My Mint 19 has crashed

ssfc72 · April 11, 2019, 01:10:14 PM

Ok guys, my Mint 19.1 has crashed on my 14" Dell notebook. :-(
The Dell boots fine into Windows 8.

I select the Distro to boot up and the screen just goes from the OS boot screen to a black screen. There is no indication of the Distro booting.
I have to manually hit the power button to power down the notebook.

The Mint 19 was working fine just a few hours previously. I believe there was an upgrade for the systemd module along with a few other upgrades, which I allowed.

So, can I just get Mint 19.1 on a usb flash drive and boot into that, and then do an install from the flash drive, to recover my existing Mint 19.1, or is there some better way to recover my existing Mint install?

buster · April 11, 2019, 01:48:27 PM

Have you tried leaving it for a long, long time after turning it on? And watch the lights to see if there is any hd activity. Have had systems sort themselves out after a problem update. No cost to you `attempt anyway.

Jason · April 11, 2019, 02:42:29 PM

Did you have Timeshift enabled on it? This is exactly what Timeshift was designed for, when updates either change the functionality of your system in a way you don't like or even bork the install. So if you were using Timeshift, you should be able to boot from the live usb, then bring up Timeshift and do a restore from where you put the Timeshift snapshots.

Note that the default setup of timeshift doesn't back up the home or root directories thought you may have changed this option. If your home directory was on a separate partition, no big deal. Just go ahead and restore. If not, you should use the live thumbdrive to backup those files in your home directory to somewhere else before doing the restore as the Timeshift snapshot will clobber it and replace it with the default home setup.

Make sure you also select the option to restore the bootloader from the timeshift backup as well since that could be broken, at least for LM. This could save you some time if you had have made a lot of changes from the initial install. It's pretty easy to do but if you're not sure, this link should help.

If Timeshift wasn't being used but you have a separate home partition, you can reinstall LM and use the same partition (you will have to note which partition it is) and assign it to /home on the new install and you'll get back all your settings and data but obviously not the programs you had installed or updates unless they resided in /home. That's the case for snaps, flatpaks and other programs that don't actually require installation using the software manager.

Closetgeek · April 11, 2019, 02:44:55 PM

I've had some luck with going into advanced options at the Grub screen and booting into an older kernel.
Then using Synaptic to repair broken packages.
Or, At advanced grub screen go into " Recovery " option. (can't remember the exact term off of the top of my head)
and select "repair broken packages".

ssfc72 · April 11, 2019, 03:34:27 PM

Thanks Buster! I left it for about 5 minutes, with no change, but I will try again and leave it for about 1/2 hr and hope that might work.
No, great loss, since I only had a few documents on the Dell notebooh, which I will need to try any retrieve.

Quote from: buster on April 11, 2019, 01:48:27 PM
Have you tried leaving it for a long, long time after turning it on? And watch the lights to see if there is any hd activity. Have had systems sort themselves out after a problem update. No cost to you `attempt anyway.

ssfc72 · April 11, 2019, 03:37:11 PM

Thanks Jason! No Timeshift was being used. I don't think I have a separate Home partition.
Wasn't too much on the notebook, just a few documents I will like to retrieve.

Quote from: Jason Wallwork on April 11, 2019, 02:42:29 PM
Did you have Timeshift enabled on it? This is exactly what Timeshift was designed for, when updates either change the functionality of your system in a way you don't like or even bork the install. So if you were using Timeshift, you should be able to boot from the live usb, then bring up Timeshift and do a restore from where you put the Timeshift snapshots.

Note that the default setup of timeshift doesn't back up the home or root directories thought you may have changed this option. If your home directory was on a separate partition, no big deal. Just go ahead and restore. If not, you should use the live thumbdrive to backup those files in your home directory to somewhere else before doing the restore as the Timeshift snapshot will clobber it and replace it with the default home setup.

