Interrupted installation - Filesystem lost?

[eamner]

Hello

I messed it up. Big time.
I was upgrading from 12.04 to 14.04, using Muon Upgrade Manager. I left it installing all day and when I came back from work it was still installing and showing a console window with a message saying something about stopping kdm and that the installation would be resumed after restarting it. Then It asked if it should stop kdm, I said "Y"... then it went to text console with some messages showing the status of some jobs (timidity, etc). And nothing else happened.
I opened a new console and tried several things, but since I am a NOOB I couldn't think of anything other than rebooting. Now after reboot all I get is: "Filesystem check or mount failed. A maintenance shell will now be started. CONTROL-D will terminate this shell and continue booting after re-trying filesystem. Any further errors will be ignored".
And that's all I get.
Please keep in mind that I have a Dual Boot with windows 7 so I could go to windows using GRUB and now I'm writing from windows.
My question: if I can't recover my Kubuntu, would it be possible to at least recover my files? My last backup was a month ago....
Please let me know your comments.
Eric.

[bweinel]

Hello
My question: if I can't recover my Kubuntu, would it be possible to at least recover my files? My last backup was a month ago....
Please let me know your comments.

Sorry to hear about your installation troubles. If you were reinstalling kubuntu using an existing partition (i.e.: overwriting, not re-partitioning) you should be able use an installation CD to boot up a live kubuntu session, then mount your hard drive user partition in order to gain access to your files. If you used the partition manager during the installation attempt to reinitialize your kubuntu hard drive partitions, then the file tables are likely wiped out making any data recovery of existing files very difficult to impossible.

cheers,
bill

[eamner]

Sorry to hear about your installation troubles. If you were reinstalling kubuntu using an existing partition (i.e.: overwriting, not re-partitioning) you should be able use an installation CD to boot up a live kubuntu session, then mount your hard drive user partition in order to gain access to your files. If you used the partition manager during the installation attempt to reinitialize your kubuntu hard drive partitions, then the file tables are likely wiped out making any data recovery of existing files very difficult to impossible.
cheers,
bill

Bill
Maybe I wasn't clear in my initial statement. I was not installing, but upgrading from 12.04 to 14.04, using Muon. I will take your suggestion and use a live cd to try to read my files. I'll do this in a few hours when I get home. If I can do this, the big question will be if I can finish the upgrade...
Thanks.

[oshunluvr]

Did you let the filesystem check run?

[eamner]

Hello again

The good news is that with the live cd, as Bill suggested, I could access my files... actually I can see my files doing a simple "ls" in command line console. In KDE I could run the partitions program and see all the partitions normally. HOWEVER there were a few files that seemed to be corrupt (at least one text file gave me troubles when opening). But that's ok.
Now I need to know if it will be possible to recover my system as it was. And possibly continue the upgrade?
Here's some info I got:

fsck -f
fsck from util-linux 2.20.1
e2fsck 1.42.9 (4-feb-2014)
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information

/dev/sda5: 1032083/23142400 files (0.4% non-contiguous), 33503299/92546560 blocks

And the result from fdisk -l:

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 : 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes/512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes/512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x212ac65c

Device Boot Start End Blocks ID System
/dev/sda1 * 2048 206847 102400 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2 206848 224759807 112276480 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda3 224761854 976773119 376005633 5 Extended
/dev/sda5 224761836 965134335 370186240 83 Linux
/dev/sda6 965136384 976773119 5818368 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Disk /dev/sdb: 2000.4 GB, 2000365289472 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 243197 cylinders, total 3906963456 bytes
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 : 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes/512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes/512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x00021365

Device Boot Start End Blocks ID System
/dev/sdb1 2048 3906963455 1953480704 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

Now, I have seen a few other cases in the forum similar to mine. I've seen cases where they have even proposed ways to continue the upgrade, but I prefer to wait for your inputs to my specific case, before trying those. If there is a way to recover my kubuntu without reinstalling everything again, please let me know. Also I don't want to do anything that ruins my grub (I'm writing from windows now).
Rgds.

