no gdm after 8.04 update

[houseworkshy]

I allowed update manager to do it's stuff and all seemed well. Then when browsing the system crashed. On trying to reboot it got past the password and name stage, made the right noises then the screen went white. Tried recovery mode, same again after fixing broken files. Tried fix x servor and again. Booted to comand line and "sudo start gdm" didn't work. Also noticed that I was "root@desktop and not my user name. Also this is not my machine. I'm using puppy to post this. Any ideas about how I can sort this out.

[searchfgold6789]

You upgraded 8.04 to what? 8.10? I read somewhere that you couldn't upgrade to 10.10 from pre-10.04.

[houseworkshy]

It wasn't a distribution upgrade, just the standard update manager which had been set to pull only security and recomends. Also only the lts ones. Most of them related to cups, though I didn't read them all. Let it do that then went browsing with firefox, which had no add-ons installed not even the security ones like no-script ( it's not my macine ). Probably five minets later the machine went down, was looking at forbes magazine when it happened which is probably irrelevant. the gui went then a screen of command lines flashed past too fast to read then stopped. No comand line entry so hit the power button. Then rebooted and as in my first post.
Though the problem wasn't understood or solved the situation has been. Its a single drive machine which is a duel boot based on partitions, the other system being xp. Against the chance of something going wrong I'd left cd's of puppy quirky and ubuntu 10.04.1 round there ( it's my mum's machine actully and has had trouble after updates once before. ), also we had blank dvds. I tried the things mentioned in the first post then booted from puppy ( the quirky version ) and all hardware was working, just as importantly the linux partition was intact with all her work ( open office documents mostly ) undamaged. So part of whatever happend had hit the grub. Sorry we didn't wait long enough to see your reply, it was a bit of a panic as mum's a writer and there was rather a lot of new work which hadn't been backed up. I then made a directory on the xp side and copied over the documents, email etc, desktop ( it was all over the place, mums a good writer but not a tidy maker of ordered directories, I had to make docs1 2 and 3 because I don't know redundant from important versions of things ). Thinking back I should have grabbed the logs too but sorry I didn't. Then took a slight risk and booted again, the xp boot worked so we were able to confirm that the work had indeed been copied properly because open office is on both sides. Mum checked it and when she said all was there, I booted from Lucid tested from live and all seemed ok. So deleted the hardy partition and put Lucid on it. Rebooted and all worked. Then Ufw default deny and enable first, then drivers, then updates, clamAv etc. Put no-script on this time too, one can take ease of use too far, also changed theme to clear looks as Mum didn't like the buttons on the other side thing. All was well both sides through both cold and warm boots so, fingers crossed, ok now.
Sorry I don't have more for the developers, we were in a bit of a flap. I may have copied the sudo as admin sucessful file as part of the rest and will look for it the next time I go round. Also it was late by the time it was sorted out which was why I didn't post back here last night, I'm posting from my own machine now.
I'll try to add what I can remember. Tried the recovery options, mending broken files and x but no joy. Looked ok through password splash, flicker of orange background ( may be useful as Mum had changed her background to green) then white screen in which one can move the mouse pointer but can't do anything with it, no context menu. When in the command line from the broken hardy, via recovery, not only didn't starting gdm work there was no man page for it and the command was reported as non-existant. Apt-get update couldn't connect, though it did at least try. The etho seemed to be working as far as moden lights indicate. Couldn't change directories so root@desktop was the only place I could be. I tried a few programs which I knew to be there without luck. I didn't spend long in there because I feared for the data on the drive. That's all I can remember for now.
Thank you very much for posting a reply.
I'll come back and may mark this tread as solved, because the situation is. However I'll leave it open for a day or two because what happend isn't known. The last time Mum had problems after a Hardy update lots of other people did too and if that is the case this time the few scraps I can remember may be of use and people may want to use the thread to chat about it, in which case I'll leave it open. Last time I wasn't there and suspected a borked dist upgrade, this time I was there and it definately wasn't, default repositories, security and recomends only and Lts only, the server was the fastest of the uk ones at the time.

[sikander3786]

Ahhh. Reading that long post is not easy. I admit I haven't read whole of it.

What happens when at the command prompt, you type,

startx

[houseworkshy]

I didn't try that. However did try fixing it via recovery which didn't work. Also as we got the password screen x probably started though what it did later is unknown. Thanks for replying.