[ale] Ubuntu upgrade

[drifter]

I continue my descent into madness with this issue.

{Someone asked about the version of Grub. It is 0.97}

With the help and hints of this community I have been exploring
the idea that I have an "upstart" problem.

Watching the boot process carefully, I see that I get an Ubuntu
splash screen, complete with graphic for maybe two tenths of a
second before the command prompt appears.  That indicates to
me that for a brief moment the Xserver is running.   Then, I'm
guessing, something kills it.

Hunting around I discovered /usr/share/doc/upstart. This directory contains
the file, README.Debian.gz.  Ha, I thought. the answer to my problem may lie
within.  But the file is owned by root, and there is no way for Joe user
to unpack the file!!!!!!!!  Sometimes I just do not understand the
convoluted minds of programmers.  What sort of peeled idiot would make
a README file unreadable?

Had to chown the file AND the directory to gain access.

Now the fun begins:

Reading the README file led me to /etc/init/rc-sysinit.conf

It contains these lines:

# Default runlevel, this may be overriden on the kernel command line
#or by faking an old /etc/inittab entry
env DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=2


Further down in the same file these lines appear:

 # Check kernel command-line for typical arguments
    for ARG in $(cat /proc/cmdline)
    do
	case "${ARG}" in
	-b|emergency)
	    # Emergency shell
	    [ -n "${FROM_SINGLE_USER_MODE}" ] || sulogin
	    ;;
	[0123456sS])
	    # Override runlevel
	    DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL="${ARG}"
	    ;;
	-s|single)
	    # Single user mode
	    [ -n "${FROM_SINGLE_USER_MODE}" ] || DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL=S
	    ;;
	esac
    done

Doing  <cat/proc/cmdline> returns this:

root=UUID=[long HEX string] ro quiet splash


Now I have new questions:

If I were to change the DEFAULT_RUNLEVEL to 5, would that help?

----------------------

To answer some other questions:

David Tomaschik asked if there any lines above the root prompt?
Nothing the least bit unusual there. The prompt I get needs a login/pswd
pair and then I get a new prompt and can type "startx"

I tried following David's suggestion of booting in recovery mode.  That may
have helped some of the underlying problems, but at the end of that process 
I am still looking at the login prompt. The Xserver is not running.
Trying a reboot.  Well, that's interesting. Logged in and typed "shutdown 
now" only to be told that I have to be root to do that. So tried "sudo 
shutdown now" and it still wanted the root password, not my user password.  
Only this is Ubuntu, and I have no earthly idea what the root password 
might be.  I never had a chance to set one.

So I gave up and hit the power button. on restart I got the login prompt 
again.

Thinking about Brian Pitts comments, how can I check the kernel arguments
and erase the "single" if it appears there?  And should I then replace it
with something else?

My current plan is to backup /home and run a fresh install from the
DVD I have in hand if I can't get this to work pretty damn soon now. :)

If that doesn't work, then I will try installing FC13.  

For now I'd prefer to stay with Ubuntu, as the new version provides a 
driver for the ethernet chip and can use the microphone so I can
use Skype to talk with my grandson. Previous version of Ubuntu
did not support either.

Sean



On Monday 05 July 2010 12:37:58 Brian Pitts wrote:
> On 07/04/2010 11:34 PM, David Tomaschik wrote:
> > Does it say anything above the root prompt?  I rather suspect that
> > something is erroring and aborting the boot. If it's giving you a root
> > prompt with no login, that means it's dropping you into single-user
> > mode, which is triggered either by an error during the boot or by the
> > line "single" being appended to the kernel arguments.
> >
> > You don't really want startx anywhere -- init loads the services
> > requested by the current run environment, and one of those (for
> > Gnome-based "vanilla" Ubuntu) is gdm.  GDM will load X and provide you
> > with the login screen you're used to.
> >
> > Menu.lst is not a shell script, so putting startx there will likely
> > only make things worse -- and certainly won't get X going for you.
> 
> I agree with the above. Your upgrade may not have completed
>  successfully.
> 
> Make sure your computer is plugged into a wired network and turned off.
> Turn it on and hold down shift; this should bring up the GRUB2 menu.
> Select the entry labeled "recovery mode". If you're not in too bad a
> shape, this should eventually load a menu with different automated
> recovery options you can choose. One of them is labeled something like
> "repair broken packages". Choose it and see what happens.
>