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I've installed Ubuntu 16.04 and effectively lost control of my computer which worked just fine under Ubuntu 14.04. I just need a simple command line instruction(s) so I can save my files on my 2tb backup drive, reformat my hard drive and start all over again. Even though I don't want to use it I've even lost access to the partitions with Windows 7 on them.

BobT
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    Ehm. This does not really make sense to me. "and effectively lost control of my computer " Like what? Lost your admin password? If so reset it. Messed with chmod? Use a live session. Either way: it is always possible to use a live dvd to boot into it, mount your disks and copy anything over from 1 partition to another. When using a live session you effectively own anything. – Rinzwind Jan 29 '17 at 16:56
  • I need help that goes beyond "reset your admin password" because I don't even know what that means much less how to do it. I don't know what a "live session" is either. In other words, I'm obviously looking for help in an area that isn't suitable for beginners. – BobT Jan 29 '17 at 17:36
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    But I bet you can use google. http://askubuntu.com/questions/24006/how-do-i-reset-a-lost-administrative-password "live session" Then how did you install Ubuntu? You do that from a dvd or usb and got a destop that way (before you installed). You don't need an area for beginners. All you need is know how to use google ;) – Rinzwind Jan 29 '17 at 17:54
  • @Rinzwind There's no need to be arrogant. A real beginner won't necessary know what to search for or even understand the instructions on the pages the come up (which always assume a basic level of proficiency). – DepressedDaniel Jan 29 '17 at 18:10
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    @DepressedDaniel Rinzwind isn't being arrogant. He's practically right - there's tons and tons of information out there on all the topics you mentioned. And please realize that you kind of have to take up responsibility for your computer, just as if you were to be responsible when you drive a car. – Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy Jan 29 '17 at 18:15
  • I installed 16.04 from Ubuntu 14.04's update function. It wouldn't finish because some linux-header package was missing. I tried again using a 16.04 iso on a cd which only works very slowly from the cd. It has also filled up my hard drive so I have no room to download new email now. I can't create space until I back up the 14.04 files/partition and I can't do that because I don't know how to become user1000! I need a simple command line or lines to do this. – BobT Jan 29 '17 at 18:56
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    It seems to me your situation is not one where you need to reset a password, chroot, or do much in the terminal. You want to copy files to an external drive but have problems with ownership or permissions. See Recovering user files with a Live CD. It might work from the installed system. If not, even a slow live CD should work for this. If that doesn't let you to do what you need to do, you can [edit] this with details of what you did and what happened, which should give us enough info to find a solution. (Even if we close this, it can then be reopened.) – Eliah Kagan Jan 29 '17 at 20:49

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Here's a few steps that you might want to do:

  1. Find a friend with a computer. Download Ubuntu 16.04 LTS installation *.iso file, and create bootable USB using an utility of your choice for creating installation USB. Buy your friend a beer if necessary.
  2. Insert the USB into the computer, boot and enter Boot Selection menu. Select to boot from USB. Usually this is F8 key, but it depends on your computer.

  3. Once your computer boots to USB, choose "Try Ubuntu", press Ctrl-Alt-F1.

  4. You will need to know which /dev/ device is your hard drive. Use lsblk -o NAME,FSTYPE for that. ext4 is Ubuntu , ntfs is Windows - general rule of thumb. Here's my output example - primary solid state drive /dev/sda has Ubuntu on /dev/sda1 , and secondary hard drive has whole bunch of Windows stuff:

    NAME   FSTYPE
sda    
└─sda1 ext4
sdb    
├─sdb1 ntfs
├─sdb2 vfat
├─sdb3 ntfs
├─sdb4 ntfs
├─sdb5 ntfs
└─sdb6 ext4

  5. Once you know which one is your Ubuntu, do the following (substitute /dev/sda1 with your actual paritition found in step 4)

    sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt

sudo mount --bind /dev /mnt/dev

sudo mount --bind /proc /mnt/proc

sudo mount --bind /sys /mnt/sys

  6. At this point you can either change password for your user to recover your system, or run rsync command to copy files somewhere. Take a look at this for reference if you choose to copy files:Copy file to External Hard Disk If you choose to change password, do 

    sudo passwd your_login_name
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Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy
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  • I seem to have a copy of 16.04 running now but off the CD and so very slow. Why it's there and not on the hard drive I don't know. At any rate, I can run Caja as root (sudo -i caja) but it can't see my 2T backup drive and says it can't handle Network access. Neither can Nautilus as root. However if I open Caja from the ubuntuMATE menu, it sees the drive but still won't copy to it because of permission errors presumably because I don't "own" some of the files on the partition I want to back up. – BobT Feb 01 '17 at 02:56
  • How can I load Caja or Nautilus as "user#1000"? – BobT Feb 01 '17 at 03:16