Boot fix

[AngelPi3]

Hi experts,
after a bad interrupted "sugo get-update" on my Pi3 with Raspbian Jessie, now I can access the GUI after booting it, but it has no background anymore, the time goes on on the taskbar, the LAN cable seems to exchange data but I can't move anymore the cursor via the small keyboard+touchpad that was perfectly working before (also after changing the USB port).
The same device works fine on NOOBS if I press Shift while booting, but I don't know what to do now.
Any way to enter the command line to complete/redo the get-update, maybe fixing some corrupted file?

I was looking for options to enter in the config.txt or cmdline.txt, but no luck so far.
Help, please! I wouldn't like to have to reinstall everything for this kind of "freezing".

Thanks in advance.

Angelo

[topguy]

Help, please! I wouldn't like to have to reinstall everything for this kind of "freezing".

You should always be prepared to do a full reinstall, things can break and SD cards are not foolproof.

This post here: https://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1646925 shows things you might do to find out which packages has not been installed correctly.
You should then be able to reinstall the broken packages using "sudo apt-get install --reinstall packagename".

But this assumes that "apt" itself i still working.

[MaxK1]

A full re-install is a pretty drastic step. Better to restore from a recent backup. My normal routine is to backup all my Pi's at least once a week (Sunday morning) and then (possibly) do an update/upgrade/dist-upgrade. You could also do a full backup weekly, and a daily backup of whatever you feel needs to be backed up more frequently (like /etc, /home) Also, it can be very handy to have some tools like a USB SD card reader/writer and a "clean" installation Raspbian SD card.

[AngelPi3]

Thanks for the hints, guys!
Is there any way to interrupt the boot and access the command line or change the config files from NOOBS and set the system so that it does not start the GUI, but the command line?
Thanks again.

Angelo

[DougieLawson]

Even if it starts the GUI and that piece fails you can get a login prompt with [CTRL]+[ALT]+[F2]