While upgrading Ubuntu from 13.04 to 13.10 today, my computer froze half way through the install step. (Others have had the same issue with a power cut mid way through install). My only option was to reboot it, which resulted in what I feared... The maintenance shell...

A quick:

cd /home
ls

put my mind to some rest, in the knowledge that files and folders were still there, but without being able to actually start the GUI or perform some other basic operations, things were looking a bit grim.

Finally I stumbled across a post which suggested the following:

# mount -o remount,rw /
# dpkg --configure -a
# mount -o remount,ro/
# sync
# reboot

I couldn't actually perform the final remount/sync as the drive was busy so just went for the reboot and hoped for the best. Everything started up and I'm running 13.10 without any issues.

The --configure -a step took about 20 minutes so a little patience required there.

Does it work for you?

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