How to recover

[Ralf Mardorf]

On Fri, 02 Sep 2016 10:13:51 -0400, s_s_shahin at fastmail.fm wrote:
>I was using 14.04 LTS and while I was recycling I was asked if I wanted
>to upgrade and I agreed.
>
>The process started and ran for over an hour then it was interrupted
>when an MS file was found and Ubuntu did not know what to do with it
>(Seemed that way) and the upgrade froze and I lost what I had.

Hi,

is the machine still running? IOW do you still have access to the
possible partial upgraded Ubuntu?

If so, then open a terminal and try running

  sudo do-release-upgrade

this might not work for several reasons, if so post the command and the
complete output. To coping text from a terminal usually works at least
by the right click menu.

There are ways to fix issues, e.g.

  sudo dpkg --configure -a
  sudo apt-get update
  sudo apt-get -f install
  sudo apt-get -m install
  sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

but don't try this now, instead attach the file

  /etc/apt/sources.list

and possible available files in the directory

  /etc/apt/sources.list.d/

to an email and send it to the list.

If you need to boot, but boot doesn't finish, you could try to boot
using recovery mode.

  https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RecoveryMode

If even recovery mode shouldn't work, then you need to use chroot or
systemd-nspawn from a live media.

Regards,
Ralf