8.10 Upgrade failed

[Vitamin_A]

Well, I tried to install the upgrade last night, and when it was actually doing the actual upgrade, an error message flashed in the top corner of my screen (I think it said something like, it couldn't get the temperature for my hard drive, or the amount of battery remaining, which is odd, because I'm plugged in), and the the window showing me my upgrade status suddenly closed (while it was not completed). I tried to run the update manager again, but nothing was loading, so I restarted my computer, and now nothing boots.

Can I somehow continue the upgrade, or do I have to clean install?
And if I clean install, can I get my files?

[Partyboi2]

Are you able to boot into recovery mode? If so then try

dpkg --configure -a
apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get dist-upgrade

If you are enable to recovery your system then you could try booting a ubuntu live cd and copying the data you want to keep before doing a clean install.

[Vitamin_A]

When I launch into recovery mode, it detects my file system as read only. How can I make it so that it isn't just read only?

[Partyboi2]

Try booting a ubuntu live cd and running fsck. Once you have booted a ubuntu live cd open a terminal (Applications>Accessories>Terminal) and start fsck

sudo fsck /dev/sda1

Change sda1 to the correct number.

[Vitamin_A]

Try booting a ubuntu live cd and running fsck. Once you have booted a ubuntu live cd open a terminal (Applications>Accessories>Terminal) and start fsck

sudo fsck /dev/sda1

Change sda1 to the correct number.

after trying the fsck command, and then booting into recovery mode, I still get the read-only message.

[Partyboi2]

When you boot into recovery mode try to mount your filesystem as read/write

mount -o remount,rw /

[Vitamin_A]

well, I was able to boot into my OS, thanks.
However, ut seems that everytime I start up, I have to put in those commands, followed by 'reboot' before I get to my graphical interface, because it keeps checking the drive citing an "unclean shutdown" no matter how many times I shut the computer down properly. Is this fixable? Or do I just have to live with it.

[MKlemm]

well, I was able to boot into my OS, thanks.
However, ut seems that everytime I start up, I have to put in those commands, followed by 'reboot' before I get to my graphical interface, because it keeps checking the drive citing an "unclean shutdown" no matter how many times I shut the computer down properly. Is this fixable? Or do I just have to live with it.

Did you really wait until the check has run all the way to it's end? Sometimes this can take a *long* time, so that one might think it is hanging. And if you interrupt it during the check, it will try to check again on the next boot...
You should really let it run through, until it boots without any interaction. If you the shutdown you system cleanly, you should be fine for the next couple of reboots, until the check policy again thinks the disk has to be checked.

[Vitamin_A]

Did you really wait until the check has run all the way to it's end? Sometimes this can take a *long* time, so that one might think it is hanging. And if you interrupt it during the check, it will try to check again on the next boot...
You should really let it run through, until it boots without any interaction. If you the shutdown you system cleanly, you should be fine for the next couple of reboots, until the check policy again thinks the disk has to be checked.

Well, at 8%, it detects an error "Error reading block 1867825 (Attempt to read block from filesystem resulted in short read) while getting inode from scan."

The fsck fails with error code 4, and it requests that I run fsck manually from the maintenance shell that appears. However, running fsck produces the same error message many times over, except the block number changes. I am asked whether I want to ignore the error. Choosing no ends the fsck, choosing yes asks me if I want to overwrite it.

[Partyboi2]

Boot the ubuntu live cd again and try

sudo e2fsck -y -f -v /dev/sda1

again replace sda1 with the correct partition.