Upgrade from 14.04 to 16.04.1 no desktop or network

Question

I upgraded and when I checked it had issues booting, so I rebooted, and I got the menu to select Ubuntu or memory checks etc and chose Ubuntu. it first booted to login for 14.04 and said last login July 2016??? So I rebooted and again got to login prompt that said 16.04.1 last loging todays date. so I was happier. But no desktop. I try and do apt-get update to finish update but got errors because my network was not up. SO now I guess I need help getting an ip address and internet. I tried to restart network and manager but errors. ifconfig reports no IP address, which should be 192.168.0.3. I tried adding ip but get error saying gatway not found. Not sure how to get the desktop to load or if it was installed. I thought I should get network working first, then finish or check updates. But I need help with networking please. Any help appreciated.

Update: I now have an IP address!! on eth0 and I was able to ssh in remotely. Still have errors when I run apt-get update. I see:

    norman@merlin:~$ sudo apt-get update
[sudo] password for norman: 
Err http://us.archive.ubuntu.com xenial InRelease

Err http://us.archive.ubuntu.com xenial-updates InRelease

Err http://us.archive.ubuntu.com xenial-backports InRelease

Err http://security.ubuntu.com xenial-security InRelease

Err http://archive.canonical.com xenial InRelease

Err http://us.archive.ubuntu.com xenial Release.gpg
  Temporary failure resolving 'us.archive.ubuntu.com'
Err http://us.archive.ubuntu.com xenial-updates Release.gpg
  Temporary failure resolving 'us.archive.ubuntu.com'
Err http://security.ubuntu.com xenial-security Release.gpg
  Temporary failure resolving 'security.ubuntu.com'
Err http://archive.canonical.com xenial Release.gpg
  Temporary failure resolving 'archive.canonical.com'
Err http://us.archive.ubuntu.com xenial-backports Release.gpg
  Temporary failure resolving 'us.archive.ubuntu.com'
Reading package lists... Done
W: Failed to fetch http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/xenial/InRelease  

W: Failed to fetch http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/xenial-updates/InRelease  

W: Failed to fetch http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/xenial-backports/InRelease  

Here is ifconfig results:

norman@merlin:~$ ifconfig
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:16:17:2d:3a:ce  
          inet addr:192.168.0.3  Bcast:192.168.0.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::216:17ff:fe2d:3ace/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:53 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:94 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:7389 (7.3 KB)  TX bytes:15389 (15.3 KB)

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:65536  Metric:1
          RX packets:1332 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1332 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:99664 (99.6 KB)  TX bytes:99664 (99.6 KB)

Answer 1

I wonder if you have more than one screen for your desktop? I do and seem to face these sorts of issues every time I install a new release...

I faced similar issues, but not the network ones... basically Unity had to be started after a basic X restart to give me a usable system (otherwise I only had a wallpaper and a mouse cursor!).

My recipe to fix this was to CTRLaltf1 to give me a TTY screen with command line where I can logon. Then a simple startx unity will get X started and gives me a basic, but unsatisfactory system. So <CTRL> C from the X terminal to leave that and you should fall back to the TTY terminal.

Follow that with sudo service lightdm start and I was good to go. Next use CTRLaltf7 to return from tty screen to my Unity session.

Liberal use of the "Suspend" function might stop this being too much of a pain, because it is far from ideal, more a workaround than a solution. Also, and I cannot explain this, it will not always work for me - seems to work about 3 times out of four. Another shortcoming is that with this desktop I'm unable to drag anything onto it, nor does Rubbish bin or any mounted drive show up there.

I was going to make my own post asking how I can get boot to incorporate the starting of unity and subsequent service start, but this was so close to my symptoms I thought I would share - hopefully it works for you?

Even more hopefully someone with a deeper understanding of X and lightdm screenmanager can identify a way forward for a proper solution which might make its way into updates soon!