Window manager dies during 10.04 -> 10.10 upgrade

[Jeff Abrahamson]

During the 10.04 LTS -> 10.10 upgrade, I find myself with the update grub dialog. Unfortunately, it's action buttons are behind the upgrade progress dialog, and I have lost window decorations (so can't change window stacking order). This seems to indicate that the window manager has died, because I can use the mouse but not the keyboard.

So the upgrade appears to be dead in the water for inability to tell the grub upgrade to go ahead. I can launch a terminal, but I can't type to it. :(

Any suggestions besides reboot?

On reboot, any suggestions for what to do next? (In the absence of response, in a few hours I'll reboot and look at how to recover, updating this thread.)

Thanks for any tips.

[Jeff Abrahamson]

I've filed this bug report, which describes the problem and its resolution.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/910051

Briefly, the resolution was an hour or so of clicking and poking and typing to no effect, until mysteriously the upgrade understood a respond and started again. Unsatisfying as a response but ok as an outcome.