[ubuntu-za] Interrupted Upgrade

[Tim Johnson]

On Mon, 24 Aug 2009 08:18:51 +0200, Jonathan Hitchcock  
<jonathan.hitchcock at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 12:09 AM, Tim Johnson<tim at pteq.net> wrote:
>> At some point during the process, power was interrupted and I ended up
>> with a non-bootable disaster.  On booting I end up at a BusyBox prompt  
>> and
>> have no idea where to go from there.
>>
>> My question is this:  Can I copy my old /home folder into my /home
>> partition and regain all my previously installed apps etc?  Would a  
>> fresh
>> installation of each app be a better approach?
>
> As Lee said - unfortunately, simply copying your home directory won't
> be enough.  Nothing is stored in your home directory other than
> personal data and personal configuration settings.  All system-wide
> application settings and all installed apps are stored elsewhere.
>
> There are ways to fix this situation, or to use what you have left to
> recover bits of data, settings, and lists of installed apps, so that
> you can duplicate your old set up.  However, each situation differs in
> what has gone wrong and how badly it has gone wrong, so there is no
> set method to do this - you have to fiddle and pry to see what you can
> do.  I know that if you wanted to go this route, and you stepped into
> the #clug IRC channel on irc.atrum.org, you'd find a bunch of people
> who would actually find performing that sort of necromancy remotely to
> be quite a bit of fun, and an enjoyable exercise in "what the hell
> went wrong?".
>
> However, unless you actually have the spare time, and want to treat
> this as a learning process, I don't actually recommend this course of
> action.  If you have your home directory, that's all you really need.
> You will have to remember which apps you had installed, and reinstall
> them, but this is actually quite a useful way of getting rid of cruft
> that you no longer need - you only install the apps you want, and all
> the old things that you installed once and never used again are no
> longer there.
>
> Cheers,
> -Jonathan
>
Thanks Jonathan.  Due to time constraints, I will have to pass on the IRC  
learning experience.  The cleanup of cruft however, was the silver lining  
to the dark cloud.  I had plenty of one-time tested apps that remained  
installed "to check them out more thoroughly later" that have now been  
cleaned up.

Cheers

-- 
Using Ubuntu 9.04 and Opera 10