[nylug-talk] Boot Failure after Attempted Ubuntu Upgrade

[wastrel]

Jim,

I'm afraid you've put too much faith in the packaging system.

Unfortunately, upgrading from Breezy (or Hoary) to Edgy is explicitly 
not supported -- you would have had to upgrade through Dapper first. 
((Hoary ->) Breezy -> Dapper -> Edgy).  Upgrades are only 
tested/supported from the "current" to the "new" release.  The 
subsequent jump back to Breezy wouldn't have helped matters.

At this point, your package system is pretty broken, and there's 
incompatible library and binary versions scattered all over the the 
drive.  Hopefully the filesystem is intact.

I recommend booting from a rescue CD and retrieving your data, then 
doing a fresh install.  Unless I'm badly mistaken, you're not going  to 
repair this mess.  If you've  got a separate /home partition the first 
step is not strictly necessary (unless you've got important data outside 
of /home.)

As to your questions, see below.

Good luck,

David
wastrel at nyip.net