Upgrade from Ubuntu 9.10 to Ubuntu 10.04 crashed now I cant backup my files
 

I was running Ubuntu 9.10. It was great, I loved it. Update manager said there was an upgrade available to upgrade to Ubuntu 10.04. (This is the first time I have ever said Yes, install upgrade. I usually do a backup and install a fresh copy of the newer version.) Anyway the upgrade installed and reported an x-server error but the rest looked OK. After reboot---thats it, nothing after reboot. Just sits at a Ubuntu page like it wants to load but it will not. I could handle this if only I had made a backup first. (I should have known better.)I have another PC running Ubuntu 9.10 so I took the hard drive from the failed upgrade and I have it hooked up to my SATA drive adapter and the USB side into my other Ubuntu PC. So now I can see the folders on the failed upgrade disc. (great.) Thats all I need are the files that are in "Documents" folder. I assume "Documents" is in my "root" folder. The "root" folder has an X symbol on the top right corner and when I try to open it, it displays that I dont have permissions. Please would someone let me know the path to the "Documents" folder or tell me how to get through the permissions to get my files.
Sorry about the long explanation. This is my first post.
Any help would be really appreciated.

Documents are stored in /home/user you can give permissions by doing the following,
disk0 is the path were it mounted the failed install drive.
You may also need to give read/write permissions with
Does that help?

Cannot Access
 

chown: cannot access '/disk0/home/user: no such file or directory

Like I said in my first post, disk0 is the location of your other drive. Most likely it's in /media somewhere. Just look at the path when you navigate to your documents.

Its the newbie in me...
 

Sorry, I'm just a newbie. I opened a terminal window and cd to the directory. Lets say my username is bubba. so I'am at a prompt like this:
bubba@rod-top:/media/c44df52b-7e9f--4030--a0b0-fewmorenumbers/home/bubba$
if I type ls I can see two files: access-your-private-data.desktop (and) Readme.txt
At the above prompt if I type sudo chown bubba -R /c44df52b-7e9f--4030--a0b0-fewmorenumbers/home/bubba I get that previous post of cannot access no such file or directory.

I know it can be tuff dealing with a newbie, especially when you cant see exactly what they are doing, but I do appreciate your trying to help.

Do you get an error saying that you don't have sufficient permissions or an error saying there is no such directory? Because, normally, the path would look more like this (changes in bold)
Don't worry about being new to this... Seriously, this is the best way to learn.

Seemed to have worked
 

OK, I took my prompt back to root and typed in the command you first posted with that full path to the folder and it asked for may password and did not give any errors. Then i changed directories all the way to /media/c44df52b-7e9f--4030--a0b0-fewmorenumbers/home/ If I type cd bubba from here, it says: permission denied.
I hope that makes sense...I did type both of the commands that you posted the first time. Both sudo chown commands.

What happens when you do "gksu nautilus", which will open nautilus as sudo and then see if you can open or change the permissions using the nautilus that opens.
cd to /media/c44df52b-7e9f--4030--a0b0-fewmorenumbers/home/ again and do "ls -l" and post the output here.

BTW, "chown" means change ownership.

gksu natilus
 

when I pe gksu natilus it displays this:
(nautilus:2957): Eel-CRITICAL **: eel_preferences_get_boolean: assertion `preferences_is_initialized ()' failed

** (nautilus:2957): WARNING **: No marshaller for signature of signal 'UploadFinished'

** (nautilus:2957): WARNING **: No marshaller for signature of signal 'DownloadFinished'

** (nautilus:2957): WARNING **: No marshaller for signature of signal 'ShareCreateError'
Initializing nautilus-gdu extension

--- Hash table keys for warning below:
--> inode/directory
--> l2081
--> root
Shutting down nautilus-gdu extension

(nautilus:2957): Eel-WARNING **: "unique eel_ref_str" hash table still has 3 elements at quit time (keys above)

(nautilus:2957): Eel-WARNING **: "nautilus-directory.c: directories" hash table still has 5 elements at . time
It does open a window and I click on that drive and go to home/bubba it tries to let me share the folder. It acts like I do have permission. I can open the folder and there are two locked files in it. Access-your-private-data.desktop and readme.txt

If I type ls -l I get this:
total 4
dr-x------ 3 775 bubba 4096 2009-11-30 08:36 bubba

Instead of removing the hard drive and trying to access it with another computer, I think you could likely fix the upgrade, and get it going. When it "sits at an Ubuntu page like it wants to load", is it at the command line? If so, try the command "startx". If it is not at the command line, but is just hanging on some splash graphic, try pressing the Escape key, or F3, or F4, and going to Recovery Mode.

Here, I believe you get the option to "try to fix the x-server". I would try that first. Otherwise, you could go to the command line and run the upgrade again.

I will try that.
 

I'm getting ready to leave for the day, so I think I will try that. It boots to a pinkish/purple graphics page that says UBUNTU in the middle and underneath it has like 5 or 6 red dots that turn off and on from left to right and they finally quit blinking all together and it is locked up bad. I have tried hitting the escape key while it is loading and I got to a login screen with my login displayed but the mouse wont work. I tried plugging in another USB mouse but cant get it or the keyboard to work once it gets there. I cant seem to get it to the black screen that just has a basic login, either. I will give it another try. If it works out I will post the results.
Thank you soooo much for putting up with me.
I appreciate it.

Perhaps hitting Tab to highlight your login name, and then hitting Enter to select it would work.
Sometimes Ctrl-Alt-Backspace (holding down Ctrl and Alt, and then pressing the Backspace key) can get you to the command line. Or, sometimes Ctrl-Alt-F2 (or F3) can do it.

What a nightmare
 

I have tried everything and nothing will work. I finally put in the Ubuntu 10.04 live cd and installed it side by side with my ruined system. Now, I can finally get to my user folder and there are all of my documents that I need to back up. There is no GUI, I'm just at a black screen with my login. I cant figure out what to type in to copy the entire Documents folder to my external hard drive. I'm pretty sure it is is dev/sda1 but I dont know how to actually view whats already on the drive. Anyway I just need to copy Documents to my external hard drive.
Any help would be appreciated.And thank you all for getting me this far!

Mount your external drive
Copy your docs to external drive (assuming you mounted it at /media)
You might run into permission issues again... Make sure you can the paths right and chown the directories that are giving you trouble.

Awesome!
 

It is in the process of backing it all up.........
Thank you all very much!
Once it is through I will format and do a fresh install using the entire disc space, reload documents and be back in business..
Thanks again............Case closed!