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View Full Version : [ubuntu] Someone I know shut their computer off during the middle of a distro upgrade



diablo75
September 24th, 2008, 04:38 AM
A friend of mine has an older PC he's put off upgrading from 7.10 to 8.04 for a while and decided to do it recently. After the downloading of the new packages started, he decided to use the computer (which I've advised him to NEVER do again while upgrading). Elements of the desktop started to disappear, and perceiving a serious problem, he felt the next course of action would best be shutting the computer down.

His xserver was broken as a result and we've gotten him back up and running with a GUI after reconfiguring it, but what about the upgrade? Will it be able to continue where it left off or is the damage permanent?

DougieFresh4U
September 24th, 2008, 04:43 AM
could try

sudo apt-get -f install
sudo dpkg --configure -a

wolfen69
September 24th, 2008, 04:43 AM
let's start with:
sudo apt-get install -f

jemate18
September 24th, 2008, 04:45 AM
A friend of mine has an older PC he's put off upgrading from 7.10 to 8.04 for a while and decided to do it recently. After the downloading of the new packages started, he decided to use the computer (which I've advised him to NEVER do again while upgrading). Elements of the desktop started to disappear, and perceiving a serious problem, he felt the next course of action would best be shutting the computer down.

His xserver was broken as a result and we've gotten him back up and running with a GUI after reconfiguring it, but what about the upgrade? Will it be able to continue where it left off or is the damage permanent?

Oh... that will be damaged. When you are upgrading, the packages in your computer are being upgraded, suppose one package is upgraded, but its dependencies were not upgraded due to interruption, that package will therefore not be able to run as expected and will produce error. More so, it might be corrupted......

better follow the post above

xeth_delta
September 24th, 2008, 04:47 AM
Given that the some parts have already been updated, I assume that all the packages have been downloaded and installation began.

Whatever you do, do not run "apt-get clean" before finishing the upgrade (it will delete the packages from the cache).

Also, I suppose that the sources.list file has been updated too, to contain the new repositories.

You should wait a little bit longer for another suggestion or to see if somebody recommends against my suggestion, which would be to go to the command line and issue a

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
and let it finish installing...

sam_delta
September 24th, 2008, 04:51 AM
there are probably more solutions but if i were him, id backup everything and do a fresh install. (probably with simple backup or something)

sam