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Old 09-12-2014, 10:00 AM   #1
corrados
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Debian doesn't work after recovery - many errors


Hi everyone.
I have a problem with my Debian jessie.
Yesterday, I upgrade my kernel and debian. Everything was working, dispite some scripts, so I decided to purge / partition, because before upgrade I made backup with rsync. After recovery linux boots only in kernela recovery mode. I think it is missing some files, gui doesn't work too (I used KDE). I get many Syntax error, missing eeximconfig and some others. It is important for me to repair this, because I had many services configured. Can You help me. If U need somedate just send me a commend to run and I send output. Oh, I also tried to upgade again (apt get update, then upgrade and dist-upgrade ) but a few minutes after runnig gives errors too. Please make my debian working again. Cheers
 
Old 09-12-2014, 12:31 PM   #2
jdkaye
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I assume you had backed up your important files before you decided to "purge / partition" (whatever that means). I think your best solution is a fresh install. It will be quicker than trying to repair your system which seems to be very broken. Once you've finished that it's an easy matter to restore your system to its previous state using your backed up files.
jdk
 
Old 09-12-2014, 12:44 PM   #3
corrados
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Thank You for your advice. I will make a fresh install, but how can I restore services and config. I mean from this backup for example owncloud, xbmc, pyload. This are only example programs/services. I woud like to automate restore programs with theirs configuration to fresh install. How can I do this? What files from backup dispite my personal data I should recover to have my programs back?
 
Old 09-12-2014, 03:09 PM   #4
ondoho
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Quote:
Originally Posted by corrados View Post
because before upgrade I made backup with rsync.
so now you recover, no?
if you managed to back up with rsync, you should also be able to recover.
how about
Code:
man rsync
 
Old 09-12-2014, 05:51 PM   #5
corrados
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Yes I am able to recover files but when I do this with rsync my debian is broken, there are many errors ex. Syntax error etc. So now I would like to make fresh install as suggested jdkaye, but I also need my programs with their configuration like owncloud, xbmc or pyload this are only three from many others. That's why I would like to recover this programs with theirs config to fresh install of debian. So could You help me with this or its impossible? Or maybe another solution to solve this?
 
Old 09-12-2014, 06:16 PM   #6
widget
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All of your user configuration files are in your /home/<user name> directory. They are hidden so that you don't have to stumble over them all the time.

In your file browser you should be able to see them by hitting ctrl + h. If that doesn't work with whatever crazy file browser is default under KDE just look in the View menu and select something like View Hidden.

Copy all the "hidden" files. There are directories and files. Get them all and put them someplace safe like on a RW optical disk or a usb stick.

After you finish your new install and install any packages you need you can use those files to put the thing back the way it was by just plugging the appropriate ones in.

You need to take a little care with this as some may not be quite right. I would just do one or two and reboot and see what they are doing. There could be some problem with those files that is causing some of your current problems.

If one proves to be screwy simply remove it and reboot. The file will regenerate with the default settings when you reboot.

Hidden files are usually refered to as ~/.foo files. Foo is a long standing Unix designation for a generic file. As is "bar" or the two combined for "foobar".

My main concern here is Jessie. Why are you using an unstable Debian version when you appear to have little experience, from your questions, with Linux at all? This is not critism, no matter what it sounds like. I am just wondering.

Stable would be more reliable. Jessie more educational.

I will tell you that I consider myself to be a testing user. Started Debian testing with Squeeze after years of Ubuntu testing. At that time Squeeze-testing was more reliable than Sid. When Squeeze went stable Wheezy-testing was more reliable, on the whole, than Sid for the entire period that Wheezy was testing.

I say I use Sid as a backup. So I have both Jessie and Sid installed right now. I am using Sid. Jessie is my fallback plan if I screw Sid. Sid has been more reliable than Jessie since the start of this dev cycle on my hardware and that is 2 boxes because my old one died in Feb.

Your milage may differ if you but this is something you may want to consider if you are bound and determined to use a Debian version other than Stable (Wheezy).

On your new install, by the way, make sure you install the package "apt-listbugs" first off. This will tell you about all KNOWN bugs against all packages you install or upgrade. Can be handy. Read the bug summary. They may not affect you at all. If one in 10 or 20 does it will save you a lot of problems.

A backup install that is stable is nice to have. Or at least a backup OS of the other unstable Debian versions.

Learn to chroot and you can keep a broken system update/upgraded from your backup install and hopefully the bug that bit you gets fixed and the thing will work again.
 
Old 09-12-2014, 06:31 PM   #7
corrados
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Thank You very much. Your advices are very useful. I just install jessie, because i thought, that some of services would working better (now I know it was mistake :/).Today I am too tired to make install and this changes so I make it tommorow. I will write tommorow if It is working or ask if sth goes wrong...
 
Old 09-14-2014, 09:02 AM   #8
corrados
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This what widget said helped, however I have new big problem. I had a Luks partition. When I tried mount this I get an error:mount: unknown filesystem type 'LVM2_member', so I decided to run this command :
vgcreate -c n Name /dev/sda1, after that it asked me that it have luks signature, and asked again if I would like to wipe it. I thought that it wipe only signature but it wiped this conteiner. How can I get it back? I had very important data on this? Please help again!.
Oh and I dont have a Luks header bakup, but I have data log fro fdisk -l before run this command and I didn't power off my pc too. So I don't know it is possible to recover it or no

Last edited by corrados; 09-14-2014 at 09:27 AM.
 
Old 09-14-2014, 05:31 PM   #9
widget
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The only way I know to reliably get that data back is to run testdisk. This must be done when the drive is not mounted so do it from a different drive or a Live Session of some sort.

If you do it from a live session testdisk is likely not installed. You can install thing on a live session, they just disappear when you reboot because they are simply loaded in your ram along with the rest of the live session.

Make sure you remove any other data from the drive first and have some place to copy the recovered data to.

You will need to redo the entire drive, in my experience, when you get done with recovery.

When you do that do it with a simple partition scheme. Just straight up primary, extended and logical partitions. Learn the ins and outs of them before trying to understand LVM. I am, obviously, assuming you are currently using a MSDos partition table. If you are using a GPT then you only have primary partitions and don't need to worry about the extended and logical partitions.

While it is perfectly possible to use a GPT in place of the MSDos Partition table on bios running computers (as opposed to uefi boxes where GPT is the recommended partition table) if you are using a bios box don't do it.

Partitioning is fairly easy and straight forward and fun. Start slow, learn the basics first.

Along that line you may be interested in this free coarse offered on edX in partnership with the Linux Foundation.
https://www.edx.org/course/linuxfoun...roduction-1621

May save you some time and trouble that folks like me wasted and had early on. Doesn't go into great depth but covers a wide range of basic things that are really good to know.

Install / and /home on separate partitions as this not only works a bit better but also makes data recovery somewhat easier.

2 observations;
1>never assume a command means something. Chech the man page to make sure.
2>you said you had backups. Why wasn't this lost data backed up? If you are backing up on the same drive as the original is stored on it is not backed up, it is simply duplicated. Duplication slightly makes data recovery more likely to succeed. The idea of backups is to avoid the need for data recovery.

A healthy drive with a solid, well understood partition scheme will not give you much trouble. Probably. Backups are insurance.
 
  


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