Disaster!

[tlinux]

Yesterday I was trying to update some packages using Adept. This started the downloading of lots of packages. After a while I got an error message and the downloading stopped. The system was frozen up. It is possible that I had used up all of the disc space, but I don’t know how to determine this. After a while I was able to close Adept, but the system was screwed up. Firefox wouldn’t open and Thunderbird would open but wouldn’t work.

Not knowing what else to do, I rebooted the system. However, the program wouldn’t accept my password. Then I rebooted in into recovery mode. However, after loading lots of files, I got a command line prompt. I didn’t know what to do from here so I’ve given up.

The system I have is Kubuntu 5.10. I’m not very knowledgeable about Linux, but I did manage to install this version of Kubuntu in a dual boot setup.

QUESTIONS:

1. Is this a hopeless situation, or is there a reasonable way to recover from this failure?

2. If I have to reinstall Kubuntu, I’d like to use a more recent version. I prefer one that’s stable. Should I go with Kubuntu 7.04 or is Kubuntu 6.06 a better choice for me? I’m not knowledgeable enough to solve many system problems.

3. Are there any other options that I haven’t mentioned that would be helpful with this problem?


Thank you for your comments and help!

[claydoh]

Re: Disaster!

If you install new, 6.06, 6.10, or 7.04 will all be in my opinion vast improvements over 5.10, especially as these are live-cd's and the installer is much easier than the text install you had before (this is still available if you prefer). I find Feisty very stable, but Dapper (6.06 LTS) will have much more info to search in the event of any problems, and Edgy 6.10 will be similar. I usually recommend Edgy 6.10 as I feel its KDE version is much more stable, though that can be installed on 6.06 as well

One thing to try first is to try and finish what you started before the crash
'sudo dpkg --configure -a' from the command prompt will finish up any packages not completely installed
'sudo apt-get update' , then 'sudo apt-get upgrade' should also make sure it is all up to date. Then reboot and see what happens.

You can also use the livecd to browse your linux folders and copy your important bits somewhere before you install. I'd create an archive if you need to save them to a windows partition. Then you can restore that stuff if you decide you need to reinstall

[tlinux]

Re: Disaster!

Claydoh, thanks for your suggestions. They make sense to me so I'll give them a try.

[tlinux]

Re: Disaster!

claydoh,

I wasn't successful with the commands so I downloaded and installed 7.04. Wow! What a difference. It was really a smooth installation. It didn't take long and there were no problems. The hard drive was already partitioned so it automatically changed the partitions and loaded the software. Now I'm up and running and haven't had any problems so far. This was MUCH easier than installling 5.10.

Thanks again for your suggestions.