Make sure you also select the option to restore the bootloader from the timeshift backup as well since that could be broken, at least for LM. This could save you some time if you had have made a lot of changes from the initial install. It's pretty easy to do but if you're not sure, this link should help.

If Timeshift wasn't being used but you have a separate home partition, you can reinstall LM and use the same partition (you will have to note which partition it is) and assign it to /home on the new install and you'll get back all your settings and data but obviously not the programs you had installed or updates unless they resided in /home. That's the case for snaps, flatpaks and other programs that don't actually require installation using the software manager.

ssfc72 · April 11, 2019, 03:43:08 PM

When I installed Mint 19 on this notebook, I did not get a Grub menu, after the install (I have had the same issue on another notebook that I install Mint on to).
I have to do an F12 upon boot up and select a Legacy hard drive, to get Mint 19 to boot, otherwise the notebook just boots into Windows 8.
At this point I get an option to boot Mint or a Mint recovery. Neither one, no longer boots up Mint, just a black screen appears.

Quote from: Closetgeek on April 11, 2019, 02:44:55 PM
I've had some luck with going into advanced options at the Grub screen and booting into an older kernel.
Then using Synaptic to repair broken packages.
Or, At advanced grub screen go into " Recovery " option. (can't remember the exact term off of the top of my head)
and select "repair broken packages".

Jason · April 11, 2019, 04:44:27 PM

Nice to see you again closetgeek! Are you still living up in... Aurora, was it? I remember it was in the Barrie/Lake Simcoe area.

Jason · April 11, 2019, 04:46:35 PM

If you have an external drive (or a big enough flashdrive), or even a local drive with enough space, I really recommend using Timeshift in the future so that you can recover from errors like these. Even if you use just one or two snapshots, it can be very handy.

Closetgeek · April 11, 2019, 05:34:43 PM

Hey Jason.
Was in Aurora. Moved to Newmarket over new years.
I've been trolling for months, just haven't felt the need to post until now .
LOL

Closetgeek · April 11, 2019, 05:41:15 PM

Try tapping shift a few times after selecting your mint drive.
You should get a grub menu then.

ssfc72 · April 12, 2019, 08:01:27 AM

Ok, I was unsuccessful in trying to get my Mint 19, restored.

So I booted up a usb Live version of Mint 19, to retrieve the few document files on the notebook computer.
However, some of the pdf files I could not copy because of permission issues. :-(
I shut down the Live Mint 19 and booted up the Puppy Distro form a usb flash drive. No problems copying these permission locked files.

Then I booted up Mint 19.1 from a usb flash drive and did an install.
I completed the install and rebooted the notebook and I still got a black screen, when I tried to boot into the fresh install of Mint.
I repeated the install of Mint 19 and this time I selected the Mint installer to Format the Mint partition.

Finally the Mint 19.1 install was successful and I can now boot up Mint on my Dell notebook. :-)

Jason · April 12, 2019, 08:36:07 AM

Glad you worked it out. With permission issues, you just need to use sudo before the command or su root first and then you can transfer the files or change the permissions of then after you've logged in as root. Not sure how to do that in Mint live version but it should be possible. Something to remember for the future.

BusterE · April 12, 2019, 04:52:17 PM

"If you have an external drive (or a big enough flashdrive), or even a local drive with enough space, I really recommend using Timeshift in the future so that you can recover from errors like these."

If you're using an external drive for Timeshift, I believe you cannot use the same drive for MS. Pretty sure Timeshift does not work on msft.

Jason · April 12, 2019, 07:42:12 PM

Quote from: BusterE on April 12, 2019, 04:52:17 PM
If you're using an external drive for Timeshift, I believe you cannot use the same drive for MS. Pretty sure Timeshift does not work on msft.

Lots of things don't work on Windows.

Not sure how it's relevant but yes, Timeshift needs a Linux partition to create snapshots on and it doesn't work on Windows. So you just create a Linux partition on your external drive if you also use that drive for Windows.

For VMs, I'd suggestion using Virtualbox which has a snapshot ability for system images that you can revert to at any time.