/cli/art-sharp-2.0/art-sharp.dll failed
E: Installation of libart2.0-cil with /usr/share/cli-common/runtimes.d/mono failed
* Installing 1 assembly from libflickrnet2.1.5-cil into Mono           
E: installing Assembly /usr/lib/cli/flickrnet-2.1.5/FlickrNet.dll failed     
E: Installation of libflickrnet2.1.5-cil with /usr/share/cli-common/runtimes.d/mono failed
* Installing 1 assembly from libflickrnet2.2-cil into Mono                
E: installing Assembly /usr/lib/cli/flickrnet-2.2/FlickrNet.dll failed          
E: Installation of libflickrnet2.2-cil with /usr/share/cli-common/runtimes.d/mono failed 
* Installing 6 assemblies from libgconf2.0-cil into Mono                 
E: installing Assembly /usr/lib/cli/gconf-sharp-2.0/gconf-sharp.dll failed        
E: Installation of libgconf2.0-cil with /usr/share/cli-common/runtimes.d/mono failed

etc etc, more worryingly:

Setting up xserver-xorg (1:7.4+3ubuntu5) ...                                                         
No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already                                                
No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already                                                
No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already                                                
No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already                                                
No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already                                                
No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already                                                
No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already                                                
No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already                                                
No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already                                                
No apport report written because MaxReports is reached already                                                
start: Unable to connect to Upstart: Failed to connect to socket /com/ubuntu/upstart: Connection refused                           
invoke-rc.d: initscript hal, action "restart" failed.                                                    
dpkg: error processing xserver-xorg (--configure):                                                      
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1                                         
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of xorg:                                                   
 xorg depends on xserver-xorg; however:                                                           
 Package xserver-xorg is not configured yet.                                                        
dpkg: error processing xorg (--configure):                                                          
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured

etc etc, which basically leaves X itself unconfigured (all-in-all, 39 unconfigured packages).

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Laptop overheated during upgrade; hilarity ensues!

Hmmm. That almost looks like the script problems that showed up in updates a couple of weeks ago.

http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3106448.0

and

http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...opic=3106656.0

I guess maybe try:

sudo /etc/init.d/network-manager start
sudo /etc/init.d/dbus start
sudo /etc/init.d/hal start

And then try dpkg --configure -a
or dpkg -i /var/cache/apt/archives/xserver-org*

If the init.d stuff gives you errors about using "service" instead, then upstart is actually running., but it doesn't look like it.

[KeithZG]

Re: Laptop overheated during upgrade; hilarity ensues!

If the init.d stuff gives you errors about using "service" instead, then upstart is actually running., but it doesn't look like it.

Sadly,

\u@\h:\w$ /etc/init.d/network-manager start
Rather than invoking init scripts through /etc/init.d, use the service(8)
utility, e.g. service network-manager start

Since the script you are attempting to invoke has been converted to an
Upstart job, you may also use the start(8) utility, e.g. start network-manager
start: Unable to connect to Upstart: Failed to connect to socket /com/ubuntu/upstart: Connection refused

Naturally, just going "start network-manager" merely gives the latter part of the above error message.

Could this be not entirely the fault of the Karmic upgrade, and partially just the fact that I'm forced to be running this in a chroot? I know it spits up errors related to the chroot nature of it if I try and use "sudo" for kicks (not really needed since I'm root by virtue of chrooting anyways, but I figured I'd try). I think I've got openssh-server properly installed now, maybe I'll just try rebooting and ssh-ing into the broken system....fingers crossed....

....okay, sadly it doesn't seem to be starting up the SSH server. Or anything else, now, literally just a blank screen.

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Laptop overheated during upgrade; hilarity ensues!

Naturally, just going "start network-manager" merely gives the latter part of the above error message.

OK, that would mean that upstart is at least partially installed.

sudo service network-manager start

and dbus, hal, kdm

But if start isn't working, it's a long shot that the above will.

What I suspect has happened is the update botched itself installing the initialization scripts. (duh)
What to do about it depends on how badly you need to salvage the system. If you have important data/programs on it, and you have a backup, then it might be best to restore from backup and try the update again, now that several incremental updates have occurred since then.

