Recover and Repair a Failed Ubuntu Upgrade

I recently upgraded from Ubuntu 10.04 LTS to Ubuntu 10.10 - it didn't go quite to plan! Midway through the upgrade the GUI (Gnome Desktop in my case) froze and I had to power off manually and restart.

All I got was the usplash screen and when I Alt-Ctrl F1 'd i saw "mountall: disconnected from plymouth". No matter what I tried couldnt get any further.

It happened to me once before and in the end I reinstalled which wiped everything. Now I'm a little more seasoned I knew this wasn't going to be necessary.

So I used my 10.04 LTS liveCD and started searching for solutions. I managed to find the following info which poved most useful because it allowed me to mount my HDD FS within the liveCD GUI and work from cmd line as though I were in the HDD OS: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=422523

Also quite useful:

http://galigio.org/2009/11/29/how-to-repair-a-bad-upgrade-on-ubuntu/

http://serverfault.com/questions/8540/recover-from-shutdown-during-ubuntu-distribution-upgrade

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=186672

http://www.ubuntugeek.com/easy-way-of-mountunmount-iso-images-in-ubuntu.html (used this to download and mount the alternate upgrade cd, which is how I eventually fixed my upgrade)

Essentially what had happened was that after usplash the nvidia drivers werent loading, so I removed the xorg.conf file, and replaced it with the xorg.conf.failsafe. This step got me booting into a low res gnome desktop, yaaay!

I then Alt-Ctrl F1 'd to the shell, and mounted the ubuntu-alternate iso I had downloaded when I was in the liveCD, and which I ha copied to my home folder on my HDD from there.

Once the iso was mounted I simply ran:

sudo /media/cdrom/cdromupgrade

and ten minutes later everything was fixed and my desktop was up and running 10.10 !

Good Luck! :)

Clean your MAF sesnor for smoother running and better fuel economy

Ive just cleaned the MAF (Mass Air Flow) sensors on both of my cars. An easy procedure which, has produced smoother running, instantly noticeable better fuel economy, and more power at low revs.

I was apprehensive about doing that, as a mechanic friend of mine, whom I trust a lot, told me it wasn't a good idea, but having read around the subject and watched a few youtube videos, I was confident I could do it and that it was a good idea - or at least time would tell!

Now the cleaning solution I wanted to use (CRC Mass Air Flow Sensor Cleaner) wasn't available officially in England due to EU laws on chemicals or something or other, so I went for the next best thing (or just as good).

Maplin, sell Isopropyl Alcohol in a pressurised can, which has pretty much the same desired effect as the CRC product I believe from my googling.

The theory is that the isopropyl alcohol is safe for electronic components and contact, and it removes dirt, grease, grime, etc which is exactly what we want to do. The hot wire in the MAF runs at around 200 degrees Celsius and when air passes over it, small particles like pollen and dirt, hit it and then 'cake' themselves on, leaving a 'dirty' residue which reduces the efficiency of the MAF and fools your engine ECU into using the wrong air/fuel mix, giving you less economy, and even worse, less power to go with it.

Caution: the MAF is an extremely sensitive piece of equipment, and the hot wires are extrmemly brittle. If you drop or knock the unit you may break it, and this will set you back hundreds of pounds, so be careful!!!

Having bought a can, I whipped out the MAF sensors on both cars (about 10min job each - make sure car is COLD before you do this) and proceeded to clean as per some of the videos I had seen around the CRC product. 

Basically spray at the hot wire, and only the hot wire. Short one second bursts around five seconds apart, just as a rough guide. Continue until shiny and clean, which should require no more than a dozen or so bursts, even for the dirtiest hot wires. I blasted mine from all different angles not just one, so as to get the hot wires totally clean.

The result? Well, the BMW's hot wire started off a golden brown colour and was restored to sparkling silver. The Toyota hot wires were actually black! after 30 seconds, they were gleaming silver! Job done. I waited till the alcohol had dried completely (if I couldn't smell the vapours anymore then it was done). Then put both MAF's back on the cars.

The BMW felt a bit spongy when I took it for a test drive, which made me think I'd bricked the MAF, but after a couple of miles it came to life and I saw the estimated range shoot up on the on board computer display. The car felt much, much smoother, much more power at lower revs. Lovely!

