9.2 to 10CE errors

[Guest mrt]

Hey everyone,

 

I've run into some problems with upgrading from 9.2 to 10CE. I was hoping I could get some help to rectify the situation! At this point, I can't seem to "log in" to any of my accounts. I was upgrading the kernel through the ctrl-alt-f5 terminal and I left it unattended for too long (because the process didn't do anything for 20+ minutes so I decided it probably needed to take longer and when I came back after two hours or so, I was back at a login prompt). Trying to login with my user account or root doesn't work. So I went back to ctrl-alt-f7/xwindows and I tried to edit the password file or use the configuration utilities to edit my user logins. But this didn't work because it would just give me a pop up that said su returned an error

 

Right now, my computer is sitting in xwindows. I'm afraid to restart it because I might not be able to ever get back into the computer. So I'm wondering two things:

1) is there a way to rectify this installation? if not then I'l lhave to reinstall, but

2) is there a way to protect my files even though I have to reinstall? I have in this computer three drives. The first drive has my / and /home mount points, but my other two drives are labeled as /drive1 and /drive2. All my important files are on /drive1 and /drive2. Can I just clean out my first drive and do the installation there without affecting the other two drives?

 

I am a SUPER-newbie so I'm somewhat hesitant to reinstall the computer. Last time when I installed the computer, it took a good half week for Steve Scrimpshire

and I to get Mandrake to run with nvidia, my ethernet, and various other things that kept on breaking down. But if this is my only solution, then can someone give me some tips to help me through the process?

 

Thanks so much guys! really appreciate this!

 

T

[Ixthusdan]

There are no guarantees that a new install will be less troublesome than your previous experience. I have never had a good experience using the upgrade option with Mandrake. To answer your question specifically, a new install will only write on the partitions that you allow it to. In order to perform an install, / and any directories associated with it in the partition will be over-written. If you have /home seperate, then it will not be, unless you tell Mandrake to do it. Notice that I am talking about partitions and not hard drives. It is always best to install linux over several partitions. I have /, /usr, /home, and swap all seperate just for the purpose of preserving data when I install a new version. I had CE and installed, not upgraded, OE. Just another note, a kernel upgrade is not the same thing as a system upgrade. I'm not really sure from your description which you were doing.