No keyboard after 'dist-upgrade'

Hungry ghost · 03-23-2006, 08:10 PM

Hi all, I installed Debian Sarge a few days ago and today I tried to upgrade the entire system with 'apt-get dist-upgrade'. It downloaded all the upgrades, then I went through the configuration process, and then it began installing the packages but got stuck when installing the 'gnome-system-tools' package, so I had to reset the machine. After reboot all I got was a text login prompt, so I tried with 'apt-get update'; after a while I got a message telling me there was a problem and I had to run 'dpkg --reconfigure -a'. So I did, and it finished installing the upgrades. In a point of the installation it told me something about the kernel and that I had to reboot as soon as posible, so I rebooted, but when finishing the booting process I got an error message telling me it couldn't start the X system. so I pressed enter to see the detailed error, but there was no response to the keyboard. I tried 'Ctrl-Alt-F1' bbut it didn't give any result, simply there's no keyboard response.
Does anyone know how to solve this problem??

Thanks in advance.

Hungry ghost · 03-23-2006, 10:08 PM

Ok, I booted in 'Recovery mode', and my keyboard was recognized, so I ran 'apt-get upgrade', 'apt-get dist-upgrade' and 'apt-get install x-window-system', then I was prompted to use either gdm or xdm as display manager, I selected gdm, it tried to start X and the entire system got frozen again. There was a a prompt asking me if I wanted to see the detailed error log, but I couldn't do anything because the system was frozen(I couldn't even select 'yes').

Any sugestion?

rickh · 03-23-2006, 10:14 PM

I suggest you start over and install Debian Etch
Much less likely to encounter hardware problems.

hitest · 03-23-2006, 11:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rickh

I suggest you start over and install Debian Etch
Much less likely to encounter hardware problems.

I agree with rickh, I've run sarge and found it to be a bit buggy. Perhaps try a clean install of Etch?
I've run Etch for awhile and really like it; I have not encountered anything that really sucks.
Debian rules!

Hungry ghost · 03-24-2006, 06:12 AM

I tried to install Debian Etch last night from floppies (I don't have a cd burner), but I couldn't boot from the boot floppy, even if my BIOS was setup to boot from it. Well, I'll try the net-install cd as soon as I buy a cd or dvd burner.
Thanks for your answers.