Kubuntu 12.04 upgrade to 14.04 froze at 59% i8kutils

I haven't been on much in a long time because I haven't had many problems. With mature distros such as Mint and Kubuntu, things mostly just work.

I bought a new Dell A860, must have been in late 2009 based on file properties in Windows Vista. I used it several years, then it had problems so I called Dell on my free service plan, and they put in a new keyboard and fan.

Eventually, one day it would not do anything when I turned it on. No lights. No fan. No sound of any kind. I took it back to the States and my SIL looked at it. Turns out something in the new keyboard caused complete death in the machine. He bought a Chinese keyboard at a modest price and it works now.

I updated sda5, which had Kubuntu 12.04 to latest status. Then, clicked on upgrade to 14.04. It downloaded all night, then started install which went on for hours. It froze solid at 59%, showing installing i8kutils or something very close. I left it an hour to be sure.

Now, it will not boot up on any Recovery option. Even fsck wants to lock up.

The first bit of good news is, I have a parallel distro on sda7, also Kubuntu 12.04 and can boot there. I did this based on something that happened years ago, and was able to move files across the HD partitions to fix the failed installation. So, I can access anything I wish on the sda5 installation.

The second bit of good news is over the year this was in the States, I got used to anything missing on this machine.

I am bringing sda7 up to the latest updates, but am sure at this time I am not going to do a distro upgrade, heh, heh.

I could just install a new distro in the partition. But, that doesn't seem to be very 'Linux' to me. :D

IF anyone has any ideas how to deal with a frozen distro upgrade, I am willing to give it a shot. If not, I may just let it sit there and think a lot.

Sometimes problems that seem complex are not.

Thanks for any tips, though not wishing to make work, I tend to like links to other similar fixable problems.

I am starting to shop around for larger injectors. What experience has everyone had with EV14 based injectors such as Injector Dynamics or Deatschwerks?

As far as I know the engine computers do not use Linux. So, it might be more beneficial if you ask that question on a car board. Traffic on this board is low. Years ago, with high traffic, there would have been a car guru present to answer your question, but not any more. Besides, it would be considered off-topic.

I left that computer alone all these 11 months in hopes of finding a solution. Recently, I was thinking about it and realized there must be a way to see what is happening when it freezes during boot-up.

I did a search for verbose boot and no luck. I blundered around and discovered if you hit 'e' on the Grub menu, then change the words 'quiet splash' to 'text' you get the whole activity as used to be years ago before they got fancy.

Just before it froze, it sent out a message of duplicate ACPI video VGA drivers, and told how to eliminate it. Go into /etc/default/Grub and in a file change to "video.allow_duplicates=1"

I did that and the duplicates message went away. But, it still froze one line later, with the message [drm] Initialized i915 1.6.0 20080370 for 0000:00:00 on minor 0. (One digit illegible in my handwriting, sorry.)

A search showed a lot of people have that error message linked with Kubuntu 14.04. Not sure if that is the only place it happens, though.

Apparently i915 is an Intel driver of some sort, and since that partition is broken, I can't find out where it belongs or should be stored. This seems to be connected by search engines to Kubuntu 14.04. Still, no luck and no solution found so far. I have Kubuntu 14.04.03 on HD and may try it. But, first, I may try letting the distro upgrade for 12.04 to 14.04 run and see if it has the same error.

One person suggested that a BIOS update might fix it. I had various problems with my Dell Vostro A860 laptop trying to install
BIOS data with no luck, but wasn't sure it was even an upgrade because different sources listed different numbers.

Anyway, the important thing I learned, and I have no idea why I didn't know it using Linux since 1999 I did not know it, was to change quiet splash to text in the Grub menu to see everything that happens during boot, but especially when it freezes.

I fixed a Mandriva laptop in Mexico City when you could still access and edit the init files by finding out which line failed and remarking it. I was working with LyX on a book of my letters from the Army written back in 1964-66. Now, they have that compiled thing.
Now, if I could just find out where i915 belongs... Maybe it's simply not there and needs to be.

I did go through that partition from sda7 with kdesudo dolphin and found important files which I moved to a 32 GB flash memory so I have nothing in that partition which I will miss. I may give it one more try, trying to find i915 and put it where it goes. I don't need that partition but I hate to give up when there may be a solution. I have always felt that in LInux one can almost always fix it, IF YOU HAD THE KNOWLEDGE.

After some thought, I concluded I had nothing to lose. The Dell computer had a problem where it intermittently blanked the video during booting. When I was back in the States in October, my Son-in-law learned if it did that it could be tripped on by rapidly repeating the switch, hold until it shuts off then start it again.

So, I decided to go ahead and do the distro upgrade on sda7. This time it ran perfectly, and actually worked. But, to my surprise, the video blanking problem is gone. My theory is that the sda5 partition had a bad cluster which did not always read correctly, and the upgrade moved the boot file to sda7 which is not bad.

If you see a problem with this theory, please let me know. At this time, I consider the dell usable with one copy of Kubuntu 14 working okay. I don't know if intermittent clusters on sda5 is why the upgrade failed, but it certainly is a possibility.

Next trip to the States, I will try to get a new HD for this machine, since I think even one bad cluster on a HD means the whole thing is suspect. I believe I have an external case here, so can do a dd from the existing HD and have it all, including the Vista partition.

Now, I must see if I can do a SOLVED on this board. I forget.