System Installation – Reinstalling Ubuntu 15.10 Stuck on Removing Conflicting Files

15.10system-installation

The process is not stuck because the terminal shows "progress", it keeps trying to remove files that it can't find, the messages read something like: /..../file x: Warning: Source ID XXXXXX was not found when attempting to remove it

The reason I am reinstalling is because my installation was messed up when I installed ubuntu-touch and the system wouldn't reboot.

I was able to fire up a live USB through grub and start the installation process, I figured it would be possible to simply reinstall but it seems to be taking forever. Is this normal behavior? Should I stop it and simply go with a fresh install instead?

Thanks!

Best Answer

The main question is: do you have a separate /home partition? If so then just erase your / and leave /home untouched, just set mountpoint to it.

If not and there is some important files then I recommend you mount your partition and remove everything except /home, e.g.

fdisk -l

Examine the output and find appropriate device name

mount /dev/sdaXY /mnt  # use the device name from fdisk -l here
mkdir /mnt/2rm         # create working dir
mv /mnt/* /mnt/2rm     # move all dirs to work dir
mv /mnt/2rm/home /mnt  # return home back
rm -rfv /mnt/2rm       # now we can safely delete the rest

After the above manipulations you can easily install Ubuntu on the same partition. Ubiquity, the Ubuntu installer, will preserve your /home directory.

Related Question