Crashed my installation

[aguila]

Hi there,

I guess I made a bad mistake today.....

Having updated last about three days ago, I was with a current system on my Thinkpad X61 T. Had installed 2010.1 in May and no problems so far.

But Digikam kept on freezing and there was some improvement with the last update (from 1.3.0-3 to 1.3.0-5). So today I checked and saw 1.3.0.-6. Not wanting to change to KDE 4.5.0 yet I just installed digikam, digikam-showfoto and inkscape 0.48. After the update digikam wouldn't start.

Instead of starting it from the console (to get the error message), I rebooted. Big fault!

To make a long story short, X isn't starting and I'm ending up with console login prompt.

I hope someone can help with my questions:

- can I downgrade on the console, maybe even without internet?
- where can I the log files of the update?

I'm not really familiar with the console yet, but I want to learn.

Thank you really very much for any hints.

Aguila

[Hootiegibbon]

aguila,

PCLinuxOS is  a bit different to the 'others ' out there , it is a rolling meta-distribution, in order to install from the repo you need to have your install up to date (Synaptic > reload > apply > apply )

When you next boot up, and get to the console login prompt, log in using your username, then su to root and type the following

init 3
apt-get clean
apt-get autoclean
apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade

This will bring the install up to date after which you should then be able to reboot into a graphically environment (KDE4.5)

Jase


 

[Bald Brick]

aguila,

PCLinuxOS is  a bit different to the 'others ' out there , it is a rolling meta-distribution, in order to install from the repo you need to have your install up to date (Synaptic > reload > apply > apply )

When you next boot up, and get to the console login prompt, log in using your username, then su to root and type the following

init 3
apt-get clean
apt-get autoclean
apt-get update
apt-get dist-upgrade

This will bring the install up to date after which you should then be able to reboot into a graphically environment (KDE4.5)

Jase

On the whole Hootiegibbon is right, of course. Nevertheless "apt-get clean" and "apt-get autoclean" may not be what you want. Neither of these commands really affects the upgrade. "apt-get clean" just removes the archived rpms in /var/cache/apt/archives/. "apt-get autoclean" does even less: it just removes rpms that are probably obsolete because they can't be downloaded anymore.

Anyway, running "apt-get autoclean" after "apt-get clean" doesn't make much sense: what would have been removed by "apt-get autoclean" will already have been removed by "apt-get clean".

If you want to save old downloads you shouldn't run either command. But if you don't, running both will no doubt leave your system in a super-pristine state.

[aguila]

Hi Jase (Hootiegibbon) and blackbird,

thanks for your replies.

I had checked "delete downloaded files after installation" (or so - ) in Synaptic, so /var/cache/apt/archives/ only contains a folder /partial which is empty and a document "lock" which is empty, too (0 bytes). Therefore apt-get clean and apt-get autoclean should neither hurt nor help, I guess.

I had disabled Ethernet earlier under KDE because of a process that caused heavy CPU load. I'll see if I can connect, otherwise I'll try drakconnect.

You live, you learn.....   

I'll post the result tonight.

Aguila

[wedgetail]

aguila

Welcome to Forum friend. Look around and get the feeling, there is a wealth of information gathered.

You might perhaps want to use LiveCD just to inspect your system before you attempt to clean it up? You could then go to for example /var/log/ an rummage around looking in the log files you will find here. You will be able to use Konqueror as su (Super User) or with root privileges, that will open anything in Kwrite.

When you have logged in, you could try the same but you do need to know you way around some konsole commands.

LiveCD is a bit slow so you could also perhaps consider installing something like LXDE, a more lightweight pclos and use this as your rescue vehicle every time things go wrong.  This however may delay your gratification of getting KDE-pclos2010.07 up and running. I notice you did say you were interested in learning.

[aguila]

Hi guys,

thank you so very much for your help! I updated on the console last night (410 MB...) and after reboot I was with a working graphical desktop. KDE 4.5.0 looks nice and it seems that some issues I had before have been solved.

Just encountered two errors after first reboot:

- KWin crashes when enableing desktop effects (compositing)
- my second panel (with favourite applications) disappeared; it was on autohide, so I'm not sure if it's there but on unhiding or if it's completely gone

Otherwise Plasma is working, also the widgets I had on the desktop. Oxygen theme seems to auto-group the apps you open(everything in one window, with tabs) which annoyed me a little bit.

This morning I updated in Synaptic (amongst others kdebase 4.5.0-1pclos2010 to 4.5.0-3pclos2010) and shut down the laptop.

So tonight I'll see what the second update did. I'll uninstall google gadgets to see if it helps with compositing.

Once again: Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!

Aguila