How can I Recover KDE GUI after I tried to kill Muon Updater?
(Also note text in usual boot up is scrambled as a feature of my AMD APU; that is a side issue.)

Is there a way in Kubuntu 14.04, 64 bit, to recover my KDE desktop?

Saturday night Muon Update Mgr complained about waiting for a profile. I let it run all night.
Sunday I tried to cancel, then close Muon Update Mgr. No way to do that.
I tried to Restart or Shut Down, but Muon blocks that.
(If I would have googled or remembered I could have killed the Muon process with KSysGuard....)

But instead I did Ctrl-Alt-F1 and then blindly (due to issues of AMD APU text handling so what I see are bizarre renditions for what are character codes) I entered my user name and password, then entered "sudo shutdown -hP now" and my password
Muon blocks that as well to my surprise.

I used the power button to get a fresh shot at Grub2 and recover mode, but I am an unskilled klutz there and got nowhere
I tried startx to no avail.

I got some suggestions and tried them, essentially using apt-get update to try to complete the update process, etc.
I did it both blind with regular startup without gui where characters are scrambled and also
recovery mode with most recent kernel.
( In that mode the characters are rendered in ASCII so I could see what was going on.)
It tells me login: initct1: event failed.
I logged in with name and password.
Again update got the most activity, upgrade a little, and configure not so much.

Then I tried /etc/init.d/kdm restart with no success,
Then I tried startx and got a clear screen to a blank screen, no prompts, etc.

Next I gambled on a regular start and got weird characters. That's where I am now.
No fixed update and no GUI. No way to kill the failed Muon update process.
(by the way ps does not show it as you try to log in, only TTY and bash.)

Any ideas?

That sounds quite broken.

When you do apt-get upgrade, what kind of output do you get? Some error message, maybe?

I carefully ran apt-get upgrade in the recovery mode and redirected stdout to a file.
No error messages.

Trying to run /etc/init.d/kdm start I got message about no file found
1. I went into etc/init.d and found lightdm but no kdm, and
2. tried lightdm start It cleared the screen but then nothing.

I will run killall dpkg and then run sudo dpkg --configure -a and then see....

http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions ... b-packages

And do never shoot package updates or shut down the machine while doing some unless you *really* and *absolutely* know why and what you're doing there.

Instead actually read what "complained about waiting for a profile" said and resolve that problem correctly.

Well, I wish I had known the proper caution on the updates beforehand, luebking.

When I ran the kill and configure there was nothing to kill, and configure did nothing new.

I tried two other things.

1. I tried to learn more about initctl: event failed message I get when I use recover mode and try to start up by logging in.
I did not find anything precisely about my situation or more information on what the inltct1 is, but I did find cases with failure to get the right Nvidia driver.
Could I have a problem with the driver for my AMD APU video driver. If so, any suggestions on proceeding further?

2. Inadvertently, then purposely, I did the normal startup but with my KVM switch set to a different system (where I am doing the forum posts).
I got a GUI, a "default" one with very low resolution, 640 x 480 with no option to change with System Settings.

So I think that also points to a driver issue, but I don't know if that is correct and if so, how to address it.
I don't know if using the default GUI offers me an advantage. It might help if it does.

Ideas?

To be honest, if you're not experienced with repairing something like that I would just reinstall the system. If you have your home directory on a separate partition, that's quite simple to do and retains almost all of your settings.

To scummos and all,

Do you agree that I have a driver issue with the AMD APU driver?

There are two things that make me reluctant to "nuke and pave" already.
A key one is that though I do have a separate home directory, it is also on a separate HDD separate from the system SSD.
Another is I would like to learn how to cope with this kind of problem as I climb the learning curve as a linux and KDE user.
(Meanwhile, I will be copying files to a portable drive just in case.)

I did lspci -vvnn | grep VGA and found my APU has a Radeon HD7660D on the APU.
I checked muon package manager in my default GUI. I do have the fglrx proprietary AMD binary driver installed along with some support files.

Do you think what might work is to use the muon package manager to uninstall the fglrx driver, reboot and then reinstall it?

Thanks in advance.

The problem is that if you did a hard reset during a package update, about *anything* (and more than one thing) can be broken.
You first need to ensure a consistent system, ie. enforce a complete package update.

Once that's achieved, we can start worry about issues with particular items (GPU driver) where we right now don't even known whether they're loaded at all (kernel module or X11 driver) or simply lack resources.

it is also on a separate HDD separate from the system SSD

So what?

cope with this kind of problem

Step 1: ensure a consistent state. Turning the system off while an upgrade is running is like begging for all sorts of random trouble.

Thanks, luebking and all,

My prior apt-get update etc. get no issues and I no longer have muon taking over.

I now have all my files, including hidden files, copied from my home directory onto a portable drive.
I also located my 14.04 DVD.

Here's my plan.
I will take a break, then shut down my default GUI regular login session and boot into recovery mode and choose to fix files.
After that I will try a regular boot if anything was fixed. Hopefully I have a consistent system at that point.

Otherwise, using the default GUI I will use muon package manager to uninstall the fglrx AMD binary driver, then reinstall it.
If it still does not boot into the regular GUI, I will load the 14.04 DVD and boot from it and choose the repair option.
Then we will see.

If you have any further tips and warnings, I will welcome them.

Well, here's an update:

Removing the proprietary AMD drivers, fglrx etc., let my system boot with normal size windows, characters, etc.
But reinstalling fglrx derailed normal boot, so it was not sufficient. So it needed more. luebking was right. What else might be broken....?

Using recover mode file repair did not gain anything.

I decided to get the latest 14.04 which since Feb. 2016 is 14.04.4.
I downloaded and burned a DVD and booted from it.
Unfortunately, there is no repair option (I am not sure where I got the idea), only try it or install.
I opted eventually to install, so I nuked my old 14:04.

My old home directory is on the separate HDD still.

What I think I will do is expand the space on the SSD for Kubuntu, re-install again and add a separate home partition there (to simplify the setup) and then copy over the files from the HDD to the new /home.
(An example I googled is here for Ubuntu: http://www.howtogeek.com/116742/how-...alling-ubuntu/ )

If you know a way you would prefer to recommend, I will welcome it.