[PLUG] Help! Update won't boot (SOLVED)

Mark Phillips mark at phillipsmarketing.biz
Thu Aug 7 15:54:06 UTC 2014


John,

I use Debian and not Ubuntu, but they are closely related. I use apt-get to
manage upgrades and I have had problems in the past where the upgrade
fails, sometimes silently, and then things are out of whack - missing
packages, won't boot, etc. I have found that re-running the upgrade
sometimes fixes the problem. What is most helpful is running the upgrade
from the command line and seeing the output - usually there is a message
with a clue as to what happened. dmesg is also very helpful to diagnose the
problem once you can boot the system.

The point of my post is to suggest running upgrades from the command line,
or find where ubuntu stores these messages (probably a log file somewhere),
or pipe the upgrade messages to a log file if you have to use the gui so
you can start to find the reasons for your upgrade-weirdness. At a minimum,
you can google the messages to see what they mean and how to fix the
problems.

Good luck!

Mark


On Thu, Aug 7, 2014 at 8:31 AM, John Jason Jordan <johnxj at comcast.net>
wrote:

> On Thu, 07 Aug 2014 00:59:45 -0700
> Ben Koenig <techkoenig at gmail.com> dijo:
>
> >Sorry this isn't working out.
> >
> >We should really try the Ubuntu Method first before diving in to this
> >chroot stuff. Even though that is exactly what all these tools use.
> >
> >Install Boot Repair onto the live cd:
> >
> >sudo add-apt-repository ppa:yannubuntu/boot-repair
> >sudo sed 's/trusty/saucy/g'
> >-i /etc/apt/sources.list.d/yannubuntu-boot-repair-trusty.list sudo
> >apt-get update sudo apt-get install -y boot-repair && (boot-repair &)
>
> That worked! I'm back!
>
> When I rebooted it brought up the Grub boot menu, which did not appear
> before, but it proceeded to boot to the default. Oh well.
>
> As soon as I was booted I tried to launch Claws Mail so I could write
> this reply, but it turns out that the upgrade to 14.04 uninstalled it.
> WTH? So I tried to launch Synaptic package manager in order to
> reinstall it, but Synaptic had been uninstalled also. Double WTH.
>
> I reinstalled both and when launched they appeared as before, so the
> config settings in ~/ must be OK. I also note that the date and time in
> my Xubuntu panel has disappeared. I suppose I'll spend the next several
> days finding other stuff that the dist-upgrade broke. Sigh.
>
> Also, when I went to install Synaptic (using Ubuntu Software Center
> rather than the terminal) I got a popup saying that in order to install
> Synaptic it needed to uninstall:
>
>         collection of boot loaders
>         (theme metapackage)
>         syslinux-themes-debian
>
> I let it go ahead and uninstall it, but it sounds ominous. A cursory
> check with Google did not disclose exactly what it does. However,
> searching in Synaptic revealed 20 or so packages that start with
> "syslinux," including several "syslinux-themes* packages, including a
> "syslinux-themes-ubuntu-trusty," and none of them are installed.
>
> A thousand thanks to all who helped!
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