Ubuntu
apt package

After a mysterious deletion of files, ubuntu 10.04 LTS will not start..The computer boots, and then it paused on the ubuntu logo where the dots change colour. It looks like start-up does not complete.

Asked by sang69

I was updating from terminal, when the update manager suddenly proped up, in the middle of typing something.... The next thing i saw it was deleting everything from the system, python, firefox, everything. When it finished, it had freed about 85MB. It then couldn't update, or upgrade. And after a restart, I couldn't even get to the login screen:
When i restart, i get all sorts of errors including

Init: Failed To Spawn Readahead-collector Main Process: Unable To Execute: No Such File Or Directory

Not starting jetty- edit /etc/default/ jetty and change NO_START to be 0

unable to start /usr/share/Denyhosts/denyhosts_ctl.py No such file or directory

when i run live cd i get errors such as

Could not import rumpy module

/usr/lib/update_notifier/update .... not found

/etc/update-motd.d/oo-header:4:lsb_release not found

When i chroot to /media/6ba7b561-aac0-47c3-9134-0ac8992501e4 - this is the filesystem where my files are

and

do apt-get, i get this:

root@ubuntu:/# apt-get update
Get:1 http://ppa.launchpad.net lucid Release.gpg [316B]
Ign http://ppa.launchpad.net/mozillateam/firefox-stable/ubuntu/ lucid/main Translation-en_US
Get:2 http://security.ubuntu.com lucid-security Release.gpg [198B]
Ign http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid-security/main Translation-en_US
Get:3 http://archive.canonical.com karmic Release.gpg [198B]
Ign http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu/ karmic/partner Translation-en_US
Get:4 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com lucid Release.gpg [189B]
Ign http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ lucid/main Translation-en_US
97% [Working]FATAL -> Could not set non-blocking flag Bad file descriptor
E: Method http has died unexpectedly!
E: Sub-process http returned an error code (100)
root@ubuntu:/#

The partition where my files are has an fstab file, the contents are as follows:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid -o value -s UUID' to print the universally unique identifier
# for a device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name
# devices that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
# / was on /dev/sda6 during installation
UUID=6ba7b561-aac0-47c3-9134-0ac8992501e4 / ext4 errors=remount-ro 0 1
# swap was on /dev/sda7 during installation
UUID=038117cf-f5e2-4ae0-a44a-a0ca0237a586 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/scd0 /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 auto rw,user,noauto,exec,utf8 0 0
tmpfs /dev/shm tmpfs defaults,noexec,nosuid 0 0

The last 24 hours i've struggled to get this going, could someone please help?
Further, I like ubuntu, have been using it on and off for 3 years now, but its been quite a hugely disappointing journey. Surely it would have been better with some live support.

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sang69
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This question was originally filed as bug #937791.

Revision history for this message
sang69 (snkhwazi) said : 		#1

and i forgot to mention that im running a live cd of 9.10, karmic koala

Revision history for this message
actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#2

unmount the partitions and fsck them. If the drive is SSD based it may be a sign that the drive is coming to the end of its life.
Also run a memtest from the livecd.

Revision history for this message
sang69 (snkhwazi) said : 		#3

Hi actionparsnip, and thanks for the response,
I managed to get into ubuntu. I did a apt-get install ubuntu-desktop from root of one of the installations, and im now in, but my nvidia graphics have gone, and i get this strange error:-

sp2@sp2-desktop:~$ sudo su
[sudo] password for sp2:
root@sp2-desktop:/home/sp2# apt-get clean
root@sp2-desktop:/home/sp2# dpkg --configure -a
Setting up nvidia-96 (96.43.17-0ubuntu1.1) ...
Removing old nvidia-96-96.43.17 DKMS files...

