Upgrading with Update Manager Incurs Huge Data Loss!!!

[Christopher Stamper]

On Apr 26, 2009, at 10:50 AM, "laurent.bellegarde" <laurent.bellegarde at free.fr 
 > wrote:

> Eric Stewart a écrit :
>> I was assured by someone at Ubuntu Forums that if I use update  
>> manager
>> that no data will be written over.   What ended up happening is that
>> when it was finished and restarted I just got an error with no
>> possible options to go any further.  I am using my 8.10 CD right now
>> to try to recover some but some folders I will not be able to back up
>> because somehow, I don't have permission to read them!
>
> Hi Eric,
>
> that's not a trouble. If your are using a live CD, juste became root  
> with
>
> sudo su + enter
>
> as root, change the right over theses folders with
>
> chmod 777 -R /folder_name/
>
> then, you should be able to read, write and execute them.

Or, from the live cd, alt+f2 and type gksudo nautilus

You should be able to access everything.

Not sure how the upgrade works, maybe booting from and older, already  
installed, kernel may work?