If you need to get into the system, a live cd might be a better way to go than ssh, but you still have to rely on chroot. I guess what I would try is getting into the system with a livecd, back up the initialization scripts in /etc/init.d and /etc/rcS.d somewhere, copy over the ones from the livecd, and see what happens.

I'm just spitting out ideas here, I really don't know how to fix this mess. I had a similar problem during one of the updates, and "fixed" it by reverting to a backup, waiting a couple of days, and doing the update again. Not much help at this point, probably. Maybe someone else has a bright idea...

[KeithZG]

Re: Laptop overheated during upgrade; hilarity ensues!

yeah, trying to run it that way didn't work either. However, running a recovery install over PXE/tftp seems to have done something; there's only a few packages left to configure now. The downside: it's xserver-xorg and xorg! But wait, it gets better:

 \u@\h:\w$ dpkg --configure -a
Setting up xserver-xorg (1:7.4+3ubuntu5) ...
start: Unable to connect to Upstart: Failed to connect to socket /com/ubuntu/upstart: Connection refused
invoke-rc.d: initscript hal, action "restart" failed.
dpkg: error processing xserver-xorg (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Setting up upstart (0.6.3-7) ...

dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of xorg:
 xorg depends on xserver-xorg; however:
 Package xserver-xorg is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing xorg (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of kubuntu-desktop:
 kubuntu-desktop depends on xorg; however:
 Package xorg is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing kubuntu-desktop (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of ubuntu-desktop:
 ubuntu-desktop depends on xorg; however:
 Package xorg is not configured yet.
dpkg: error processing ubuntu-desktop (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Errors were encountered while processing:
 xserver-xorg
 xorg
 kubuntu-desktop
 ubuntu-desktop
\u@\h:\w$ Connection to 192.168.1.127 closed by remote host.
Connection to 192.168.1.127 closed.

If you're wondering what's happening there, I've ssh'd into the chroot just for convenience (playing around in a terminal on my main desktop), and right after trying to install those packages...it restarts the laptop! Makes it a bit more complicated to retry, haha!

[doctordruidphd]

Re: Laptop overheated during upgrade; hilarity ensues!

I assume you've tried:

sudo dpkg -i /var/cache/apt/archives/xserver-xorg-whateveritis

(you'll have to get the 'whateveritis' part from ls /var/cache/apt/archives/xserver*)

you could also try:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg
sudo dpkg --configure xserver-xorg (might need the /var/cache/apt stuff, I'm not sure)

or as a last resort

sudo dpkg -i --force-all /var/cache/apt/archives/xserver.xorg-whateveritis

but that might be destructive.

[KeithZG]

Re: Laptop overheated during upgrade; hilarity ensues!

I assume you've tried:

sudo dpkg -i /var/cache/apt/archives/xserver-xorg-whateveritis

(you'll have to get the 'whateveritis' part from ls /var/cache/apt/archives/xserver*)

you could also try:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg
sudo dpkg --configure xserver-xorg (might need the /var/cache/apt stuff, I'm not sure)

or as a last resort

sudo dpkg -i --force-all /var/cache/apt/archives/xserver.xorg-whateveritis

but that might be destructive.

I've had to resort to that in the past, but not this time apparently! Yeah, I had tried all the rest, but I guess somewhere in all of this (maybe when I did "aptitude reinstall upstart", even though that seemed to just reboot the laptop and then did the same thing when I retried) something got fixed, and I was able to boot into recovery/single-user mode from GRUB's list (now with the latest kernel in Karmic) and complete the install. It's weird, the two different chrooting methods I used (a SliTaZ live boot, and an Ubuntu recovery install boot) seemed to have slightly different errors (Ubuntu's main complaint being lack of locale) but combined they seem to have installed enough to allow the normal recovery login to finish it up. Phew!

And dear Buddha is Karmic snazzy so far! I might have to make the leap with my main laptop already...although I guess it's not long before it's final. I'll at least have to run the update to Karmic on my older main PC, which has been running alphas and betas of Kubuntu since the 5.10 "pre-release" haha.

Thank you very much for your help, btw

[doctordruidphd]

Re: [SOLVED] Laptop overheated during upgrade; hilarity ensues!

Glad you got it running. Partially updated systems are always a challenge.