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I was upgrading my OS to the Ubuntu 16.04 LTS and it got stuck while upgrading over night, so I forced quit the process and rebooted. Now I'm getting a black screen to login to. There I apparently need to put in two things my password and before something else, but I don't know what. Does somebody know what I mean? I don't even know what'll happen after that, but probably I need to login first.

login screen that it is showing me picture regarding response to comment

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  • Regarding login dialog: Value 1 = Username & Value 2 = Password
    – dufte
    May 11, 2016 at 8:33
  • Press Ctrl + Alt + F1, is there a text login prompt?
    – Bracken
    May 11, 2016 at 8:35
  • Regarding the following problem: it seems like your system is no longer showing the default login which is lightdm in most cases. After login to the black screen via user & password you could test what happens if you manually restart the lightdm service via 'sudo service lightdm restart'. In best case it leads you to the old known login screen
    – dufte
    May 11, 2016 at 8:36
  • Thanks for the quick response! I put in username and password and this showed up. (see the picture) what could I do next? Thanks for your help
    – Ansgar
    May 11, 2016 at 9:25
  • 1
    Please include the output of sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -f ubuntu-desktop in your question (see How do I save terminal output to a file? and How do I get information from the logs on my computer when I only have access to the command line? for help with that).
    – David Foerster
    May 11, 2016 at 12:06

1 Answer 1

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Two words : "FRESH INSTALL". It's the safest thing to do. Upgrading to a newer version of ubuntu always has problems. The best thing to do is to have a separate partition for /home. Follow this guide to do that when installing ubuntu from a scratch:

http://www.psychocats.net/ubuntu/installseparatehome

If you've already installed ubuntu and wanna make a separate partition for home then :

http://psychocats.net/ubuntu/separatehome

Next time a never ubuntu distro comes out but you wanna preserve all your files and settings from the previous installation :

  1. In the type of installation choose "Something else".

  2. Delete the previous / partition and also delete any /boot or swap partition if any.

  3. Next follow the aforementioned guide except do not delete the existing /home partition. Click on the /home partition and click change/edit button. It should be set to "do not use". Change it and set the type as ext4 and mount point as /home.

  4. In the user info page of installation set the username to EXACTLY THE SAME AS YOUR PREVIOUS USERNAME(and don't even change the case).

Once the installation is over you'll have to re-install all of your previous programs BUT your settings and preferences will have been saved so not much hassle. All the apps after re-installation will be they way they were before the new os installation. Oh and if you're an amd64 user, set the boot mode to CSM OS cuz UEFI OS installlation fails for all flavours of ubuntu 16.04.

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  • Thank you for your answer! Is there also a way of going back, like having my old OS back? (14.04)
    – Ansgar
    May 11, 2016 at 10:43
  • Definitely. Just follow the exact same procedure but with 14.04 live usb. :) But 14.04 lacks support for many latest apps and steam also has issues with 14.04. I would recommend you to go for 16.04. :)
    – ShuaibKunji
    May 12, 2016 at 7:26
  • Alright, is 16.04 even stable yet? After I made the mistake of attempting to upgrade I read somewhere that the stable version is only coming out in August. And when I install either version with the live usb, how can I keep/get back my data from before?!
    – Ansgar
    May 14, 2016 at 8:06
  • Boot from the live usb and select the try ubuntu option. Now open file explorer and you should find your previous partions mounted as external devices. Now just find your /home and copy whatever you need to an external hdd or something
    – ShuaibKunji
    May 14, 2016 at 10:42

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