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I completely messed up my things, I was using ubuntu 14.10, yesterday I was updating it and during the installation my laptop got switched of as it ran out of battery and then I do not know what exactly happened, now when I switch it on all I get is a black screen with cursor blinking there, I am not that good with softwares as I am a medical student and have many important file there which I definitely do not want to loose so please let me know if this can be fixed or not I do not want to loose my things there... And by reading many post I tried doing some things on my own so I used:

Ctrl+Alt+F1

and then on my black screen I this little explanation about ubuntu there help site and then this error:

E: Error: BrokenCount > Orun-parts: /etc/update-motd.d/90-updates-available exited with return code 255

Please help:(

Braiam
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user307318
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  • What is your graphics card? can you connect to internet without screen in Ctrl+ Alt +F2 ? –  Jul 20 '14 at 04:57
  • Hey thanks for you comment and time, well no I can not and I did how one of the user directed me to do in his answer below and after that please read my latest comment below for my current situation. – user307318 Jul 20 '14 at 07:02

1 Answers1

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Such a situation can come if the installation is stopped midway. Good news is that all your files are safe there. Also, during update all the required files were already downloaded to your laptop (otherwise installation would not have started.)

So, now you just need to complete the installation process. First, Ctrl+Alt+F1 (or F2, f3, f4 anyone is fine.) Then you would reach the linux console. Login with your username and password there. Then issue the following command:
sudo dpkg --configure -a

This should complete your update and your system should be back up after a reboot. If the above gives errors of broken packages, issue the below command:
sudo apt-get install -f

And then run the above command again.

P.S: Did you really mean Ubuntu 14.10 ? That's an alpha-release software, NOT meant to be used for daily use. You must switch to 14.04 as soon as possible.

Ashish
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  • Hey Ashish, thanks for the support and I will surely do that once my system is up, so I ran, those commands that you wrote and after everything it says, errors were encountered while processing: Cgmanager Systemd-shim Libpam-system:amd64 Indicator-datetime Unity-contrôlée-centre Udisks2 Gvfs-daemons Pulseacaudio Gvfs-backends Indicator-sound Libcanvrra-pulse:amd64 Gvfs:amd64 Python3-checkbox-ng Python3-checkbox-support Checkbox-ng Gvfs-fuse Deja-dup-backend-gvfs Checkbox-ng-service Brasero Nautilus Nautilus-sendto Gnome-sudoku. Please help. – user307318 Jul 20 '14 at 06:44
  • Hey new update, now it says: dpkg: error processing package gnome-sudoku (configure): package is in very bad inconsistent state: you should reinstall it before attempting configuration. Then it says errors were encountered while processing: gnome-sudoku – user307318 Jul 20 '14 at 06:56
  • Just wondering how did this happen after the 1st one? Anyways, gnome-sudoku is just a game. You could as well sudo apt-get remove gnome-sudoku and sudo apt-get install -f Then reboot and check if you get a login prompt. – Ashish Jul 20 '14 at 07:11
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    Hey it's not getting removed it says: dpkg: error processing package gnome sudoku (--remove): package is in a very bad inconsistent state; you should reinstall it before attempting a removal Errors were encountered while processing: gnome-sudoku E: sub-process /user/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1). – user307318 Jul 20 '14 at 08:17
  • Then remove the broken package via the following command:

    sudo dpkg --remove --force-remove-reinstreq gnome-sudoku

    Then reboot and update.

     – Ashish Jul 20 '14 at 12:17
  • Hey Ashish first of all a big thanks to you, I don't know it was big problem or small but for me it was too important to have this system back as it contains some very important data which I collected over years and now the system is working again and it's all because of you so thanks a lot. Now one more problem, my system is not connecting to Internet and stuff so without that I can not update anything and everything is very slow no sound in videos nothings so please help. And thanks a lot once again for everything and for your time. – user307318 Jul 20 '14 at 13:54
  • Welcome! Kindly mark the answer as accepted if it helped. This would help other users having same problem as yours. And as said earlier, intall 14.04 after taking a backup of your files. Your other problems should be gone then. – Ashish Jul 20 '14 at 14:09
  • Hey sorry for that previous problem actually everything is working fine I got so excited that I forgot to update so I updated it and everything is perfect, thanks a lot for everything:) – user307318 Jul 20 '14 at 14:25
  • This answer worked for me but i used f3 – humphrey Jan 01 '17 at 14:38
  • Probably you will need an apt-get update && apt-get upgrade after you have internet of course. – Pablo Bianchi Apr 01 '17 at 02:20