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After breaking Ubuntu I decided to reinstall Ubuntu, since I had heard it is quite simple with a live CD/USB, all you need to do is select "Something Else", then not select the "Format Partition" check box so that /home is safe. When I actually tried to do this however, I get a dialog box like this:

Error Box

This comes up a couple of seconds after it asks what time zone I'm in. And, as if it wasn't bad enough, I now can't boot Ubuntu, because I only get a purple screen. The Live USB was an ISO that I downloaded as a torrent from the website and claims to install Ubuntu 14.04.02 (x64 bit)

Research:

There is a bug report on launch pad, but I don't know what partman-target is, and I really don't want to install the Ubuntu ISO again (especially with my internet), because it may not actually fix the error.

A second bug report exists with no real leads (unless I want to install Arch Linux like the 15th comment suggests) so I still can't find any real solutions, especially outside launch pad.

On the Ubuntu Forums there is a comprehensive guide on installing Ubuntu without losing data, but mentions nothing about the error, so is only useful considering my lackluster steps in the introduction

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  • was your / installed on a different partition then your /home in your original set-up?
    – Fabby
    Jun 30, 2015 at 8:59
  • @Fabby Nope, all of Ubuntu is installed on the same partition (apart from swap space and boot) Jun 30, 2015 at 9:16
  • Did you try to remove the unnecessary files manually?
    – user23013
    Jun 30, 2015 at 11:27
  • @user23013 Unnecessary files? Would that be directories like /usr, /etc, or would that be /home? I'm not sure what you mean by "unnecessary files" Jun 30, 2015 at 12:17
  • A workaround I could suggest is that you shrink the partition in question, and then create a new partition, install the Ubuntu on it. Then mount the previous partition as your home, after installation by modifying your fstab. Then you could free up space on the home partition by deleting the old ubuntu installation. Jul 4, 2015 at 7:46

2 Answers 2

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After a discussion with OP, a working solution was found. Just boot into a live system, open a terminal and type:

sudo e2fsck -f -C 0 /dev/sdxy

where sdxy is the corresponding partition. This should solve the issue.

Note : e2fsck works on Linux ext2/ext3/ext4 file systems. If you have a different file system, execute sudo fsck /dev/sdxy -f instead.

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If you would have followed this advice it would have been as simple as formatting / and keeping /home

The easiest thing to do now, would be to actually reinstall and partition at a minimum: /, swap and /home. That way your computer will be future-proof against any more re-installs. The best you could do is follow this advice from What's a good back-up strategy for 1 PC

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