Problem booting after updating from Ubuntu 14.10 to 15.04

Question

I want to insert some people into a user table using:

INSERT INTO [MyTable] (col2, col3)  
VALUES ('Jim', 'Bob'),
       ('Stinky', 'Pete'),
       ('Old', 'Frank')

I don't want those entries entered if they already exist (there is an ID column, but the uniqueness here should be dictated by a composite of those two columns.

If I was selecting these values from a table I could use (I think):

INSERT INTO [MyTable] (col2, col3)
   SELECT [Name1], [Name2] 
   FROM [ExistingTable]
   EXCEPT 
   SELECT [col2], [col3] 
   FROM [MyTable]

So how can I do this EXCEPT clause when my data isn't in a table already?

Solution

I was able to fix this after reading the bug report @Mondane mentioned and several other troubleshooting articles on recovery mode.

1. Boot into GRUB menu (pressing shift while starting).
2. Choose recovery mode.
3. Enable networking.
4. Drop to root shell prompt.
5. ifconfig eth0 and dhclient eth0 to get
6. (Probably unnecessary) I had a some networking issues that were probably unrelated to this (undetermined so far) so I had to edit /etc/resolv.conf to include Google DNS 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.
7. See what drivers are available for the nvidia hardware: ubuntu-drivers devices
8. Install the recommended: apt-get install nvidia-346
9. Reboot normally.
10. Go to sleep.

Some resources I found useful:

• https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RecoveryMode#Booting_into_recovery_mode
• How do I boot into a root shell?
• https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BinaryDriverHowto/Nvidia

For reasons I haven't yet determined, my networking was really messed up. I had to unplug and replub the USB-to-ethernet, run dhclient, then apt-get install nvidia-346 to get about 5% of the update before networking failed. This might be a hardware issue and totally unrelated, but it made troubleshooting and fixing this problem especially difficult.

Comments

[Mondane]

We might have the same problem, look at this bug report: bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/ubuntu-release-upgrader/+b‌​ug/…

[dennisobrien]

Thanks @Mondane So I tried booting into recovery mode and installing a different nvidia driver, but now my problem is that I can't get networking to function in recovery mode. It might be because the Dell Precision m3800 has a USB-to-ethernet adapter. Or it might be I don't know the arcane commands to get networking to work. I have spent several hours trying to get this to work and I'm close to just wiping the machine and installing fresh. I hate to do that because I'm going to lose a day of productivity.

[JdeBP]

A similar question is askubuntu.com/questions/613577 .

[Caustic]

This worked for me too. Dell XPS15

[Yogesh Sharma]

@jamheadart. . . Yes.

[jamheadart]

Doesn't like SELECT 1 FROM TABLE t - I'm on 2008 here I wonder if that's an issue.

[Yogesh Sharma]

@jamheadart. . . I fixed the table-name & alias. This should work.

[jamheadart]

Yes! I knew I'd used something like this last year I just couldn't figure out the danged syntax and was going round in circles. Thanks! And yes col 1 is the primary key Id