reinstalling breezy

[Paul O'Malley]

Martin Ericsson wrote:

>
> Hi!
> I don't know what's wrong with my (fresh, not upgrade) breezy install 
> but it's extremly unstable. A lot of different applications (firefox, 
> totem, the kernel, ontv, the clock applet) have crashed my computer, 
> forcing me to restart the computer with the power-switch.
> Is there any way to reinstall breezy, or just reinstall all packages?

You can install the applications just record the partition names from 
/etc/fstab and then you can install everything, this means that which is 
in your home directory is left alone as long as you don't write over it.
It is done as an install would be partitioning giving the machine.

>
> My home-partition is on a separate partition, so can I just reinstall 
> it and tell the installation program to use that partition as my 
> home-folder? If so, what will happen to my settings? Will breezy 
> reinstall default settings for the applications?
>
The applications will have default settings.

You may wish to consider installing debfoster right at the start after 
you install the box to allow you the facilities that is has, a kind of 
roll-back.

Now for my personal speculation:
If the machine appears to have locked up, you may have an ati or nvidia 
card, if this is true perhaps a visit to the web site wiki.ubuntu.com 
may be of use. If sshd is running on the machine it might be worth it if 
you have access to another machine to try to ssh into the "crashed" box 
and get it to reboot that way.

One other thing you can do is reboot the machine when you are finished 
using it and press escape, then choose the memtest. (I am not aware if 
this holds true for ppc machines.)

Regards,

Paul O'Malley