Upgrade to Oneiric failed- now have unusable system

[sumithar]

Please help- am stuck with an unusable system right now.

I was running Natty. I chose the in-place upgrade to Oneiric. I left it unattended and then when I came back later it had a blank screen and keyboard unresponsive. Tried switching off and on again- Grub came up, chose the kernel 3.0something option at the top- it gave me a blank screen.
Rebooted, Chose earlier kernel which I thought might be corresponding to natty- that didn't work either
So booted from CD with Natty and tried to install Natty all over again. Got a message that installer crashed and asked me to attach these 2 files /var/log/syslog and /var/log/partman

I posted a bug on launchpad.

But in the meantime I don't have a system I can really work with- I'm booting off CD right now.

What can I do?

When I try to install from LiveCd it gives these options- see AllocateDrivespace.png attached.
If I choose the 4th option it gives this additional screen(AllocateDrivespace2.png)-
not sure how to proceed at that point. Can I be sure that a clean install will only use that 10GB partition?

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1        1306    10485760   83  Linux
/dev/sda2            9328        9730     3227649    5  Extended
/dev/sda3            1306        9328    64435200   83  Linux
/dev/sda5            9328        9730     3227648   82  Linux swap / Solaris

The sda3 is where I have my user directory with all my videos and documents and other goodies.

Can I wipe out sda1 and install Natty there fresh? Would that work.

As I said, please help- I really don't want to format the whole harddrive- even having to reinstall the OS is a serious PITA I could have done w/o, but I obviously don't learn since my inplace upgrade from meerkat to natty had similar issues and I did end up wiping the HDD and installing natty from a downloaded CD!

[23dornot23d]

You should back up any data you need onto a separate drive before proceeding.

[sumithar]

Are you saying that just to be on the safe side or will I have no choice to back up and restore things? I was hoping that the partitioning schem I had chosen would insulate my user directory from the os.

Anyway, I started to do that...See attached screenshot- I want to just back up this entire folder. I wonder if those entries which are x'ed out can also be included somehow in the copy? It currently won't let me.

[eastwood_systems]

I have nearly the same situation. The upgrade was in the fetching packages stage when I left it. Came back to a blank screen, unresponsive to keyboard. After power-cycling, it boots partially: I get the Ubuntu logo with the 5 dots underneath, then it goes to a text screen with various messages, the last one being "* Checking battery state [OK]", then it just hangs. Keystrokes are echoed, but it doesn't react to any commands other than ctrl-alt-del.

Booting to the older kernal listed in the grub menu gives similar results. I can boot to recovery mode and get a command prompt, but don't know what to do from there.

I have Oneiric on a bootable flash drive, but would like to avoid a complete re-install.

I am running a Dell system with a Pentium 4 processor and the on-board Intel Express display adapter.

[sumithar]

I have nearly the same situation. The upgrade was in the fetching packages stage when I left it. Came back to a blank screen, unresponsive to keyboard. After power-cycling, it boots partially: I get the Ubuntu logo with the 5 dots underneath, then it goes to a text screen with various messages, the last one being "* Checking battery state [OK]", then it just hangs. Keystrokes are echoed, but it doesn't react to any commands other than ctrl-alt-del.

Booting to the older kernal listed in the grub menu gives similar results. I can boot to recovery mode and get a command prompt, but don't know what to do from there.

I have Oneiric on a bootable flash drive, but would like to avoid a complete re-install.

I am running a Dell system with a Pentium 4 processor and the on-board Intel Express display adapter.

The specifics you've detailed are what I'm facing too like the screen with the dots and the battery message. Like you I'm booting off an external device currently (Natty off a CD)

I too want to avoid a complete reinstall, I had installed a handful of programs and utilities plus quite a few under Wine that would be a pain to have to reinstall

H/w-wise I have an HP with a Intel(R) Celeron(R) D CPU 3.20GHz
and onboard graphics.

[eastwood_systems]

The following just worked for me:
1) Boot into recovery mode.
2) sudo apt-get clean
3) sudo apt-get update
This failed, but the error message provided details on a dpkg command that needed to be run. I ran that command, and then the update command again.
4) sudo apt-get upgrade
5) Exit and reboot as normal.

[sumithar]

The following just worked for me:
1) Boot into recovery mode.
2) sudo apt-get clean
3) sudo apt-get update
This failed, but the error message provided details on a dpkg command that needed to be run. I ran that command, and then the update command again.
4) sudo apt-get upgrade
5) Exit and reboot as normal.

I tried to boot into the kernel 3.0.12 recovery mode. I got a screen full of text with this line at the bottom
0.772599] [<c1533b7e>] kernel_thread_helper + 0x6/0x10

and it hanged with the caps lock and scroll lock lights flashing.

I had to switch it off.

[garvinrick4]

Take your install cd and boot off of it and hit space bar when you see the icons on
bottom right at the start.
Choose install
when get to screen that asks you how to install click on "something else"
Now when get to screen where shows partition table double click on sda1 that is your
linux install correct.
then go ext4 format, check the format box, mount point is /
You already have a swap do not need another one.
On bottom of same page make sure "boot loader" (grub) is going to sda not sda1 but sda
Now finish install.
Only thing effected is sda1 will get a fresh install all other partitions not being touched. (Just focus while installing)

[sumithar]

Take your install cd and boot off of it and hit space bar when you see the icons on
bottom right at the start.
Choose install
when get to screen that asks you how to install click on "something else"
Now when get to screen where shows partition table double click on sda1 that is your
linux install correct.
then go ext4 format, check the format box, mount point is /
You already have a swap do not need another one.
On bottom of same page make sure "boot loader" (grub) is going to sda not sda1 but sda
Now finish install.
Only thing effected is sda1 will get a fresh install all other partitions not being touched. (Just focus while installing)

This was the kind of directions I was hoping to get.
I followed these steps and installed Ubuntu. When I took out the CD and restarted I got a black screen which said file error and a grub-rescue prompt.

I googled this and applied these instructions

sudo mount /dev/sda5 /mnt
sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sda

Now it booted up into a black screen with just the prompt
grub>
Then I followed the boot repair instructions on this page
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Boot-Repair

and did everything they asked.

Now it boots up into a screen which says on the top

GNU GRUB version 1.99~rc1-13ubuntu3
Minimal bash like editing is supported. Some other stuff and then a prompt
grub>

the only difference, this is not a black screen but with the ubuntu pinkish-purplish background.

Any thoughts?

[garvinrick4]

I believe your install is in sda1, not sda5 it is swap partition.
In live Cd (install cd using Try Ubuntu) Copy and paste these one at a time.

sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt

sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt /dev/sda

sudo umount /mnt

sudo reboot