Linux Mint Forums

First, I'll start with how I got here. You can skip this part if you want to go straight to the problems...

Mint5 was running great, but I really liked the new stuff Ubuntu 8.10 so I wanted to upgrade. Formatting my HDD is not an option as there is no way to back up all my family photos, mp3's, movies and so on. So, I used the "upgrade tool". After a few issues with "unresolved dependencies" and whatever, the upgrade finished. I rebooted and was up and running again with a few issues. Mostly minor stuff like the "quicksearch" would not work in synaptic, I couldn't use a GUI to edit my sources and a few other issues like kpilot being orphaned in apt. This was enough to make me try another method of installing that I read in the blog where you do the install from the live CD and simply don't format any drives. This allowed me to keep my settings, although any non-default applications were gone. This is where I ran into trouble.

The Problems:
On reboot, GDM started, but my mouse and keyboard would not work. I was able to ctrl-alt-f2 to a terminal and work there so the keyboard worked, but no inputs in X. I copied my xorg.conf file from my working Ubuntu 8.10 box and got the keyboard to work, but still no mouse. The xorg.log shows:

Cannot locate a core pointer device

Next, networking would not work. ifconfig would show no IP address for eth0. Further researched showed a eth0:0. I resolved this by manually adding a configuration to my /etc/network/interfaces file for both network devices (eth0 and eth0:0).

Once I got my network back up I was able to run apt and get some badly needed troubleshooting tools. I installed vnc so I can log in from my Ubuntu box and actually use a GUI to make editing config files easier (vi kinda sux) and filezilla so I could copy files back and forth. VNC runs OK for the most part except every time I hit the space bar, it brings up a search window. I was able to fix this before my "second " upgrade, but don't remember what I did. Still not a big deal as once I close the app, it stays gone until the next vnc session.

Now I can't get frequency scaling or sensors to work. I've tried both powernowd and cpufreqd. Powernowd responds with:

CPU frequency scaling not supported...

and cpufreqd responds with:

No cpufreq interface found, not starting cpufreqd

cat /proc/cpuinfo shows:

processor : 0
vendor_id : AuthenticAMD
cpu family : 15
model : 35
model name : Dual Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 175
stepping : 2
cpu MHz : 2202.805
cache size : 1024 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 2
core id : 0
cpu cores : 2
apicid : 0
initial apicid : 0
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 1
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt lm 3dnowext 3dnow pni lahf_lm cmp_legacy
bogomips : 4405.61
clflush size : 64
power management: ts fid vid ttp

processor : 1
vendor_id : AuthenticAMD
cpu family : 15
model : 35
model name : Dual Core AMD Opteron(tm) Processor 175
stepping : 2
cpu MHz : 2202.805
cache size : 1024 KB
physical id : 0
siblings : 2
core id : 1
cpu cores : 2
apicid : 1
initial apicid : 1
fdiv_bug : no
hlt_bug : no
f00f_bug : no
coma_bug : no
fpu : yes
fpu_exception : yes
cpuid level : 1
wp : yes
flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt lm 3dnowext 3dnow pni lahf_lm cmp_legacy
bogomips : 4405.88
clflush size : 64
power management: ts fid vid ttp

I think that is a good enough start for now. The problem maybe some sort of HAL or ACPI issue, but wth do I know. I'll be happy if I can get these three issues, mouse in X, frequency scaling and CPU monitoring working.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Nevermind. Rather than backing up my data, I moved all the system folders to my home directory and re-installed. The system installed as if I had formatted, but kept my documents, emails, pictures and other data in tact. This took care of the issues I was having and opened a few more, but those are software/application related.

If anyone is curious as to what the problem was, I will keep the old folders for few days just to make sure there is nothing I need from there before deleting.