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:
>
>>I am thinking that
>>
>>"
>>>>I tried the
>>>>
>>>>"
>>>>Press Ctrl + Alt + F1 and log in there and run:
>>>>
>>>>sudo chown -R $USER:$USER $HOME
>>>>Then press Ctrl + Alt + F7 and try to log in.
>>>>"
>>>>
>>>>and got continuously scrolling screens of "Operation not
>>>>permitted", relating to system files, so aborted it with <CTRL><C>
>>>>then rebooted, and now, it displays the GRUB menu, I select
>>>>Ubuntu, then it briefly displays a console login prompt, then the
>>>>screen goes black, then it goes into an endless loop of black
>>>>screen _> flash -> black screen.
>>>>
>>"
>>
>>has eliminated the /home directory and corrupted the file system.
>
> That command changed the ownership (chown) of all files in the
> current user's ($USER) home directory ($HOME) recursively (-R) to the
> current user ($USER) and also changed the group ownership of the
> files to the current user(:$USER).
>
> See the chown man page for the details:
>
> http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/trusty/man1/chown.1.html
>
>>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 suspect that when you ran the command above, you were root rather
> than you, so you changed ownership of your home to root. This page
> might help with that:
>
> https://stackoverflow.com/questions/47827893/no-directory-logging-in-with-home
>
> Your issue is bigger than ownership, though, as Oliver Grawert
> pointed out in this thread. You're out of room. Is this a virtual
> machine and/or are you able to give it more space?
>
>>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 always do clean installations rather than upgrades, so that
> sounds like a solid plan to me. You may not have to wait, however, if
> the above solution helps and if you take care of your space issue.
>
>>I should probably have progressively updated the system, to 19.10,
>>instead of wrecking the system by trying the fixes that I tried.
>
> I feel badly about that since your experiments were from pages I had
> mentioned. Hopefully you've made backups so that you can start over.
> Trying fixes can definitely be risky and should usually be thoroughly
> researched. In the crafting and/or handy worlds, we have a saying
> that goes: "Measure twice. Cut once." I think that applies nicely to
> experimentation with operating systems, too.
>

This seems to have worked out a bit like the Chinese parable "The old
man who lost a horse" (well worth reading and understanding).

I copied what data I could access, from the Debian (version 6 - hadn't
looked at it for years) and UbuntuMATE installations, eliminated the
Debian and Ubuntu installations, did a bit of repartitioning, to
expand the / and /swap partitions, and, installed UbuntuMATE 19.04,
with a properly now separate /home partition, and now, it works
better, including that the wifi now works with UbuntuMATE.

However, I lost (gave up on) the data associated with my primary user
account in UbuntuMATE 18.04.

"Such is life".

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

"So once you do know what the question actually is,
 you'll know wh (well worth reading and understandingat 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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