Cannot boot after upgrade

[zeynel2]

I already posted questions to several forums including here http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2192528 but the issue is still not resolved. Thanks to everyone who tried to help, but can you let me know if there is no hope to fix this, if so I will have to reinstall and lose all data I had (I have no backup). Thanks.

[ian-weisser]

It's probably pretty easy to fix.
There was lots of good advice in that previous thread.

Losing your data is entirely your choice. Backing up is very easy to do.
You already did the hardest part when you booted from a DVD.

[zeynel2]

Hi ian-weisser: None of the good advice is working for me and all I get is reference to that link. Do you have any specific ideas that I can try.

The latest thing I tried was to log in through grub without splash (this gets me to a command line) and I logged in and there was a message saying that a new version of ubuntu was available. I started to download that, all went well, but as soon as download ended, the screen went black.

I also tried the advice here: http://askubuntu.com/questions/28884...grade-to-13-04 and it did not work. Can you help?

[zeynel2]

I tried again and when I run sudo apt-get dist-upgrage I get this error:

Failed to fetch http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/...ntu6_amd64.deb Could not resolve 'us.archive.ubuntu.com'

I thought this may be relevant because I was told that this was a video driver issue.

[zeynel2]

I am able to log in through command line and I was able to print some of the important files. Would it be possible to back up from the command line? How can I do that?

[ian-weisser]

I started to download that, all went well, but as soon as download ended, the screen went black.

That could mean a lot of things. It could mean that your screen turned off to save power, and you merely needed to jiggle the mouse, and your system is just fine. Or it could mean that you successfully upgraded and rebooted, but didn't fix your video driver. We're not psychic - you must explain exactly what happened and what you experienced in a lot more detail.

When you boot, stop the boot cycle at the GRUB screen.
There are instructions on your screen to tell you how to do that.
At the GRUB screen, select an older kernel to boot into.
You still need to fix the newer one, but it's easier if you can successfully boot.

[ian-weisser]

I am able to log in through command line and I was able to print some of the important files. Would it be possible to back up from the command line? How can I do that?

Insert your USB stick or external hard drive.

Use the ls (list) command to find your stick. You might need to look around a bit in the /media directory.
For example, here is how I found my USB stick using the ls command:

$ ls /media
cdrom  cdrom0  ian                 #  Well, I know it's not a cdrom

$ ls /media/ian/
SHARED_128                          #  There it is!

$ ls /media/ian/SHARED_128/
00063.jpg                              # Look! It's the list of all my stuff on the USB stick!
zoo_stuff.jpg

Use the command cp (copy) to backup your stuff to the external USB stick or drive.
You can copy one file at a time, or entire directories (if your external drive is big enough)
The format is simple: cp FROM TO, like a sentence.
For example, if I want to copy the file /home/ian/pudding_recipe onto the external disk, I would use

cp /home/ian/pudding_recipe /media/ian/SHARED_128/

If I wanted to copy my entire /home/ian directory with all my personal files (and my disk is big enough)

cp -r /home/ian /media/ian/SHARED_128/

[zeynel2]

I tried this but it did not work. As soon I insert the USB drive I see this on the command line:

[517.576392] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] No Caching mode page found
[517.579669] sd 6:0:0:0: [sdb] Assuming drive cache: write through
…
and this repeats a few times.

I tried to fix with this answer http://askubuntu.com/questions/16734...failed-warning but that did not work either.

ls /media does not recognize the USB stick. Is there any way to fix this?

[zeynel2]

ian-weisser: I couldn't use the USB stick to back up but I used the instructions here http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/...dropbox.1.html to back up to Dropbox with cp -r /home/a/Documents /home/a/Dropbox. Thanks, for the help, I was trying to copy the Documents directory but it wouldn't then I realized that I needed to enter -r, then it worked.

I would still like to fix the other issue if I can. Any ideas?

[ian-weisser]

Black screen smells like a hard-to-configure video card. Or perhaps a couple other issues.
I'm not a guru with video drivers. My last video problem was in 2006 or 2007.

Did you get the "nomodeset" option in Grub working?
Are you able to boot with an older kernel? Does video work with that kernel?