"Catastrophic" crashing of Linux Mint? Reinstalling is a snap, and preserves mostly everything.

[Overmind One]

Okay, tonight I was tweaking around my system trying to install PCSX2 (a PSX emulator for Linux). For some reason, it uninstalled Cinnamon and lots of other stuff, and when I rebooted I only had a cursor and nothing else. I tried to get to the other desktop from the Login screen, and still nothing. But wait...I have been here before. This is what you do:

Grab yourself a fresh copy of Mint 17 (even the latest which is Rebecca), and burn to disk or make a USB mountable using Rufus on Windows or something similar.

• Start the Mint install.
• When you are asked for the username, use the SAME username you had before. Use the SAME password as you used before. If you do not, you will be screwed.
• When the location for your install comes up, choose to make your own choices ("something else")
• Find your ext4 partition where Mint is already installed, and click Change. Make the mount point "/"
• Click install, and the installer will tell you it is going to format the Swap partition. This is perfectly okay.
• The next message will say something about deleting the /bin, /usr, /etc...let it do that. You WILL lose your Linux apps in this process.
• Continue the install...

When you get done installing, log in. You will notice that your wallpaper and files are exactly where you left them. But wait...you have lost your apps! Not to worry. When you reinstall them, their settings will be intact after re-installing. You will find that Firefox has remembered all your bookmarks and even stored passwords and usernames AND add-ons. If you re-install Chrome, however, you will see that you have lost your stuff unless you stored them as synced. . If you are using Evolution, you will find all your mail and settings intact.

The moral of the story here is backing up. If I had backed up my package list, I would have been able to keep all my apps too. I will post how to do that when I figure it out.

 

[Bluce Ree]

Or, hit "CTRL-ALT F1" to change the display to the tty1 console, log in at the command line and type "apt-get install cinnamon" to install from the repository, all without rebooting or reinstalling the entire distro and wiping out installed packages.

If the command results in "cinnamon is already the newest version.", it means the package is there but has been corrupted. In that case, the following two commands in this order will remove and reinstall cinnamon:

# sudo apt-get remove cinnamon (remove cinnamon)

# sudo apt-get install cinnamon (reinstall cinnamon)

 

[Overmind One]

Or, hit "CTRL-ALT F1" to change the display to the tty1 console, log in at the command line and type "apt-get install cinnamon" to install from the repository, all without rebooting or reinstalling the entire distro and wiping out installed packages.

If the command results in "cinnamon is already the newest version.", it means the package is there but has been corrupted. In that case, the following two commands in this order will remove and reinstall cinnamon:

# sudo apt-get remove cinnamon (remove cinnamon)

# sudo apt-get install cinnamon (reinstall cinnamon)

That PCSX had uninstalled lots more than just Cinnamon. I needed to reinstall anyway. BTW, Rebecca is great! it has several new features and great theme adjustments like blue folders! It seems faster too.

 

[Bluce Ree]

That PCSX had uninstalled lots more than just Cinnamon. I needed to reinstall anyway. BTW, Rebecca is great! it has several new features and great theme adjustments like blue folders! It seems faster too.

Rebecca is so yesterday! I'm on Rafaela.

 

[Overmind One]

Rebecca is so yesterday! I'm on Rafaela.

Wait....so am I!

 

[Gatefan1976]

take your sad cyber-porn habits elsewhere lads, this is a clean site................

 

[Overmind One]

take your sad cyber-porn habits elsewhere lads, this is a clean site................

Yeah, we went through Qiana, and now we have pulled a train on Rebecca and we are both doing Rafaela at the same time! Hey, we can't be sexually progressive?

 

[Overmind One]

BTW, for anyone who does not know how to check which release their Linux Ubuntu or Mint is, open up a terminal and type:

lsb_release -a

The output should be something like:

No LSB modules are available. (this is okay, ignore it)
Distributor ID: LinuxMint
Description: Linux Mint 17.2 Rafaela
Release: 17.2
Codename: rafaela

 

[Gatefan1976]

Yeah, we went through Qiana, and now we have pulled a train on Rebecca and we are both doing Rafaela at the same time! Hey, we can't be sexually progressive?

Hey, to each their own, I just don't wanna see it

 

[Tripler]

I'm still with Qiana . I thinks she's hot so I'm gonna stay with her for now ... Awesome inner workings once you get her wide open ...

 

[Overmind One]

After some rather lengthy research, I find that there is no way to fully export your package lists and installed software. You can backup the PPA repositories, but you cannot also backup all of the current dependencies. So, installs of stuff like Truecrypt and VMware Workstation and other stuff found in the Software Center cannot be backed up. You can create an installed software list, but the output is not really helpful.

So, the best backup is a full backup. I prefer using Clonezilla (it's in the repository), but you can use any backup solution you want.