How to repair an erroneous update?

[nickdc]

I think I may have screwed up in my latest update of 12.04. I missed the request to restart during a two batch update and when I restarted after running both consecutively, my boot process hangs with a purple screen. If I attempt recovery mode, it hangs on a black screen post. I can boot fine into the previous version, which is 3.2.0-38 generic, which I'm using now. I've tried completely removing 3.2.0-39 kernel packages in synaptic, expecting after that I'd then automatically boot into 3.2. 0-38 and be able to run the update again, this time more carefully. But maybe I've not removed all I needed to in synaptic, as rebooting produces exactly the same situation as before. And when I run the update manager I'm told that I'm up to date. I've searched on how to re-run an update, but drawn a blank. I'd be very grateful for some assistance and enlightenment.

[sudodus]

If you have not done it, run

sudo update-grub

and reboot

[nickdc]

Thanks for that, but I'm afraid it hasn't worked; I have exactly as before. I'm pretty sure my attempt to use synaptic to remove 3.2.0-39 packages can't have worked. Is there a terminal command, or series of commands, that I can use from where I am now (3.2.0-38) that will absolutely clear out everything "above" that so I'm back to where I was when I'd just updated to that (however many updates back that may be)? Presumably then I can go through the update process again until I'm current. (I know I could do a fresh install, but that seems a bit drastic, and anyway I like to learn more through dealing with these glitches as they come up from time to time.)

[sudodus]

Quick fix:

It won't purge the system completely from a kernel version, but I think sudo update-grub can't find it if you remove all '39' files from /boot

So list the files with

ls -l /boot

and remove those belonging to '39' with

sudo rm -i /boot/*-3.2.0-39-*

--
Or better:

It should be possible to remove kernels completely using Synaptic, or by removing all packages with names containing the string '3.2.0-39' with
sudo apt-get purge ..., in your case

sudo apt-get purge linux-headers-3.2.0-39*

and

sudo apt-get purge linux-image-3.2.0-39*

--
Finally run

sudo update-grub

to remove the boot option for the '39' kernel version.

[nickdc]

That's worked. Thank you very much, sudodus. It's removed nearly a gigabyte of stuff and put me back to 0-25, but it's booting cleanly now and I can start to re-apply the updates. Many thanks.

[nickdc]

Woops! perhaps I spoke too soon: the update manager is still telling me there are no updates to install. Yet "uname -a" tells me I'm on kernel version 3.2.0-25-generic, when before I was on 3.2.0-38 (and 3.2.0-39 before the erroneous update). "Sudo apt-get update" doesn't do much either. I don't get it!

[matt_symes]

Hi

As it's only the kernel you have manually removed, try just installing that

sudo apt-get install --reinstall linux-image

You can also specify the specific kernel version to install if required.

sudo apt-get install --reinstall linux-image=3.2.0-39

Kind regards

[sudodus]

Woops! perhaps I spoke too soon: the update manager is still telling me there are no updates to install. Yet "uname -a" tells me I'm on kernel version 3.2.0-25-generic, when before I was on 3.2.0-38 (and 3.2.0-39 before the erroneous update). "Sudo apt-get update" doesn't do much either. I don't get it!

First try according to matt_symes's post, but reinstall '38' not '39'

Then only if necessary try all of these commands in sequence

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

--
and finally

sudo update-grub

[nickdc]

Thanks for the continued help. I've tried your code, matt-symes, but I get an error:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
E: Version ‘3.2.0-38’ for ‘linux-image’ was not found

Same for 3.2.0-39

sudodus, if I run the commands you suggest, won't it upgrade to 12.10? I want to avoid that if I can. I'm happy with 12.04 and so far have declined the option to upgrade.

[matt_symes]

Hi

Just realised my previous command would have never worked

Try this. Copy and paste into the terminal.

sudo apt-get install --reinstall linux-image-3.2.0-38

sudo apt-get install --reinstall linux-image-extra-3.2.0-38

Kind regards