I’d say Live-CD/USB and use the recovery mode to fix GRUB. Grub has to appear so thet’s the first issue. If you’re lucky it’s the only one and you can skip the more complicated steps.
Alright, where do I find the recovery mode exactly? What am I looking for here? The live USB only lists different ways to try or install the distro, don’t see any recovery modes listed anywhere in its grub thingy.
https://www.system-rescue.org/disk-partitioning/Repairing-a-damaged-Grub/
I would also suggest, if you get grub back, to choose the 2nd kernel version in the list. The latest/top one will probably put you back to your broken state.
Just to clarify. You system is not bricked. Bricked means that it can’t boot anything. It sounds like the update is not working correctly (eg the kernel is not fully loading).
You have two options:
- Try to repair the current broken install (can be difficult depending on skill level)
- Backup your data and “nuke’n’pave”, eg re-install it all.
Both options require a live USB with your distro on it (preferably the new version).
I really hope so man, it’d really suck if the thing died on me like this. Alright I’m gonna try to sort out the USB thing.
I’d rather repair it as it’s my main system, so I definitely don’t wanna lose everything on it. Although the drive is encrypted, is that gonna be a problem for me? How do I go about all of this exactly?
Good clarification and advice.
There are so many considerations when “repairing” an installation, that I would definitely suggest a reinstall here.
You mention timeshift, did you restore to the working snapshot after selecting it in grub, then reboot AGAIN?
Booting a snapshot, does not restore from it. When booting a snapshot from grub, you need to open timeshift, restore the snapshot, then boot up a second time (this time without selecting it in grub).
Otherwise, you didn’t really restore it, you just booted into it, and if you re-attempted the broken update, messed the snapshot up, too (leaving you with no working snapshot to go back to).
If you have backups, reinstall.
If you don’t, boot a “live CD” USB stick and make a backup, then reinstall.
Then think about how this happened and how to avoid it in the future:
I tried updating Kubuntu to the newest version, and it got screwed up the first time,
Something i recently learned:
Your live usb does not need to be the same distro as your main. (And in retrospect that makes total sense but i never realized)
My arch install broke and could not get timeshift to roll back using the arch live usb. But a ubuntu-desktop live usb worked flawlessly.
Yes, for data recovery you really just need something to access the drives.
It’s been awhile, but I believe the correct process here is to boot with a live USB and repair your distro from there.
I think the tool is called ‘boot-repair’ for Ubuntu distros.
