<solved> LMDE Broke after "upgrade" - lookin for a clue

[Anthrogue]

I liked idea of rolling updates, especially even the lag given that I figured everything would be "soup yet" before trying to upgrade. So I hit the upgrade manager thing yesterday. Now I have no OS.

I don't spend my time being a Linux geek and so now I feel like an idiot for trusting the system to upgrade. Luckily I moved some files off the system before trying to restart. There was a list of failed things, which I copied to a txt file. I had no wifi connexion after whatever happened, and the pop up info on the wifi was unreadable (just squares instead of readable text).

Restart the system and I'm prompted for a username/password in bash (or whatever you call the terminal).... No GUI.. No phreakin clue. Don't know where to look here or what to do in terminal mode.

Just as a general observation though, I guess my faith that Linux was now viable, and that LMDE in particular was a solid way to go without ending up rainbows by arcane tech bs, was... a lamentable assumption

[Anthrogue]

Let me guess before hand. I have to completely reinstall the OS (assuming I reinstal LMDE), an act which completely negates the point of having a distro with rolling upgrades in the first fracking place. Brilliant

[zerozero]

Let me guess before hand. I have to completely reinstall the OS (assuming I reinstal LMDE), an act which completely negates the point of having a distro with rolling upgrades in the first fracking place. Brilliant

well, it's hard to say, we don't know what happened:
- what repos are/were you following?
- when was the last time you did a dist-upgrade?

you know, latest is basically frozen, so no breakages there; testing is very quiet lately and apart from a couple oops in the last weeks nothing major happened there; even sid has been calm for all may;

so we need to know exactly what went wrong with your system:
- what graphics drivers you have installed?
- when and how did you updated last time?
- what repos you are using?
- what modifications you did prior to this breakage? software additions? removals?

we need a lot more info to be able to help you.

[Anthrogue]

I installed LMDE and did the first upgrade, which I think was to some version 3 (whatever you call it). At the time there was sensitive stuff about pointing at the right stuff. I did whatever that was. All stable for months. I assumed everything was, thus, correctly configured.

I have terminal mode access to the system (assuming there is a system that is not completely broken). I say "broken" in the general sense, since I have no graphical OS. So I'd have to type in some command line stuff, perhaps, to suss out what is pointed at what. I don't remember installing any graphical drivers myself.

No idea where to begin. I learn about Linux Debian enough to get LMDE working and upgraded to 3 in the first place, then I expect an OS to be transparent (work and stay out of my way). I figured LMDE was the way to go after once having Mint KDE 8 and being confronted with having to completely do a fresh install of a new distro once it was dead/too old. But its infuriating now to realize I'll have to do what amounts to a graduate level seminar just to realize why I shouldn't have pushed the upgrade button. Reading Husserl would probably be easier.

Ack: so..... is there a place to go to figure out things to do in terminal mode to see if anything can be retrieved? What's the first thing I should type?

latest is basically frozen

See... right off the bat, seemingly casual comments are meaningless to me. What does "frozen" mean?

[zerozero]

frozen means that there are no new updates coming into, is frozen, it's not moving

let's try the simplest things first, in that command prompt type

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startx

any result? any error? can you give us an idea of the errors that you see in the screen?

[Anthrogue]

command prompt: startx

Now I had first of all, a terminal/command prompt generated by having tried to reboot in recovery mode. "startx" now gives me a graphical interface with a "Tips and Tricks" xfce window over which is a window called "Panel". There are three button/choices under
"Choose below which setup you want for the first startup"

Migrate to old config | Use default config | One empty panel

The first is greyed out. "Use default config" looks defaulted. The last choice means nothing to me

[zerozero]

so you are in the GUI again [good] pick |use default config| for the panel

[zerozero]

now we have to figure out what went wrong:
- i guess somehow gdm3 (the display manager that allows you to login) broke.
to be sure of that we should have 2 pieces of info:

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cat /var/log/apt/history.log

this will show us the update history (please copy&paste into here the entries from yesterday and today

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inxi -Sr

will show us the repos in use

[Anthrogue]

