trentend
March 12th, 2009, 10:50 AM
The upgrade from 8.10 to 8.04 appeared to go okay, unfortunately a restart gave a lie to that appearance.
My system is absolutely shredded, it would seem.
Initially boot didn't work because of the IOMMU problem. Changing the bios sorted that out, but:
Kernel Panic - not syncing: VFS: unable to mount root fs on unknown-block (0,0)
on the new kernel boot was a problem, but booting to the old kernel appeared to solve that problem. Except x wouldn't start.
No problem, so I boot into recovery and try
apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
This showed errors and stated that it was required to;
dpkg --configure -a
this went so far, but then aborted due to "too many errors".
xstarts (in low resolution) and progresses as far as asking for username and password, but at that point I have a lovely orange screen with a moveable mouse cursor and nothing else I can do. Booting back into the recovery kernels wors, but I can't get dpkg to progress further.
I'm stuck. There are a whole heap of settings (like messenger account settings) that I only have on this machine, and a stack of archives email. I know I should have backed them up, but it's not practical. I should have stayed with 8.04, but I have bought some external soundcards that I need for a particular application, and they're only properly supported on later kernels....and I have 8.10 working nicely on a couple of other machines, and smoothly enough for me to reconsider my previous decision only to go with LTS versions on important (production) machines to be unnecessary.
...so here I am. Perhaps went into the upgrade a little too relaxed and underprepared, and now I have a terrible mess that I don't know how to unwind.
I'm nothing like a Linux guru. I have installed and used a number of desktop installations, and have setup some specialist linux server/appliances (webserver, mailserver, trixbox server). I need to follow guides, though. I don't know what I'm doing.
If anyone can give me an idea about how I might be able to repair this system (either back to 8.04, or forward to 8.10), so that I can use it and retrieve my settings and data, I would be grateful.
I appreciate this was an unwise gamble on the upgrade succeeding, without appropriate preparation. Let this be a lesson to you all. I. am. an. idiot.
My system is absolutely shredded, it would seem.
Initially boot didn't work because of the IOMMU problem. Changing the bios sorted that out, but:
Kernel Panic - not syncing: VFS: unable to mount root fs on unknown-block (0,0)
on the new kernel boot was a problem, but booting to the old kernel appeared to solve that problem. Except x wouldn't start.
No problem, so I boot into recovery and try
apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
This showed errors and stated that it was required to;
dpkg --configure -a
this went so far, but then aborted due to "too many errors".
xstarts (in low resolution) and progresses as far as asking for username and password, but at that point I have a lovely orange screen with a moveable mouse cursor and nothing else I can do. Booting back into the recovery kernels wors, but I can't get dpkg to progress further.
I'm stuck. There are a whole heap of settings (like messenger account settings) that I only have on this machine, and a stack of archives email. I know I should have backed them up, but it's not practical. I should have stayed with 8.04, but I have bought some external soundcards that I need for a particular application, and they're only properly supported on later kernels....and I have 8.10 working nicely on a couple of other machines, and smoothly enough for me to reconsider my previous decision only to go with LTS versions on important (production) machines to be unnecessary.
...so here I am. Perhaps went into the upgrade a little too relaxed and underprepared, and now I have a terrible mess that I don't know how to unwind.
I'm nothing like a Linux guru. I have installed and used a number of desktop installations, and have setup some specialist linux server/appliances (webserver, mailserver, trixbox server). I need to follow guides, though. I don't know what I'm doing.
If anyone can give me an idea about how I might be able to repair this system (either back to 8.04, or forward to 8.10), so that I can use it and retrieve my settings and data, I would be grateful.
I appreciate this was an unwise gamble on the upgrade succeeding, without appropriate preparation. Let this be a lesson to you all. I. am. an. idiot.