All general purpose OSes (Windows, MacOS, Linux) can be changed so that the system will no longer boot completely or will behave strangely. A corrupt or full system disk, broken software packages, misconfiguration, and many other situations can cause this. Read on to find how you can use FocusRx
and other tools to recover a system.
Please read the disclaimer before proceeding. We review and update guided solutions like this regularly. If you have suggestions or requests, please write support@kfocus.org.
Before you proceed, first determine if this is actually a system issue. If your system boots fine, this is likely an application issue. We recommend you first visit the Focus Support page and search for a topic using the list or the search box. These are almost always more current and correct for your hardware than HOWTOs or forum posts you might find on the web. You should continue here only if your system does not completely boot or if you are getting warnings about missing dependencies or libraries.
Recovering an installation may be preferable because applications, settings, and other data will not need to be restored. However, like with all OSes, a badly broken system can take hours to recover and still be problematic. While a Clean Install requires recovery of data, it usually takes well under 30 minutes and can solve issues you do not have time to research or understand. For these reasons, we recommend you always keep a clean installation as an alternative and limit the time you dedicate to recovery efforts.
Any system work always has inherent risks. Mistakes happen, and in this context, that can mean data loss. It is important, therefore, to keep your data safe using a backup solution on an external disk. See the Backup Guided Solution to save your data before proceeding if possible.
Sometimes the system will boot but drop to a BusyBox Shell as shown below.
This frequently results from a corrupt filesystem, as detailed by this Ask Ubuntu ticket. The solution is to enter the command exit
into the shell to report the corrupt filesystem. You may then repair it using fsck <device-file>
as shown below.
After the filesystem repair is complete, type in reboot
or exit
to reboot the system. If the repair was good (which it usually is), the system should now boot normally.
Focus systems have a recovery tool called FocusRx
which can identify and resolve many issues:
/boot
partition is too full and fix itYou can run FocusRx as shown below.
Advanced Options
to select a different kernel if available.Startup Menu > Kubuntu Focus > FocusRx
.[ctrl][alt][f2]
to get a virtual terminal. Sign in as your user and then enter focusrx -f
.Please Download the ISO Disk Image and create a bootable, live USB. Then return here to proceed.
Boot using the USB stick as shown below.
F2
repeatedly on your keyboard to enter the BIOS.Boot Manager
from the options on the screen, using either the touchpad or your cursor keys.Start Kubuntu
from the boot menu.Try Kubuntu
from the graphical prompt.1. Use the live USB procedure (above) to boot into the Try Kubuntu mode. Then open a Konsole terminal and enter the lines as shown below.
2a. ENCRYPTED DRIVE ONLY: Decrypt the drive and mount the root filesystem.
2b. UNENCRYPTED DRIVE ONLY: Mount the root filesystem.
3. Back up your data.
If you haven’t yet backed up your data, please do so NOW! See the Take a Snapshot with USB Drive to save your important files to a separate drive. You can find your user data under /mnt/home/
. While each subsequent step below is usually safe, each brings additional risk because of an unknown system state or human error. Better safe than sorry.
4a. ENCRYPTED DRIVE ONLY: Mount the boot
and boot/efi
filesystems.
4b. UNENCRYPTED DRIVE ONLY: Mount the boot/efi
filesystem.
5. Prepare and use chroot
.
6. Once the system has successfully switched to chroot
mode, you may run FocusRx
(above) to fix packages and other common issues.
7. Here are a few more steps you might try if FocusRx does not solve the problem:
sudo apt update && sudo apt full-upgrade
(this is also done by FocusRx).apt
or aptitude
to inspect, install, or uninstall packages that may have caused the problem; GUI tools like Discover or Muon are not available. The aptitude
interface will run in a terminal and can be navigated using the keyboard.See this article for additional details on using chroot
.
8. When you are finished fixing the chroot environment, enter exit
into terminal. Close the terminal and restart. If the repairs worked, the system should start as normal.
Content will be added as needed.
This is a partial revision history. See the git
repository for all entries.
2022-10-20 9fa483fa
Clarify chroot section2022-07-06 7c6e13f5
update for 22.04 images2022-01-22 97da7ffe
Reference USB snapshot in backup article2021-10-10 5728326e
Reformat to 2-column2021-09-22 dc862884
Update link and headline colors2021-08-23 681261b4
Review and update codeblocks2021-08-22 c1974de6
Add CHROOT Recovery Steps2021-08-22 c1974de6
Add USB Drive Snapshot2021-08-19 20a66a1c
Add Busybox Shell Recovery2021-08-05 c25e459e
Fix Grammar Mistakes2021-07-23 9e6157ce
Add FocusRx Direction2021-05-17 c75588e9
First publicationWe try hard to provide a useful solution validated by professionals. However, we cannot anticipate every situation, and therefore cannot guarantee this procedure will work for your needs. Always backup your data and test the solution to determine the correct procedure for you.
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