I did the following:
So the system is broken, but where do I go from here? In particular as a first step how do I get to a terminal when the GUI is dead?
- downloaded and burned DVD of 12.10
- I was not in a hurry to install 12.10, I just wanted it handy, and to have to give to a friend who is trying out various distros. But at some point Update Manager started insisting that a 12.10 DVD be mounted on the system, and refused to apply any changes until I did so. The reason I was trying to apply changes was because until you have applied all outstanding updates you don't get the prompt to perform an upgrade to 12.10 on a running system. However even though Update Manager was demanding that I mount a 12.10 DVD it did not accept the one I had burned in step 1!
- Although it was not my first choice it appeared that the only way I could get past Update Manager's insistence on some specific version of a 12.10 disk being mounted was to perform the upgrade to 12.10 using the DVD rather than over the net.
- While doing the upgrade using the DVD a message popped up that the installer was unable to restore some services.
- Sure enough when I booted into the upgraded system almost everything I had installed on top of the base system was gone.
- I spent most of yesterday trying to remember everything I had installed and manually reinstalling and reconfiguring it. This included GVIM, Eclipse, Apache, PHP, PHP-MySQL, PEAR, several PEAR features, etc. etc.
- Finally I got the system to a working state, but by that time I had thrown away the entire day. So I closed the lid of my laptop and went to bed.
- In the morning I opened the laptop to face a black screen. I couldn't think of anything to do but cycle power.
- I am now looking at a blank PURPLE screen. The system is up: I can ping it. However among the services that the install threw away was the telnet and ftp servers so I cannot even get into the system through the back door.
So the system is broken, but where do I go from here? In particular as a first step how do I get to a terminal when the GUI is dead?