............... so I hit "Use default config". Now I have a Welcome to Linux Mint square thing. The desktop is not like it was before. No wall paper. Some kind of thing like a Mac.... a dock? at bottom with some system choices. A panel/bar at top with clock, etc. Whatever it is isn't what GUI used to look like. The welcome screen says:
Release: 1 (debian)
Edition: Xfce

Does this mean I'm at some square one? Presently I'm trying to find the wifi controls to try and suss out why it's not connected to the internet. Under Applications menu/System/Network <<< nothing appears to happen when the click the Network. There is no wireless feedback thing on the panel anywhere............................ i.e. copy/paste of stuff in terminal to post via internet connexion is impossible.

however, after cat /var/log/apt/history.log It is quite profuse. At the end it says:

Error: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned and error code (1)

[Anthrogue]

now: inxi -SR renders:

deb http://packages.linuxmint.com/ debian main upstream support
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest testing main contrib non-free
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest/security/ testing/updates main contrib non-free
deb http://debian.linuxmint.com/latest/multimedia testing main non-free


... I think I transcribed that correctly. No internet access on the affected laptop

[zerozero]

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Error: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned and error code (1)

this means that for some reason the upgrade process was interrupted; try

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sudo apt-get -f install

so see if you can resume the upgrade process.

edit: i see now your last post with the repos, they look alright, but that makes me wonder: when was the last time you updated? i think you are updating from UP3 to UP4 (but UP4 was released in april)

[Anthrogue]

April <<<< I have not upgraded then. I just noticed yesterday. I upgraded LMDE after first install, like I said I think to something 3. I am in some root level account. I cannot get internet access. "Network" doesn't do anything. No clue. .... and am assuming that "apt-get..." whatever cannot connect to anything

[zerozero]

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sudo apt-get -f install

will install the pkgs already downloaded (so you don't need internet access to it)
if it runs successfully (you will know because there will be some activity in the terminal) you need to run after that the dist-upgrade command.

[Anthrogue]

It is running... and running. So far I don't see error messages in the output.

Now choices under "Configuration file '/ect/gdm3/daemon.conf'
==> Modified (by you or by a script) since installation
==> Package distributor has shipped an updated version
....options
Y or I : install the package maintainer's verson
N or O : keep currently installed version
D : show the differences between
Z : start a shell to examine the situation
The default is to keep current...... [defalut=N]?

[zerozero]

in this kind of options i always chose Y or I : install the package maintainer's verson but that is just me. any option should be safe, we need it (gdm3) to install properly

[Anthrogue]

Aye.... no reported errors so far. Now back at command prompt. Some special syntax for "dist-upgrade" command?

edit: I mean "unopkg done."

[zerozero]

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sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

[Anthrogue]

After much activity, I'm back at terminal/command prompt. The last line prior reads "Processing triggers for menu..."

No indication that everything "worked". Somewhere along the text stream was a "failed" but it was so far back I can't scroll up far enough to find whatever it was. "init..." something or other "timed out" several times.

Anyway, I answered "Y" to several questions and don't seem to have any serious failure warnings. reboot now?

[Anthrogue]

ok... reboot and now system looks good. Update Manager reports "your system is up to date"
Update Pack info: Update Pack 4

I'm running Xfce and it says "Version 4.8". I'm guessing whatever the business is about "Cinnamon" and the remark in Update Manager about "install the 'cinnamon' package" is superfluous?

At any rate, assuming I'm good to go, thanks very much for holding my hand. Unknown why first attempt at Update to 4 failed or got broke. But of course, this working result was done through terminal/command.

[zerozero]

im glad to see that it all worked out well for you
- yeahh, the "warnings" about cinnamon are not for you (as you are running xfce);
- the biggest issue (trying to recap) was that something (hard to know exactly what) broke during the update process) and mintupdate hides the relevant information from you;
- you think that the process is finished and are good to go and actually you have a half-done update with (in this particular situation) network-manager and gdm3 broken in the way;
- luckily apt downloads all the information prior to beginning the upgrades, so (like with you now) it's fairly easy to resume from a broken point (well, sometimes )