[claydoh]

From the grub menu, you can get to a recovery section where you can run fsck; I'd run it again from here anyway just to make sure all is good just to be sure.
You can also try to complete the upgrade - likely as the package installation was aborted, it just needs to be restarted. All this part is the normal installation and upgrade of packages just like any normal update you'd get. There is an option in recovery mode to repair broken packages that might work here, but you can also select the root shell prompt and run a couple of manual commands to do this as well

dpkg --configure -a
and
apt-get -f install
The first one will attempt to install/configure the packages that did not get to be installed, or didn't finish, and the second will try to install anything that might be missing. I think that the Repair option in grub does this, or at least one of these steps.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RecoveryMode has a brief description, and also reminds me that the root disk is in read-only mode here, so any manual commands likely require re-mounting the partition(s) first.

As bad as it looks, this process should be quite safe, but do back up your files just in case.

[bweinel]

Backups before making file system changes are always a good thing.

cheers,
bill

[eamner]

dpkg --configure -a
and
apt-get -f install

Thanks Clay. I followed your steps, and I got some improvement.
dpkg only gave me a bunch of errors, saying that there were dependency issues. But with the second line I got lots of "setting up..." and it installed many packages for some minutes.
However at the end it showed this error:

Errors were encountered while processing:
bluez
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)


Then, I rebooted and ran dpkg again, and it seems that it finished installing "bluez" (at least it didn't show any error).
Then just in case, I ran fsck from the Recovery Menu. This is it:

fsck from util-linux 2.20.1
/dev/sda5: 1032083/23142400 files (0.4% non-contiguous), 33503298/92546560 blocks

...that's an improvement because before this, I was getting this error before the above lines:

/lib/recovery-mode/recovery-menu: line 76: /etc/default/rcS: No such file or directory


So, I rebooted the machine and to my surprise I got to the new blue Login window! (nice looking by the way).
Then I entered my user and password and the login window dissapeared and then... nothing else happened. I waited hoping that it would take some time to login for the first time but that was it. I could see and move the mouse cursor, but nothing else.
So I went to tty1 and it was pretty normal, I could actually see all my files there. But in tty7 nothing else happened except for the beautiful blue background.
We're getting closer to it, but what is missing?

[bweinel]

Then I entered my user and password and the login window dissapeared and then... nothing else happened. I waited hoping that it would take some time to login for the first time but that was it. I could see and move the mouse cursor, but nothing else.
So I went to tty1 and it was pretty normal, I could actually see all my files there. But in tty7 nothing else happened except for the beautiful blue background.
We're getting closer to it, but what is missing?

Sounds like plasma is crashing or lightdm isn't handing off properly. Since you got the initial graphic display screen, it seems like X started up running. Check out /var/log/lightdm/lightdm.log for problems handing off to kde-plasma.

Below is an excerpt from mine:

[+9.81s] DEBUG: Seat: Display server ready, starting session authentication
[+9.81s] DEBUG: Session pid=1399: Started with service 'lightdm-greeter', username 'lightdm'
[+10.34s] DEBUG: Session pid=1399: Authentication complete with return value 0: Success
[+10.34s] DEBUG: Seat: Session authenticated, running command
[+10.34s] DEBUG: Session pid=1399: Running command /usr/lib/lightdm/lightdm-greeter-session /usr/sbin/lightdm-kde-greeter
[+10.42s] DEBUG: Creating shared data directory /var/lib/lightdm-data/lightdm
[+10.42s] DEBUG: Session pid=1399: Logging to /var/log/lightdm/x-0-greeter.log
[+10.53s] DEBUG: Activating VT 7
[+10.53s] DEBUG: Activating login1 session /org/freedesktop/login1/session/c1
[+19.58s] DEBUG: Session pid=1399: Greeter connected version=1.10.1
[+552.64s] DEBUG: Session pid=1399: Greeter start authentication for bweinel
[+552.64s] DEBUG: Session pid=2050: Started with service 'lightdm', username 'bweinel'
[+552.71s] DEBUG: Session pid=2050: Got 1 message(s) from PAM
[+552.71s] DEBUG: Session pid=1399: Prompt greeter with 1 message(s)
[+552.71s] DEBUG: Session pid=1399: Continue authentication
[+553.11s] DEBUG: Session pid=2050: Authentication complete with return value 0: Success
[+553.11s] DEBUG: Session pid=1399: Authenticate result for user bweinel: Success
[+553.11s] DEBUG: Session pid=1399: User bweinel authorized
[+554.42s] DEBUG: Session pid=1399: Greeter requests session kde-plasma
[+554.42s] DEBUG: Seat: Stopping greeter; display server will be re-used for user session
[+554.42s] DEBUG: Session pid=1399: Sending SIGTERM
[+554.46s] DEBUG: Session pid=1399: Greeter closed communication channel
[+554.46s] DEBUG: Session pid=1399: Exited with return value 0
[+554.46s] DEBUG: Seat: Session stopped

