HI,

I was trying to upgrade my company desktop ubuntu 9.04 to ubuntu 11.10.

However, run until half way the electric was breakdown.

When I reboot the computer again. The installation is incomplete and all the files seem gone!!!!

When I click install ubuntu, its shown there is no detected operating system!

GOSH!!! how should i do?

ALl my company P&C files haven't backup yet.

PLEASE help!!

Hello,

Well, first of all, that's pretty bad luck you've had there but having a company, big or small, with critical data on the computers and NO backup... There's no excuse for that. Did you perform that upgrade process on only one of the computers? Upgrading Ubuntu is almost always troublesome. You should always take a backup before performing an operation that invasive. The first thing you need to do is calm down, next try to boot from a LiveCD and recover data, if possible, using tools like TestDisk and Photorec for example. Another thing you could try is use the recovery mode of Ubuntu although I don't guarantee it will give you a solid solution.

If you only performed the upgrade on one computer, leave the other ones alone and fix this first.

And please don't use terms like urgent in your posts, nobody here will give you special attention if you use words like that. After all, we're all volunteers here putting in our free time to help others with Linux and it's only urgent to you.

Kind regards,

Eric

HI Eric,

FIrst of all, really sorry for miss using the word of URGENT. I was really panic at this moment as I did few desktop upgrade from ubuntu 9.04 to 11.10 is fine. However, this desktop was have some accident.

I am really a ubuntu or linux newbie. Could you guide me step by step how to do the recovery process?

THank you very much.

Really appreciate for you helps and guiding.

Thanks.

Sorry but could you clarify something for me. Did you upgrade or did you do a clean install? Ubuntu recommend upgrades from previous versions by number so 9.04 can upgrade to 9.10 but to go from 9.04 to 11.10 is asking for a disaster. You can upgrade from one LTS to the next so 8.04 LTS can upgrade to 10.04 LTS but you have tried this with regular releases and even without the probable issues that would arise (GRUB changes, Plymouth introduction, GTK2 to GTK3 changes, kernel mode setting for video cards, etc etc etc) you had a power out and it appears you failed to do a backup before hand.

Follow Eric's suggestions for Data recovery but if you had formatted your hard drive before the power out (and you don't have a separate /home partition) I think your chances of data recovery are slim indeed.

I was using Dimension c521 desktop and I really having problem to boot or upgrade my computer. Can anyone guide me what should I do?

This is what appear on my black screen.


_________________________________________
Boot from (hd0,0)ext3 4a49bf8f-dbaZ-4752-b5bf-718a9b8c98a8
Starting up...
[ 0.468001] ..MP-BIOS bug: 8254 timer not connected to IO-APIC
Loading, please wait...
19+0 records in
19+0 records out
kinit: name_to_dev_t(/dev/disk/by-uuid/38948708-3cea-463c-a909-d6a284103543) = dev(8,5)
kinit: trying to resume from /dev/disk/by-uuid/38948708-3cea-463c-a909-d6a284103543
kinit: No resume image, doing normal boot...
mount: mounting /dev on /root/dev failed:No such file or directory
mount: mounting /sys on /root/sys failed:No such file or directory
mount: mounting /proc on /root/proc failed:No such file or directory
Target filesystem doesn't have /sbin/init.
No init found. Try passing init= bootarg.

BusyBox v1.10.2 (Ubuntu 1:1.10.2-2ubuntu7) build-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands.

(initramfs)



_______________________________

This is what appeared on my screen when I boot my desktop. How can i continue the upgrade or get to recover the fileS?

Million thanks

Hi k3lt01,

Actually this is the 4th computer I doing for the upgrade. From Ubuntu 9.04 to 11.10. It was working well after I do the upgrade.

However, this is an accident that power out during the upgrade installation. That's my worried part. Because previously was working well and this desktop got so much problem.

I dint do a clean installation, I just do upgrade

I would try a live-cd and see if it can recognize and mount your HD partitions. If it can, back up critical files and settings to a network or shared device for later recovery. IF it cannot, I am not sure if you will be able to recover anything. Our best hope is that someone can suggest a recovery tool that will help.

I would NOT try any more install activity on this machine before attempting to recover any critical data, even a failed boot from HD event may add to the corruption.

If you cannot recover, the obvious next step is a clean install. My advice would be to plan on backing up critical data and settings and doing a full install for every major version. Many distributions recommend this, including the "big boys" at RH and SUSE.

Well Kiwi89 you are extremely lucky, not only are you mixing way to many variations (GRUB etc) you are going against recommended practises by the developers of the system you are using.