Same story with the Toyota. I guess, the ECU's had to self learn and adjust the paramteres of the air/fuel mix and this takes anywhere from a couple to 15miles to do depending on your car and the type of ECU.

All in all, both cars feel a lot smoother, more torque at low revs, and way more fuel economy. As a rule I think I will do this every 20,000 miles or so.

Peace

Importing your contacts from your Sony Ericsson P1i into your Android Phone

Normally I can bluetooth all my contacts from one phone into another. Not possible when your migrating from a P1i to HTC Hero. Try as I may, the contact(s) would get rejected. I didnt really fancy moving all 300+ contacts manually, so embarked on a google search.... Looking for some fantastic tool that would do the job for me.... not happening!

In the end I came across some good ideas from a couple of posts so did the following, which worked brilliantly!

1) In the P1i, open the Contacts app, then hit More. In the menu, scroll down to Connections manager, and expand the sub-menu. From here select Backup option - this saves a Contacts.vcf to your memory card.

2) Copy the vcf file from step 1, onto your PC desktop, either by connecting the phone or reading the memory card via a reader with adapter.

3) Go to your Gmail account, and click the contacts link in the left hand side menu bar. Select Import from the top right. Choose your vcf file.

4) Enjoy! - you only need to wait a couple of minutes for the refresh to occur on your Hero...

A bit manual, but this is the simplest and quickest way I found.

Peace.

Recovering Erased Video / Camcorder DVD's

Short version:
Get CDRoller (http://www.cdroller.com/) and read the included help file. This great software makes it that easy!!!

Slighter Longer Version (may be worth a read...):
A relative (who shall remain unnamed!) accidentally erased a couple of our family DVDs among them was footage taken around the time I got married. Sentimentally, important to me and my wife, understandably I was instructed to recover the data - me being a software engineer, of course it was assumed i knew exactly how all technical things in the world worked, and should be a doddle. (for the non-British, doddle is the equivalent of 'piece of cake').

I soon discovered, a doddle it wasn't!

Problem was that (after much googling) recovering data from DVDs was not exactly easy, partly due to the type of disc (in this case DVD-RW, the most difficult removable media to recover from, just my luck!!!), and partly due to all the variables that could be involved:

- the type of DVD disc, as just mentioned
- the type of data to be recovered
- the type of file system used on the disc
- the type of device that originally wrote the disc
- the type of device that erased the data on the disc
- and, finally, the type of erasure method employed

...and that is the 'in a nutshell version'

Most info I found pointed me to the IsoBuster website where the software maker said they could recover from some removable media types, but not from DVD-RW. uh-oh! But...

Googling around I came across much information from people who had been in similar scenarios but had been unable to recover their data successfully. This initially disheartened me and I immediately thought of the lazy option - getting a specialist lab or company to do it. Looking into this, the cost was high (175 GBP or thereabouts), which in my mind, was paying someone to do something that I could probably do myself, if it involved only the use of software to recover the data form the DVD.

So I persevered, and eventually came across a forum post where someone had successfully retrieved the DVD data from a DVD-RW from the comfort of their own home. So I bought the software and hey presto!

Now it wasn't that easy, I had to do some reading of the help file (well I hate reading stuff about software as that's what I deal with daily, so I skimmed...) but after less than 5 min's of reading the great help file that is included, I had found my step-by step illustrated instructions, which seemed relatively straightforward to me.

Now, this clever software has a menu option to run a wizard to specifically recover video data from DVD's, so if you are like me please resist the temptation to immediately start investigating the myriad of options and settings and pretty clickable icons in the user interface. A quick search and read of the help file will save you lots of time.

I kicked off the 'Recover Video Data' option from the file menu and four clicks later my data was being recovered. All of it!!! Yey! It got recovered as a VOB file, which I can pretty much do whatever I want with, but it did get back the data which most of the info on the net suggested wasn't possible.

So, if you are in a pickle like I was, then give this software a go, it is downloadble on a try before buy basis, although I am not sure what the limitations might be there.

If anyone at CDRoller ever reads this, then a big thanks to you guys, you helped us keep some of our most cherished memories to review on DVD whenever we want. Priceless, and the fact my sister in law now owes me one;)