..next check to see if X is currently running:

bweinel@beck:~$ sudo ps -ae | grep X
 1187 tty7     00:02:50 Xorg

Running on my system.. but if you get no returns, its not on yours.

Hopefully you'll find some clues from the above as to whats happening. If you don't find anything significant, have a look at /var/log/Xorg.0.log to see if Xorg generated any helpful error messages along the way...

Finally try a 'startx' from the command line in tty1 to see if you can restart an X session. If it crashes it should generate some error messages.

This sounds suspiciously like you may be having a video driver issue....

cheers,
bill

[claydoh]

As a test, I tried starting kde manually, using startx and startkde after stopping lightdm, and it simply gave a black screen, on a working system. Even after exporting $DISPLAY.

Sent from my Verizon HTC Droid DNA Android smartphone running ViperRom Kit Kat, using Tapatalk, like that really matters

[eamner]

This sounds suspiciously like you may be having a video driver issue....

Thanks Bill, I'll try your suggestions when I get home.
By the way, in the login screen there's a button under the password text box, saying something like "KDE Workspace somethingelse"... but when I clicked on it, all it does is change its font to Bold. Nothing else. Is this normal?

[eamner]

Hi

After following Claydoh's suggestion (stopping lightdm and doing startx) my KDE STARTED!
After logging in, everything looked pretty normal, as if nothing had happened. A few seconds later I realized this is because KDE hasn't been updated (I got the message of having +1000 pending updates).
So, should I apply these updates (+2 GB)?
And the most important question, what must I do to leave this to start normally, without doing it manually?

In response to Bill, this is an excerpt from my lightdm.log:

