ubuntu 8?? hung during upgrade to 9.04. what to do now?

[pstock]

Hello,

I had Ubuntu 8 something with two users - me and my girlfriend. Last night I started the upgrade process (to 9.04) on the administrator's side (user Me)
my girlfriend was working away this afternoon on her side and when I stepped in and flipped out of her user account over to mine to check the progress of the upgrade, when I flipped back to her side, the system seemed to hang.

after waiting a few minutes, I forced a power off.
on restarting, it comes to a blank coloured screen with a pointer arrow (which moves).
what have I done and how to I undo it?
I can imagine powering down in the middle of an upgrade was not wise, but I didn't know how else to proceed.

Peter

[jmadero]

you've probably corrupted the OS files which means...you start from scratch. Burn (or put on a USB) 9.04, install it WITHOUT formatting your hard drive (unless you have your home folders on a separate partitions, which, if you don't, I highly suggest moving towards).

[coopstah13]

the upgrade process is pretty intense, and there are times when it will seem like it is hung, but most likely it isn't, for next time your safe bet is to wait longer to make sure it really is hung

[pstock]

Thanks for the suggestion.
Can you advise me as to how I ensure that the install does NOT reformat the harddrive?
I ask because I recently installed Ubuntu 8.xx from a CD onto a laptop and I was not prompted for "Install without reformatting" (though it did suggest I use 100% of the HDD for Linux, which might effectively have been the same thing as reformatting. Though I didn't care as I had backed off the bits I needed.)
I know cannot seem to find any vestige of the old file structure.

Peter

[D-cat]

Use manual partitioning (watch your steps carefully, it's there), then at the partitioner, "Edit" the existing partitions to point to where each is supposed to go (/ : root, /home, SWAP...). Do not select format for any drive unless you have a separate /home partition, which only in that case you may format all except /home. /home is where all your personal files are, so formatting the partition the /home resides on will erase all your files.

[coopstah13]

if your home isn't separate partition, backup important data, because you really need to reformat the / partition when you install a new distro

[pstock]

I have to reinstall Ubuntu 9.04 on this machine.
I have a huge music library on the HDD as well as some important work files.
I cannot seem to get at them across the LAN here (I've tried to set up Samba for sharing but it's not letting me at them.)

there must be a way to reinstall without wiping out all the existing data.
I am attaching a screen shot of the current Partition structure. but I don't know how to partition this drive to protect what is already there. (nor can I seem to get Gparted to actually do antying. none of the action buttons are active. I can't figure it out....)

any suggestions would be appreciated.

Peter

[waterhead]

It looks like you installed Linux into one gigantic partition. It has 42.97 GB of free space. You could resize the partition, and take the unused space to create a new partition. You could then install Ubuntu to the new partition, or transfer the files you want to save to the new partition.

You will have to boot into a LiveCD to do this, as you can't resize a partition that is mounted. Then use GParted to resize the partition and create the new one. Don't take all of the free space away from the partition, as it needs room to operate. A 20 GB partition is enough to install Ubuntu on.

[pstock]

well, my final solution was to slap in a blank 20GB HDD, install Ubuntu 9.04 on that and then put the 250Gb Hdd (which had the data I was worried about overwriting onit) back in as a Slave.

which seemed to work except that I am now facing a new issue.

Hello Again.
well, here's the latest.
I stuck in a blank 20Gb hard drive and installaed Ubuntu 9.04 to it.
that seems to work.
I then added the old 250Gb with the data I was trying to protect as a Slave Drive.
That seems to have been recognized.
Now though when I log in as the newly installed user (Julie) I cannot seem to access the old main user (called "lola2")
there were two users on the old 8.04 system. Lola2 and Peter.
From Julie and I get at the Peter files and folders.
but I the Lola2 folders all have Xs beside them and I am being told I do not have permission.

so it appears I have saved the data. but in the process I have thrown away the key?

how can I patch things up so that Julie (the only current User Account on this newly re-installed system) can access the old Lola2 files and folders.

[reed9]

sudo chown -R julie /path/to/home/lola2

Replace /path/to with the actual path to the directory. This will make user julie the owner of the directory and the files therein.