Upgrade from 16.04.x to 18.04.3 broke system - was Upgrade paths from UbuntuMATE 16.04.x and 18.04.x to 19.10

[Bret Busby]

On 15/10/2019, Little Girl <littlergirl at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hey there,
>
> Bret Busby wrote:
>>Little Girl wrote:
>
>>> This page is pretty old, but one of the people who used it posted
>>> not all that long ago, so maybe it will be of some use:
>>>
>>> https://askubuntu.com/questions/628974/ubuntu-14-04-returns-to-login-screen-after-login
>>
>>I tried the
>>
>>"
>>Press Ctrl + Alt + F1 and log in there and run:
>>
>>sudo chown -R $USER:$USER $HOME
>>Then press Ctrl + Alt + F7 and try to log in.
>>"
>>
>>and got continuously scrolling screens of "Operation not permitted",
>>relating to system files, so aborted it with <CTRL><C> then rebooted,
>>and now, it displays the GRUB menu, I select Ubuntu, then it briefly
>>displays a console login prompt, then the screen goes black, then it
>>goes into an endless loop of black screen _> flash -> black screen.
>>
>>And, I can not apply <CTRL><ALT><F1> to get to a console terminal.
>>
>>So now, the system appears to be completely broken and unusable in
>>Linux.
>
> I'm sorry to hear that. Can you make a different selection from the
> GRUB menu? Below are a few links that may or may not help:
>
> Is this of any use?
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OG4deLa_vK8
>
> This may or may not be of some use:
>
> https://askubuntu.com/questions/628974/ubuntu-14-04-returns-to-login-screen-after-login
>
> This one is for Linux Mint, but may have some useful portions:
>
> https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=261704
>
> Here's another that may be of some use:
>
> https://askubuntu.com/questions/937712/ubuntu-randomly-started-blinking-the-screen-on-boot
>
> And another that's more recent that may be of some use:
>
> https://askubuntu.com/questions/1031928/screen-flickering-on-boot-after-upgrade-to-18-04-and-slow-boot?noredirect=1
>
> --
> Little Girl
>
> There is no spoon.
>


I am thinking that

"
>>I tried the
>>
>>"
>>Press Ctrl + Alt + F1 and log in there and run:
>>
>>sudo chown -R $USER:$USER $HOME
>>Then press Ctrl + Alt + F7 and try to log in.
>>"
>>
>>and got continuously scrolling screens of "Operation not permitted",
>>relating to system files, so aborted it with <CTRL><C> then rebooted,
>>and now, it displays the GRUB menu, I select Ubuntu, then it briefly
>>displays a console login prompt, then the screen goes black, then it
>>goes into an endless loop of black screen _> flash -> black screen.
>>
"

has eliminated the /home directory and corrupted the file system.

After various subsequent actions, upon rebooting, I now get a console
login screen, and it does not progress beyond that screen.

When I log in, I get
"
No directory, logging in with HOME=/
-bash: cannot create temp file for here-document: No space left on device
"

So. I think that command has corrupted the filesystem.

I do not know, but I think the only thing left for me to do, now, is
wait until 19.10 is released (as I previously mentioned, the
UbuntuMATE Release Notes for 19.10, state that it has multiple fixes,
and is supposed to be better for nVIDIA stuff (the affected computer
has nVIDIA Optimus, which. I think, has thus far been dealt with by
nouveau) ), and do a "clean install", replacing the current UbuntuMATE
system with a new install of 19.04 .

I should probably have progressively updated the system, to 19.10,
instead of wrecking the system by trying the fixes that I tried.


-- 
Bret Busby
Armadale
West Australia
..............

"So once you do know what the question actually is,
 you'll know what the answer means."
- Deep Thought,
 Chapter 28 of Book 1 of
 "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy:
 A Trilogy In Four Parts",
 written by Douglas Adams,
 published by Pan Books, 1992

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