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Harris_Paltrowitz
July 24th, 2015, 12:54 PM
Hi all,

I'm not really new to Linux, although I've begun using it again after several years. I recently bought a very inexpensive Dell Inspiron laptop that came with Ubuntu 14.04 LTS installed. The problem is that immediately after I reset the unit to factory settings, I get prompted to apply Ubuntu updates. I went through the update cycle, but upon rebooting I was brought into a process that never completed, even after about 8 hours of it doing its thing. I attached a screenshot below that shows this.

The only way I'm able to proceed with this system is by choosing the lower level of Linux at bootup time. The default version (which gives me the problem I mentioned above) is 3.13.0-58-generic; the lower version, which does work for me, is 3.13.0-38-generic.

Any help would be much appreciated! Thank you.

Harris


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kansasnoob
July 24th, 2015, 02:37 PM
While booted into the older kernel try a few simple commands in terminal (just copy-n-paste):


sudo apt-get update


sudo apt-get -f install

The latter of those two may instruct you to run other commands.


sudo dpkg --configure -a

If any of the above commands return any errors it would be helpful for you to copy-n-paste the full terminal output here so we can see what they are.

Harris_Paltrowitz
July 24th, 2015, 04:03 PM
While booted into the older kernel try a few simple commands in terminal (just copy-n-paste):


sudo apt-get update


sudo apt-get -f install

The latter of those two may instruct you to run other commands.


sudo dpkg --configure -a

If any of the above commands return any errors it would be helpful for you to copy-n-paste the full terminal output here so we can see what they are.


Thanks kansasnoob. I did all of the above and didn't get any errors (although the install ended saying that 7 were not upgraded) but I got the same bad situation when I rebooted. I've attached screenshots of the results of the three commands you mentioned plus the reboot problem. Thanks again!

Update:

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Install:

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Configure:

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Upon reboot:

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dino99
July 24th, 2015, 04:20 PM
as the old kernel does not crash; that probably mean the latest one is not installed as expected:
- from 'synaptic' (install it if necessary) purge that faulty kernel (2 images + 2 headers files)
- check that the sources are well set into /etc/apt/sources.list (only 14.04 sources url)
- update the archives
- check that build-essential is installed (as well as dkms)
- reinstall the faulty kernel from the archive: 2 headers + 2 images (glance at the install possible error/warning comments from the synaptic install dialog box)

Harris_Paltrowitz
July 24th, 2015, 09:19 PM
as the old kernel does not crash; that probably mean the latest one is not installed as expected:
- from 'synaptic' (install it if necessary) purge that faulty kernel (2 images + 2 headers files)
- check that the sources are well set into /etc/apt/sources.list (only 14.04 sources url)
- update the archives
- check that build-essential is installed (as well as dkms)
- reinstall the faulty kernel from the archive: 2 headers + 2 images (glance at the install possible error/warning comments from the synaptic install dialog box)

Thanks Dino. I did as much of this as I could (much of it is really beyond my limits of expertise) but I got the same bad result upon rebooting. I'll detail what I was able to do:

- from 'synaptic' (install it if necessary) purge that faulty kernel (2 images + 2 headers files)
After I installed the Synaptic Package Manager I saw several ".58" files, and I removed them.

- check that the sources are well set into /etc/apt/sources.list (only 14.04 sources url)
I didn't understand this at all.

- update the archives
Wasn't sure what this was, although I did do a "reload" in synaptic.

- check that build-essential is installed (as well as dkms)
They were both already installed.

- reinstall the faulty kernel from the archive: 2 headers + 2 images (glance at the install possible error/warning comments from the synaptic install dialog box)
I reinstalled what appeared to be this set of files but I'm not quite sure, as the names were somewhat different from what you mentioned.

I have to admit I'm kinda lost.... and even more so, I'm pretty disillusioned about Ubuntu after this, as all I had done was install the recommended updates using the update manager that was prompting me to do so. Thanks again for your help.

kansasnoob
July 25th, 2015, 05:18 AM
Please copy-n-paste the full terminal output of this command using code tags (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2171721&p=12776168#post12776168):


sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Just posting screenshots makes it nearly impossible to see what's going on. We need to see why those 7 packages are not upgrading. There could be several causes.

I'm even a bit concerned about the long list of packages that apt is offering to "autoremove" ................. some seem essential to me.

Harris_Paltrowitz
July 25th, 2015, 02:19 PM
Please copy-n-paste the full terminal output of this command using code tags (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2171721&p=12776168#post12776168):


sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Just posting screenshots makes it nearly impossible to see what's going on. We need to see why those 7 packages are not upgrading. There could be several causes.

I'm even a bit concerned about the long list of packages that apt is offering to "autoremove" ................. some seem essential to me.

