[ubuntu-za] Interrupted Upgrade

[Jonathan Hitchcock]

Hi,

On Mon, Aug 24, 2009 at 12:09 AM, Tim Johnson<tim at pteq.net> wrote:
> At some point during the process, power was interrupted and I ended up
> with a non-bootable disaster.  On booting I end up at a BusyBox prompt and
> have no idea where to go from there.
>
> My question is this:  Can I copy my old /home folder into my /home
> partition and regain all my previously installed apps etc?  Would a fresh
> installation of each app be a better approach?

As Lee said - unfortunately, simply copying your home directory won't
be enough.  Nothing is stored in your home directory other than
personal data and personal configuration settings.  All system-wide
application settings and all installed apps are stored elsewhere.

There are ways to fix this situation, or to use what you have left to
recover bits of data, settings, and lists of installed apps, so that
you can duplicate your old set up.  However, each situation differs in
what has gone wrong and how badly it has gone wrong, so there is no
set method to do this - you have to fiddle and pry to see what you can
do.  I know that if you wanted to go this route, and you stepped into
the #clug IRC channel on irc.atrum.org, you'd find a bunch of people
who would actually find performing that sort of necromancy remotely to
be quite a bit of fun, and an enjoyable exercise in "what the hell
went wrong?".

However, unless you actually have the spare time, and want to treat
this as a learning process, I don't actually recommend this course of
action.  If you have your home directory, that's all you really need.
You will have to remember which apps you had installed, and reinstall
them, but this is actually quite a useful way of getting rid of cruft
that you no longer need - you only install the apps you want, and all
the old things that you installed once and never used again are no
longer there.

Cheers,
-Jonathan