I ran slackpkg upgrade-all and everything seemed to work.
After the reboot, root could log into the console and then startx, but user account could not. Reload because I realized I had created no /home.
Then both root and user could startx. And I went to terminal, sudo su -, w/appropriate password, then as root slackpkg upgrade-all. (sudo slackpkg upgrade-all would not work)
So after a very l o n g update, I rebooted. Now neither root nor local user may startx.

In fact, now I can't even shut down the system. Even init 0 doesn't work. My computer just sits there.

Is there any way to roll back the slackpkg upgrades?
When the option to update LILO came up, I chose overwrite.

I'd save my home directory, and reinstall the distribution from scratch. Then do all updates before reintroducing your personal data. Easiest way to fix big goofs that I know of.

An even easier way would be restoring the system partition image that was made, just in case, before doing the slackpkg upgrade-all, or part of routine maintenance backups.

Slackware is NOT an sudo distro.
The correct way to login as root is 'su -'. This correctly sets the environment for the root user.
There is not an automated option for this. Reinstalling from scratch is likely to be quicker.

did yo run
or did you skip something?

if you can get cli login and network. then from the cli run the three in in order.
see if that installs something that may not have.

'slackpkg install-new' will probably be the only one that will actually do anything due to you didn't run that one first after updating.

your sudo may not have worked due to you not even setting up your user to use sudo. But nevertheless as stated before su - first then run your admin commands.

no home or home/user is ok to update and what not in slack as root.

isn't that a "really big goof"?

I've got same problem: http://slackbuilds.org/mirror/slackw...ckware64-14.2/
How do you upgrade your system and have it work?
I did everything like it said

For information on slackpkg, type 'man slackpkg' at the command line or see here.
I prefer to run 'slackpkg' from run level 3, as I have had issues when upgrading X from run level 4 in the past. To get to run level 3 from the grahical run level 4, you can run, as root, 'telinit 3' in a terminal window.

So if I change the Run level and follow slackpkg to a tee, as I have done before; (should I be root?)or is SU OK when done and I choose the use updates, my system will reboot and operate properly unstead of just hang at a flashing curser?

I hate giving "it depends" answers, but it depends on your setup and the packages being upgraded.
The first golden rule is always be root when running slackpkg, either by logging as root, or using 'su -'.
My second golden rule is always be at run level 3 when running slackpkg. (Tip - If using lilo as your bootloader, hit Tab then add ' 3' to the boot command.)

If you boot to run level 4 routinely, rather than the default run level 3, most packages can be upgraded successfully. However problems with X upgrades have occurred when slackpkg is run when the system is at run level 4.

When kernel upgrades are involved then you will need to adjust boot loader configuration. If you are running the -huge kernel and using lilo as the boot loader, at the slackpkg prompt to run lilo after a kernel upgrade, just answer "Yes" and you are done. If you are running the -generic kernel with an init.rd, then you need to rebuild the initrd, then re-run lilo.
Kernel upgrades may also require rebuilding third party kernel modules (e.g. nVidia graphics drivers and VirtualBox).

Some packages also include configuration files with a .new suffix. When these are found, slackpkg will silently compare these with existing files and delete the incoming .new files if no differences are found. If differences are found, then it is up to the system administrator to reconcile the differences. You can use slackpkg with the 'new-config' option multiple times after an upgrade to locate these files. There are in-built options in slackpkg to view differences, remove, keep, overwrite existing the incoming .new files. This is important as these configuration files often include local customisation settings that need to be maintained. An alternative to the in-built slackpkg diff option is to simply keep the incoming .new file, then use vimdiff to update the existing file with changes in the incoming .new file. I find this easier with configuration files for cups and ssh(d) where I have extensive local customisations.

One weakness of slackpkg is that it only looks under /etc for incoming .new files. Some packages have .new files that are placed under /usr. The incoming files will be placed under /usr, ut slackpkg will not report or take action on these.

You should not be running startx as root regardless. This is likely leading to .Xauthority being owned by root which will generally prevent the user from starting X normally.

cynwulf,
I haven't run startx as root.
After running slackpkg, I couldn't run startx under my user account. I could before running slackpkg.
After running slackpkg, I can't even run lynx.

Well now I am confused...

Make sure you are using one mirror (uncomment only one in /etc/slackpkg/mirrors), making sure that it is the version you want and the architecture is correct.

What graphics card do you have? If its a binary blob (nvidia binary blob requires nouveau blacklist package and blacklist nouveau from upgrading in /etc/slackpkg/blacklist) then you need to reinstall it after upgrades like the kernel and mesa.

Generally, X related errors will appear in the system message buffer, or one can check the X.org log files in /var/log/

The OP hasn't posted any console output, nor given the OS release, kernel version, etc...

They also haven't specified the type of upgrade, whether just a general update or an attempts to upgrade from one release to another.

So not a lot to go on and guesswork isn't that useful.

Interestingly, the "tags" at the bottom of this thread include the phrase "slackware -current".

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