------------------------------
Deleting module version: 96.43.17
completely from the DKMS tree.
------------------------------
Done.
Loading new nvidia-96-96.43.17 DKMS files...
First Installation: checking all kernels...
Building for 2.6.32-37-generic and 2.6.32-39-generic
Building for architecture i686
Module build for the currently running kernel was skipped since the
kernel source for this kernel does not seem to be installed.
Building initial module for 2.6.32-39-generic

Error! Bad return status for module build on kernel: 2.6.32-39-generic (i686)
Consult the make.log in the build directory
/var/lib/dkms/nvidia-96/96.43.17/build/ for more information.
dpkg: error processing nvidia-96 (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 10
Setting up nvidia-173 (173.14.22-0ubuntu11) ...
update-initramfs: deferring update (trigger activated)
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-37-generic
Removing old nvidia-173-173.14.22 DKMS files...

------------------------------
Deleting module version: 173.14.22
completely from the DKMS tree.
------------------------------
Done.
Loading new nvidia-173-173.14.22 DKMS files...
First Installation: checking all kernels...
Building for 2.6.32-37-generic and 2.6.32-39-generic
Building for architecture i686
Module build for the currently running kernel was skipped since the
kernel source for this kernel does not seem to be installed.
Building initial module for 2.6.32-39-generic

Error! Bad return status for module build on kernel: 2.6.32-39-generic (i686)
Consult the make.log in the build directory
/var/lib/dkms/nvidia-173/173.14.22/build/ for more information.
dpkg: error processing nvidia-173 (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 10
Processing triggers for python-gmenu ...
Rebuilding /usr/share/applications/desktop.en_GB.utf8.cache...
Processing triggers for initramfs-tools ...
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32-39-generic
Processing triggers for python-support ...
Errors were encountered while processing:
 nvidia-96
 nvidia-173
root@sp2-desktop:/home/sp2#

make.log looks like:
DKMS make.log for nvidia-173-173.14.22 for kernel 2.6.32-39-generic (i686)
Tue Feb 21 16:03:29 GMT 2012
If you are using a Linux 2.4 kernel, please make sure
you either have configured kernel sources matching your
kernel or the correct set of kernel headers installed
on your system.

If you are using a Linux 2.6 kernel, please make sure
you have configured kernel sources matching your kernel
installed on your system. If you specified a separate
output directory using either the "KBUILD_OUTPUT" or
the "O" KBUILD parameter, make sure to specify this
directory with the SYSOUT environment variable or with
the equivalent nvidia-installer command line option.

Depending on where and how the kernel sources (or the
kernel headers) were installed, you may need to specify
their location with the SYSSRC environment variable or
the equivalent nvidia-installer command line option.

*** Unable to determine the target kernel version. ***

make: *** [select_makefile] Error 1

???

Revision history for this message
sang69 (snkhwazi) said : 		#4

Hi, following the above.

In terminal I chrooted to the filesystem ( there were 3, but i knew the correct one) where my files were and did a "sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop" and mounted the filesystem. Note it sometimes asks you to specify so you have to do the:

 mount -o tmpfs /dev/sda6 thingy

The apt-get install ubuntu-desktop it seems causes an avalanche of interesting events. The system installed loads of files , and i ended up with a semi functional system.
I unmounted ("umount dev/sda6"), shutdown, removed the cd and restarted the computer.

On the list of instances of linux that appear after restart, scroll down to the last ubuntu instance , i think its marked recovery mode or something...

In here, select the "fix broken packages" option and press enter. Then get into the command with networking and run sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade.

Restart, and suddenly i was in! But the graphics were broken, i got a GNOME error about power manager not working, the windows couldn't be moved or resized, and all sorts of other errors.

But I was inside ubuntu, on the desktop, with access to usb :-)

All along, i was using a 9.10 live cd, on a 10.04 system, so it looks like something weird happened and somehow my software sources were for 9.10, when they should probably have been for 10.04. Anyhow, after a data back-up onto my usb, which took over 3 hours, i found a new 10.04 software source.list online, and copied it to my /etc/apt/source.lists - making sure that all instances of "http://us.archive ..." were changed to "http://uk.archive ..."

I then run update manager, and after editing the software sources in "settings" tab of the update manager, to be notified of all releases (not just LTS releases), I saw the option of upgrading to 10.10.
After many updates, and restarts, and in update manager and terminal, I have a perfectly functional system in the form of ubuntu 11.04!