[+0.40s] DEBUG: User /org/freedesktop/Accounts/User1000 added
[+0.42s] DEBUG: Got signal 10 from process 1847
[+0.42s] DEBUG: DisplayServer x-0: Got signal from X server :0
[+0.42s] DEBUG: DisplayServer x-0: Connecting to XServer :0
[+0.42s] DEBUG: Quitting Plymouth; retaining splash
[+0.44s] DEBUG: Seat: Display server ready, starting session authentication
[+0.44s] DEBUG: Session pid=1903: Started with service 'lightdm-greeter', username 'lightdm'
[+0.48s] DEBUG: Session pid=1903: Authentication complete with return value 0: Success
[+0.48s] DEBUG: Seat: Session authenticated, running command
[+0.48s] DEBUG: Session pid=1903: Running command /usr/lib/lightdm/lightdm-greeter-session /usr/sbin/lightdm-kde-greeter
[+0.66s] DEBUG: Creating shared data directory /var/lib/lightdm-data/lightdm
[+0.66s] DEBUG: Session pid=1903: Logging to /var/log/lightdm/x-0-greeter.log
[+0.74s] DEBUG: Activating VT 7
[+0.74s] DEBUG: Activating login1 session /org/freedesktop/login1/session/c1
[+2.92s] DEBUG: Session pid=1903: Greeter connected version=1.10.1
[+170.42s] DEBUG: Session pid=1903: Greeter start authentication for eric
[+170.42s] DEBUG: Session pid=3054: Started with service 'lightdm', username 'eric'
[+170.43s] DEBUG: Session pid=3054: Got 1 message(s) from PAM
[+170.43s] DEBUG: Session pid=1903: Prompt greeter with 1 message(s)
[+170.43s] DEBUG: Session pid=1903: Continue authentication
[+170.48s] DEBUG: Session pid=3054: Authentication complete with return value 0: Success
[+170.48s] DEBUG: Session pid=1903: Authenticate result for user eric: Success
[+170.48s] DEBUG: Session pid=1903: User eric authorized
[+171.86s] DEBUG: Session pid=1903: Greeter requests session kde-plasma
[+171.86s] DEBUG: Seat: Stopping greeter; display server will be re-used for user session
[+171.86s] DEBUG: Session pid=1903: Sending SIGTERM
[+171.90s] DEBUG: Session pid=1903: Exited with return value 0
[+171.90s] DEBUG: Seat: Session stopped
[+171.90s] DEBUG: Seat: Greeter stopped, running session
[+171.90s] DEBUG: Registering session with bus path /org/freedesktop/DisplayManager/Session0
[+171.90s] DEBUG: Session pid=3054: Running command /usr/sbin/lightdm-session /usr/bin/startkde
[+171.90s] DEBUG: Creating shared data directory /var/lib/lightdm-data/eric
[+171.90s] DEBUG: Session pid=3054: Logging to .xsession-errors
[+171.96s] DEBUG: Activating VT 7
[+171.96s] DEBUG: Activating login1 session /org/freedesktop/login1/session/c2
[+962.84s] DEBUG: Got signal 15 from process 1
[+962.84s] DEBUG: Caught Terminated signal, shutting down
[+962.84s] DEBUG: Stopping display manager
[+962.84s] DEBUG: Seat: Stopping
[+962.84s] DEBUG: Seat: Stopping display server
[+962.84s] DEBUG: Sending signal 15 to process 1847
[+962.84s] DEBUG: Seat: Stopping session
[+962.84s] DEBUG: Session pid=3054: Sending SIGTERM
[+962.91s] DEBUG: Process 1847 exited with return value 0
[+962.91s] DEBUG: DisplayServer x-0: X server stopped
[+962.91s] DEBUG: Releasing VT 7
[+962.91s] DEBUG: DisplayServer x-0: Removing X server authority /var/run/lightdm/root/:0
[+962.91s] DEBUG: Seat: Display server stopped
[+963.32s] DEBUG: Session pid=3054: Exited with return value 0
[+963.32s] DEBUG: Seat: Session stopped
[+963.32s] DEBUG: Seat: Stopped
[+963.32s] DEBUG: Display manager stopped
[+963.32s] DEBUG: Stopping daemon
[+963.32s] DEBUG: Exiting with return value 0

and this is the Xorg process (seems to be running fine):


eric@Eric-PC:~$ sudo ps -ae | grep X
4375 tty8 00:00:22 Xorg


(this was run from inside KDE... but I got very similar outputs before loggin in).
Almost there...

[claydoh]

Well if we are lucky, the new packages (a LOT - more than I would expect) will fix things, fill any missing holes if you will.

If you are not sure, post the output of apt-get dist-upgrade (without letting it perform the process) to show us what exactly is being done.

[bweinel]

Yeah... I guess I should have really said from tty1 make sure lightdm was killed first and then execute startx...

Glad to hear that you're making progress... that's the important thing.


cheers,
bill

[bweinel]

By the way, in the login screen there's a button under the password text box, saying something like "KDE Workspace somethingelse"... but when I clicked on it, all it does is change its font to Bold. Nothing else. Is this normal?

Yes. If you have more than one desktop manager loaded, lightdm allows you to select which one to start there. In most Kubuntu installations this isn't the case.

cheers,
bill