Can not upgrade

did you import back your home after the installation (including hidden files)?

Thanks Damiano,

No I did not import anything. In fact I fell back to 6.06 and
reinstalled at that level so I could reformat the hard disk and start as
new.

The problem happens in the upgrade from 8.04 to 8.10. The only
processing that happened in 8.04 was to use Firefox and Evolution. No
import of music, no creation of new documents.

Jack Kinnell

On Thu, 2009-07-16 at 02:51 +0000, Damiano Venturin wrote:
> Your question #77119 on Ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/77119
>
> Status: Open => Needs information
>
> Damiano Venturin requested for more information:
> did you import back your home after the installation (including hidden
> files)?
>

If you create a new user can it log in ok.

You can do this by booting to recovery root console (esc when grub loads and select recovery mode then root)

You can now create an account using

adduser recoveryacc
passwd recoveryacc
useradd -G admin recoveryacc

You now have a new user named recoveryacc whom can use sudo / gksudo

You should now be able to log in as this user and troubleshoot your system

the situation is not clear to me
actionparsnip is right but if you didn't import your data back and u really perfomed a full format ... that process is useless

in your shoes I would download 9.04 and then proceed to a full reinstall beeing sure to format every partition
after this process, if you still have troubles, post here again

enjoy!
Dam
http://www.squadrainformatica.com

Damiano;

The upgrade problem kept getting worse. I could not get even 6.06 to work.

Finally I installed 8.10 from a CD. Rather than use the normal installation
I selected the load driver approach.

This worked!

I must admit trepidation about Ubuntu, I user should never be able to bring
the system down by entering or deleting data.

Thanks again,

Jack Kinnell

----- Original Message -----
From: "Damiano Venturin" <email address hidden>
To: <email address hidden>
Sent: Thursday, July 16, 2009 1:23 PM
Subject: Re: [Question #77119]: Can not upgrade

Your question #77119 on Ubuntu changed:
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/77119

Damiano Venturin proposed the following answer:
the situation is not clear to me
actionparsnip is right but if you didn't import your data back and u really
perfomed a full format ... that process is useless

in your shoes I would download 9.04 and then proceed to a full reinstall
beeing sure to format every partition
after this process, if you still have troubles, post here again

enjoy!
Dam
http://www.squadrainformatica.com

--
If this answers your question, please go to the following page to let us
know that it is solved:
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/77119/+confirm?answer_id=3

If you still need help, you can reply to this email or go to the
following page to enter your feedback:
https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/77119

You received this question notification because you are a direct
subscriber of the question.

"I must admit trepidation about Ubuntu, I user should never be able to bring
the system down by entering or deleting data."

well this is common to every o.s. if u delete important data ... that's why u should be careful using the sudo command or the root user

No No;

Damiano, as you will recall some years in the past a system programmer
brought down the American Airlines reservation system. He was backing
up the system. When he should have entered back up he keyed in restore
and blew the indexes to every reservation.

No reservation agent in 45 years of processing ever brought down the AA
system by deleting a reservation. In software it is called integrity.

I have been Superuser in Unix systems, I find Ubuntu's idea of sudo
great. But, I was deleting songs from the application level, not at the
sudo level. I should never be able to destroy the system.

Be that as it may, you are great to contribute you time to the further
Linux. I want the system to grow.

Thanks,

Jack Kinnel

On Thu, 2009-07-16 at 23:59 +0000, Damiano Venturin wrote:
> Your question #77119 on Ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/77119
>
> Status: Open => Answered
>
> Damiano Venturin proposed the following answer:
> "I must admit trepidation about Ubuntu, I user should never be able to bring
> the system down by entering or deleting data."
>
> well this is common to every o.s. if u delete important data ... that's
> why u should be careful using the sudo command or the root user
>

Hi Jack
unfortunately I don't know anything about your nice story and I thank you to share it with me. It was a nice reading (but is it really true?)

about the delete. I agree with you: a user should never compromise the system and I assure to you that without using "sudo" or the user "root" u can't seriously compromise the system. I don't know exactly what happend. I suppose that the issue was related to some deletion on hidden files in the home and things went worst during the installation process cause of a wrong or not complete formatting.
Some times it happens too that nautilus has some "strange" behaviours like in this case happened to me (you can read it only if you know italian) http://www.squadrainformatica.com/it/blog/bug_nautilus_si_blocca_in_presenza_di_alcuni_desktop_file

In your case I don't know. But for sure you had the occasion to learn something more, right? think positive

cheers!

Trust me it was true. I was a IBM Senior System Engineer on the
Airlines Team.

Jack

On Fri, 2009-07-17 at 03:33 +0000, Damiano Venturin wrote:
> Your question #77119 on Ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+question/77119
>
> Status: Open => Answered
>
> Damiano Venturin proposed the following answer:
> Hi Jack
> unfortunately I don't know anything about your nice story and I thank you to share it with me. It was a nice reading (but is it really true?)
>
> about the delete. I agree with you: a user should never compromise the system and I assure to you that without using "sudo" or the user "root" u can't seriously compromise the system. I don't know exactly what happend. I suppose that the issue was related to some deletion on hidden files in the home and things went worst during the installation process cause of a wrong or not complete formatting.
> Some times it happens too that nautilus has some "strange" behaviours like in this case happened to me (you can read it only if you know italian) http://www.squadrainformatica.com/it/blog/bug_nautilus_si_blocca_in_presenza_di_alcuni_desktop_file
>
> In your case I don't know. But for sure you had the occasion to learn
> something more, right? think positive
>
> cheers!
>

I trust you completely. should funny now after years, right?

I made some googling about this interesting story. Do you refer to SABRE? ( I suppose it's better to close the answer here and go on by email if you like. You can read it on my profile page https://launchpad.net/~dam-venturin )

cheers!

Just watch the use of *s in commands as well as the use of rm -rf which people seem oh too well to bandy around.

If a user can use sudo then you can do anything you like, you can even waltz into the modules folder for your kernel and simply wipe them all out, this is not just Ubuntu. It is all Linux. Similarly you can run regedit in windows and deleted registry keys willy nilly and I bet the system will not boot.

With great power comes great reponsibility.