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I make a mistake today.

The incident happens when I opened my computer, open Vivaldi, and after all tabs are loaded, I update my Linux distro.

Unfortunately, when it updates the kernel, it got lagged, really lagged. My CPU load goes up to 14,56 (which is also the PB of CPU load of my computer). I barely can move my mouse. I decided to Ctrl-C, nothing happened. Then I decided to turn off my computer by pressing the power button once, nothing happened. Then I hold the power button for a few seconds, don't really hesitate or think of anything.

When I start my computer again, it goes to the GRUB. I realized that the GRUB load is slower than usual, but I don't really think of anything. When I choose the 'Alter Linux' option (which is the name of my distro), the GRUB says that it cannot find the kernel and thus it cannot boot. At this point it's pretty fucked up.

2 lessons that I have learned after this incident:
1. Turn off every single other window (except the Update window) when you are going to update.
2. Never turn off the computer while it's still updating, especially if there is kernel update in it.

(Luckily, I have an old version of the distro burned to a Kingston USB, so I can run the live environment of the distro from the USB, and then install another distro to that USB)

Comments
  • 0
    Edit: A pretty worse thing is that the distro contains my personal website's code, and I have not uploaded it to GitHub. So now I have to build another personal site.
  • -1
    You can probably fix grub, and at least you can save your shitty website.
  • 0
    Can't you use the live environment to recover the website's code?
  • 4
    Chrooting into the distribution on your harddisk and reinstalling the kernel (and possibly reconfiguring grub) should fix it without reinstall as well.

    As your hard drive volume should not touched (besides a missing kernel / defect grub configuration) you should be able to copy all data from the disk, if you choose to reinstall.
  • 3
    How stupid can one be to power off a PC during system update? I wonder
  • 0
    @iiii hey, some people do some stupid stuff while they are hungry, *has flashback to the time windows was updating and i was 13 and turned off the computer*
  • 3
    Definitely do not interrupt updates, especially firmware and kernel. If you do, you’re gonna have a bad time.

    As mentioned above, your data is not lost; you can chroot or simply mount from another runtime and perform a backup from there.

    Also, it is very likely possible to fix your grub. Inspect /boot and add whatever files are missing/incorrect, and update the grub config/menu to point to the new ones (if needed). You might be missing some kernel modules, too, depending on what the updates were. Those are a little trickier, but nothing a quick ddg search won’t explain.

    tl;dr:
    It didn’t cause permanent damage, but it’s still a painful lesson and learning experience you won’t soon forget. And if you learn to fix it, you won’t be scared anymore :)
  • 1
    @eternalrm you were 13. Equivalent to being stupid 😄
  • 0
    @iiii yea, but it was still scary enough when the computer just doing a boot cycle again and again, thankfully we had a totally legally acquired cd of windows
  • 2
    @Nanos And a Diesel generator! And a miniature nuclear plant!
  • 0
    @sbiewald a miniature one?, That can potentially fail, better just make a full one just in case and use that power to store in a giant battery, just in case the power supply for the while world goes down for some reason
  • 0
    @sbiewald a bicycle generator
  • 0
    @iiii nah, that would be completely unreasonable
  • 0
    You need to learn about backups. I routinely update kernel and shit in the background without closing any windows, no problems.

    But even if I had a problem, I would boot from the install USB stick, fire up Timeshift, and restore the last working system snapshot.

    I also would not lose my personal data because everything is backed up on external media as well as also present on my second computer.

    If you don't have a backup of your website, then it wasn't important. Otherwise, you would have a backup.
  • 0
    @Nanos Or just buy a laptop. That has its own UPS built in.
  • 0
    @Fast-Nop I definitely should. I already lost data on like 3 distros already.
  • 0
    @Nanos weak
  • 0
    @Nanos to be fair, i also dont have billions of dollars to build a nuclear power plant so.....
  • 0
    @NoOneCares WTF? I'd also check the hardware health. Memtest for the RAM, SMART data for the drives, mprime along with temperature monitoring for the cooling system, and visual inspection especially of the capacitors in PSU and mainboard if it's not a laptop.

    In my previous PC, I had sporadic crashes during the full disk backup, and that was because the data were compressed, causing high CPU load, and my CPU fan was broken. My current build has two (slower) CPU fans in push-pull configuration so that this won't happen again.

    @Nanos I don't use Windows so that updates are fast.
  • 0
    @NoOneCares I'm too late, but you can probably recover your data from the live drive.
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