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I was in the middle of an upgrade when I accidentaly pressed ctrl+c. I can no longer open a terminal and I cannot shut down with a GUI

io flag

As the title says I borked an upgrade. It paused for a moment to ask me something about gnome settings, and I pressed "D" for details, and then ctrl+c to try and get out of the output it gave.

Now I cannot open a terminal, nor can I shutdown through the GUI. Firefox is working fin though obviously. Alt+F2 also works, or at least the command window pops up

*What Should I do to keep my system working, and to start up the upgrade again?

**In my haste I forgot that I have a recent back to restore to and do the upgrade again after restore. I will try that route and update here for posterity.

Final Update

Thanks for the help everyone. I've decided to call in the firing squad.

I formatted the drive with my laptop, and then attempted a fresh install of 18.04 so that I could recover my settings and documents with the Deja Dup backup I made before starting the upgrade.

This introduced another error where I'm stuck in TTY after boot. There will be yet another post about that. Please follow me on this cortisol-fueled adventure of the failed upgrade.

Cheers.

David avatar
cn flag
Reinstall from scratch with the new version is what I would be doing at this point.
Soren A avatar
mx flag
Log in in the console (CTRL-Alt-F2) There might be messages on login directing you on what to do. Follow them. IF no directions are given try running `sudo do-release-upgrade` again.
guiverc avatar
cn flag
You weren't clear on where the upgrade was up to.. I gather it was installing packages given your description, but I'd likely still view the sources (I'd assume they'll point to *focal* given your tags imply to me you're in a *release-upgrade* from 18.04 to 20.04). Assuming sources look good, I'd `sudo apt full-upgrade` to see if it continues.. I'd hope for clues from the messages; but you may have issues as the other process was killed; it may be locking the upgrade from occurring.. but I'd base what I'd do on details I can see & had seen (ie. where in the upgrade cycle it was likely up to)
J.Tho avatar
io flag
I've calmed down a bit now, and I realize that I am actually using 20.04 now, although I do not have permission to shutdown, nor open the file explorer or terminals. I cannot input commands and am afraid to restart. I believe it was up to installing the new Gnome settings(?), since that is what caused this whole issue.
guiverc avatar
cn flag
My prior comment was assuming you can login via a text terminal as @SorenA suggested. You can always safely shutdown using SysRq commands to direct to the kernel (use that rather than using power-off of pulling cable; ie. a REISUB to reboot is much safer. But try what was suggested from terminal
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