help! I upgraded Xuntubu 12.10 to 14.10 Utopic Daily build BY Mistake

May 6, 2014 11:49 AM

I accidentally added a line of source for Utopic to sources.list. And later my system can't get into GUI. While trying to fix the problem I accidentally typed in command sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get upgrade. So tragedy happened: my system was upgraded to 14.10 utopic daily built! which I don't want! what's worse, becuase it was upgrading from 12.10 to 14.10, a lot of dependency can't resolve, and many services stopped working. The worst thing is, I still can't get into GUI. What should I do for this circurmstance? I'm a newbie in Linux/Unix. Thank you very much!!!
posted by pack2themoon to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

If your home directory is in its own partition you can just reinstall, being extra careful to not format /home when you specify partitions. Everything will be like it was before the attempted upgrade.

If you don't have a separate home partition...how bad do you need anything that was one the hard drive? A total reinstall may be the simplest route if you have recent backups or synced your data or documents with Dropbox or wherever, or just don't care about anything that was on the hard drive.

If you need to get the box working again while not deleting any data....I got nothing. I don't know of any way to downgrade versions without a reinstall.
posted by COD at 12:46 PM on May 6, 2014 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thank you! I don't have a separate Home partition. I still have network with Xubuntu.

The most important things are ~/bin/ folder which has my own scripts, and was uploaded to github fortunately. And I haven't been using the system for too long, just about a month, so not too much data. Still I had installed quite a bunch of packages and configured things like Git, jekyll, customized startup items, etc.

I don't care about data too much but I am worried about reinstalling and re configuringe those things, as you know I am a newbie, to get those setup took quite a lot of time for me and I don't know if I can make everything work agian as before. Also I don't have much time to waste recently.

Here is a link I found from googling, http://askubuntu.com/a/3670/265865
I'm quite interested in the method by this post. Do you think that's a good way? Thanks!
posted by pack2themoon at 3:48 PM on May 6, 2014

You can use a Ubuntu live cd/bootable usb drive to get into a working system gui environment (when loading it, select the option to try Ubuntu rather than launching into an install). This should let you access any files in your home directory (or anywhere else) and back them up to another location.
posted by Pryde at 5:19 PM on May 6, 2014

Response by poster: Hi I tried to use Live CD, but still can't get into GUI :(
posted by pack2themoon at 5:51 PM on May 6, 2014

There's no downgrading. Sorry. The link to askubuntu you posted explains how to back up your installed, but as you've upgraded to 14 and want to run 12.10 you don't want those apps.

A few things then... You can't boot from a live cd? That's peculiar. Try downloading a different flavor of ubuntu and see if you can get in with one of those. Gnome Remix. Pure Ubuntu. Lubuntu. Any of them. Get in. Back your data up. Re-install Xubuntu.

And is there any reason you need to be on 12.10? 14.04 has so many tune-ups and refinements it's ridiculous. I run pure Ubuntu, but read about developments on other flavors. Xubuntu's people are pretty proud of how far they've taken their project with 14.04.
posted by artof.mulata at 11:55 PM on May 6, 2014 [1 favorite]

I don't know anything about git and jekyll, but they are in the 14+ repos. Just 'sudo apt-get install git jekyll' then follow the instructions. Startup items will be in your settings manager and if your messing with git and markup you'll figure out the protocol pretty quick.

You can also find a lot of pages devoted to "24 Things To Do After Installing XUBUNTU 12.10, 13.10, 14.04." There will be some nonsense, but you'll learn a lot of little things...
posted by artof.mulata at 12:12 AM on May 7, 2014 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: Thanks!
I cant boot into liveCD, to be specific, I cant boot into Xubuntu 12.10 liveCD I orginally used. It stuck after greeting , no login, just black screen, cant even get into tty.

I backed up my data under command line(which stilll works for the half-upgraded 14.10) to USB drive. I'm going to reinstall Xubuntu.

The problem now I realized is that: upgrading of the kernal reconfigured grub, now it's in MBR, my double boot system now goes straight into grub instead of windows boot manager. I guess before reinstall I have to use Mbrfix to remove grub from MBR first, is that correct? Thanks!



btw:-----------------------------------------------------------------------
The reason I installed 12.10 in the first place is because that I tried to install 13 before but for some reason it stuck in the middle and couldn't finish copying files, which is quite a problem after googling and people recommend removing RAM or try alternative installations.

I would like to try latest stable version 14.04, but I don't want to waste time for not being able to install or other weird bugs. Haven't heard a lot about how it is.
posted by pack2themoon at 3:45 AM on May 7, 2014

You've probably done your install by now; hope it went well!

I've never built a dual boot machine, but everything suggests installing Windows first. And pretty adamantly at that.
posted by artof.mulata at 8:49 PM on May 7, 2014 [1 favorite]