Fwd: Re: [Wylug-help] Mandrake has seriously screwed up just by doing media updates

[C.Mackins at Bradford.ac.uk]

----- Forwarded message from cmackins at bradford.ac.uk -----
    Date: Sat, 15 Jan 2005 17:58:28 +0000
    From: cmackins at bradford.ac.uk
Reply-To: cmackins at bradford.ac.uk
 Subject: Re: [Wylug-help] Mandrake has seriously screwed up just by doing media
updates
      To: Anne Wilson <cannewilson at tiscali.co.uk>

Quoting Anne Wilson <cannewilson at tiscali.co.uk>:

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> On Saturday 15 Jan 2005 16:44, you wrote:
> >
> > Reinstalling is my concern exactly for the reasons that you outline.  My
> > particular problem though is that after doing the initial media updates,
> > the 'behaviour' of the reboot, was that of a fresh install (once I'd logged
> > in that is) in that the Mandrake Welcome window appeared, and of course the
> > apps my work had just 'vanished'. All my bookmarks have gone too.  Though
> > there is the puzzle of the shell line in console 'bash-2.05b$'
> >
> I wonder if that means that you can't access your home directory because
> perms
> have been affected?  It's hard to see how that could have happened, but worth
> a thought.  Try this:
>
> Boot up, and when the lilo screen comes up hit 'Esc' and type 'linux 1'.
> This
> will bring up a text screen, and you are to all intents and purposes running
> as root.  See whether you can cd to your home directory and ls the contents.
>
> If you can, check ownership and perms with an 'ls -al' command.  That might
> give us a clue what's happening.
>
> >  /home is on a separate partition - now to all intents and purposes, I can
> > cope with the loss of apps, I can always reinstall
> > (firfox/thunderbird/StarOffice7) but the work which was saved there cannot
> > be seen at all.  So I'm unable to recover my work. I've installed a knoppix
> > disk - and again I can't see anything of my work folders (though to be
> > honest, I'm not sure I'm using it properly as a recovery tool).
> >
> > There is a small breadcrumb to all of this.  On the task bar, instead of
> > the StarOffice7 icon, its been replaced by the blue cogged wheel icon.
> > Clicking on this brings a KDE error which says:
> >
> > The desktop entry file
> > /home/chris/.kde/share/apps/kicker/staroffice7-4.desktop has no Type=...
> > entry.
> >
> > This is the only trace that the StarOffice app even existed!
> >
> So you are able to run kde?  While you are in single-user mode, in your home
> directory try 'mv .kde .kdeold'.  If kde configs are screwed up this often
> cures it.  You can get your bookmarks etc back from .kdeold, and .kde will be
> re-created when you restart kde.
>
> A few thoughts, anyway.
>
> Anne
> - --

Just to feedback...it still appears that the system is totally screwed up!  My
feeling is that *somehow*, when I did an MCC media update, my entire system
acted as if it were going through an upgrade - wiping out a lot of stuff.
Another example,  I'm using webmail today, as (also) all my KMail
settings/folders etc have been lost too.  Almost all of my system set up has
been affected.

Cheers again.

Chris.
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