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ubiquity package

How to repair a failed Ubuntu installation

Asked by William Pabon

I have Ubuntu 10.04 LTS running from an external drive connected via USB. It has been running pretty good for the past two years until I expanded the pc memory to 3 Gig. From that moment on, the USB ports run very slow, which make the OS (and pretty much everything) to run very sluggish. In dealing with this issue questions #188417 and #188801 were generated, but there's no answer yet. Additionally, the issue was brought in the Ubuntu forums, thread:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1931985

The data may seem to indicate that the problem is within the OS because other versions of Ubuntu (10.10 and 11.10) that I connect to a USB port on the same machine work at normal speed (see data on the questions and thread). I would like to find out if the OS has system files corrupted or if this is a bug within the OS.

For that reason I would like to know if Ubuntu has an OS repair tool that will check the system files without affecting or altering the data, applications and configurations that I may have on the disk. Something equivalent to the Windows System file checker tool (sfc), that examines the system files in the hard drive and compares them to the original installation disk, determines if they are of different version or corrupted, and replaces them accordingly.

Thanks for the help.

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actionparsnip (andrew-woodhead666) said : 		#1

i suggest you fsck the partitions to make sure they are healthy (no need to check swap). i also suggest you run a memtest so you know your RAM is healthy.
You will also benefit from installing the preload package as it should copy stuff preemptively to RAM and can help.

If i were you I would think about using one of the newer releases, the drivers and kernel are much more recent and may help. You could clean install Precise which is released in April and is in Beta1 now and you may get a smoother OS.

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William Pabon (williepabon) said : 		#2

Andrew:
I need help in using fsck. I read the man help and it seems like complicated for my knowledge. How do I configure the command to check and repair the partition without affecting my data, applications and configurations? I only know, that in order to do the command the drive to be checked has to be unmounted.

I already did a thorough RAM test and they are OK.

Yes, I'been considering changing to a newer release, but 10.04 (I like 10.10 very much) is the one with Long Term Support which is important for me. If I upgrade, it can't be a clean install because I don't want to loose my data and applications.

Thanks in advance for your help in using fsck.
wp

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Sam_ (and-sam) said : 		#3

> Long Term Support which is important for me

Precise is LTS with five year support.
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PrecisePangolin/ReleaseSchedule

> If I upgrade, it can't be a clean install because I don't want to loose my data and applications

Well, don't you make backups? What happens when there is any hardware failure?

With a separate /home partition a new installation is easy-peasy while it keeps user data and config files.

> help in using fsck
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SystemAdministration/Fsck
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/TestingStorageMedia

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William Pabon (williepabon) said : 		#4

Sam:
Thanks for answering. Unfortunaley, when I did my first installation with Ubuntu 10.04 I had no knowledge about doing a separate partition for the /home folder. So, I have only one partition for the whole thing ( boot, home, etc) and backups for the whole thing. Is it possible to do a clean install with the new OS (ie 12.04) and restore the home folder from my backup of 10.04? thanks again.
wp

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Chris (fabricator4) said : 		#5

You can do a clean install while manually specifying partitions, but tell it NOT to format the partitions in the advanced partition tool. This will give you a clean install and retain your data in /home/username but any programs that you installed after the initial installation will need to be re-installed. In most cases the program configurations will be kept, since they areusually in dot files in /home/username as well.

Before doing any installation regardless of whether you are formatting, or before any partition table changes, it's highly advisable to do backups. You probably won't need the backups and usually everything is fine, but launchpad and the forums get flooded with help requests from people who didn't do backups and had an install or upgrade fail for them due to unforeseen circumstances. If the worst happens, the best help you can have is that backup.

Chris

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