Thanks kansasnoob. Well, the plot thickens... here's what I've just done:

1) Did a fresh restore to factory settings

2) Even before I got the prompt to apply updates from Software Updater, I ran the command you suggested -- here's the output:


harris@harris-dell:~$ pwd
/home/harris
harris@harris-dell:~$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
[sudo] password for harris:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
apt-clone archdetect-deb autogen binutils-mingw-w64-i686
binutils-mingw-w64-x86-64 dmraid g++-mingw-w64 g++-mingw-w64-i686
g++-mingw-w64-x86-64 gcc-mingw-w64 gcc-mingw-w64-base gcc-mingw-w64-i686
gcc-mingw-w64-x86-64 gfortran-mingw-w64 gfortran-mingw-w64-i686
gfortran-mingw-w64-x86-64 gir1.2-json-1.0 gir1.2-timezonemap-1.0
gir1.2-xkl-1.0 gnat-mingw-w64 gnat-mingw-w64-base gnat-mingw-w64-i686
gnat-mingw-w64-x86-64 javascript-common kpartx kpartx-boot
libdebian-installer4 libdevmapper-event1.02.1 libdmraid1.0.0.rc16
libjs-jquery libjs-jquery-ui libopts25 libopts25-dev lvm2 mingw-w64
mingw-w64-common mingw-w64-i686-dev mingw-w64-x86-64-dev python3-icu
python3-pam quilt rdate watershed
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
harris@harris-dell:~$ ^C
harris@harris-dell:~$


3) I got the prompt from Software Updater and went ahead with the update. However, it has frozen at this point -- this popup is still up on my screen, grayed out as you can see in the photo:

263374

4) It's been stuck at this point for about 30 minutes at this point.

Thanks again for your help.
Harris

kansasnoob
July 25th, 2015, 03:26 PM
Thanks kansasnoob. Well, the plot thickens... here's what I've just done:

1) Did a fresh restore to factory settings

2) Even before I got the prompt to apply updates from Software Updater, I ran the command you suggested -- here's the output:


harris@harris-dell:~$ pwd
/home/harris
harris@harris-dell:~$ sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
[sudo] password for harris:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Calculating upgrade... Done
The following packages were automatically installed and are no longer required:
apt-clone archdetect-deb autogen binutils-mingw-w64-i686
binutils-mingw-w64-x86-64 dmraid g++-mingw-w64 g++-mingw-w64-i686
g++-mingw-w64-x86-64 gcc-mingw-w64 gcc-mingw-w64-base gcc-mingw-w64-i686
gcc-mingw-w64-x86-64 gfortran-mingw-w64 gfortran-mingw-w64-i686
gfortran-mingw-w64-x86-64 gir1.2-json-1.0 gir1.2-timezonemap-1.0
gir1.2-xkl-1.0 gnat-mingw-w64 gnat-mingw-w64-base gnat-mingw-w64-i686
gnat-mingw-w64-x86-64 javascript-common kpartx kpartx-boot
libdebian-installer4 libdevmapper-event1.02.1 libdmraid1.0.0.rc16
libjs-jquery libjs-jquery-ui libopts25 libopts25-dev lvm2 mingw-w64
mingw-w64-common mingw-w64-i686-dev mingw-w64-x86-64-dev python3-icu
python3-pam quilt rdate watershed
Use 'apt-get autoremove' to remove them.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
harris@harris-dell:~$ ^C
harris@harris-dell:~$


3) I got the prompt from Software Updater and went ahead with the update. However, it has frozen at this point -- this popup is still up on my screen, grayed out as you can see in the photo:

263374

4) It's been stuck at this point for about 30 minutes at this point.

Thanks again for your help.
Harris

Were you running the update-manager at the same time you ran apt-get from terminal? If so that doesn't work, they interfere with each other.

If you click on the bullet next to details does that expand so you can grab a screenshot of the text? That may be helpful.

If you have to quit that process (or just shut down) before that process is complete go back to trying:


sudo apt-get update


sudo apt-get -f install


sudo dpkg --configure -a

I would not run autoremove just yet, but do try also:


sudo update-grub

Harris_Paltrowitz
July 25th, 2015, 05:53 PM
Were you running the update-manager at the same time you ran apt-get from terminal? If so that doesn't work, they interfere with each other.

If you click on the bullet next to details does that expand so you can grab a screenshot of the text? That may be helpful.

If you have to quit that process (or just shut down) before that process is complete go back to trying:


sudo apt-get update


sudo apt-get -f install


sudo dpkg --configure -a

I would not run autoremove just yet, but do try also:


sudo update-grub

Thanks again kansasnoob. Well, there's been an interesting turn of events -- I seem to be working beautifully now under the newer kernel (the "58" version). I'll do my best to recount exactly what happened:

- To answer your questions -- no, I didn't run those updates simultaneously. Also, the popup was completely frozen, including the Details button.
- I did a shutdown, but upon reboot I was thrown into an endless loop whereby when Ubuntu came up, it said that there was a system problem, but even without me clicking anything, it threw me back to the login screen. This happened repeatedly, so...
- I did a reboot and chose the lower "38" version of the kernel as usual, but in safe mode this time.
- Safe mode presented me with an ASCII menu -- I decided to choose "repair broken packages". This seemed to go well, although it ended saying that it couldn't access some online libraries, but that's likely because I believe I wasn't connected to the internet at that point.
- I then chose the "continue with reboot" option on that ASCII menu, and it brought me up to the full Ubuntu desktop. This time, though, I was able to restart repeatedly without any of the problems happening -- meaning no endless scrolling error screens, and not even the menu that allowed me to choose between kernel versions -- it just restarts normally now.
- I installed synaptic and I saw that the "58" version of the kernel is installed... I then ran the command:


cat /proc/sys/kernel/osrelease


that shows that I'm now running the "58" version.

So, assuming all stays well from this point, it appears that repairing the broken packages in safe mode did the trick. I'd still welcome any thoughts, though!

Thanks again.
Harris

Harris_Paltrowitz
July 25th, 2015, 06:14 PM
Nope, the problem came back. I restarted again out of curiosity, and bam, I once again received that full black screen of errors, where it mentioned something like "kernel panic" -- so I'm back to where I was originally. I'm using the prior "38" version of the kernel now :/