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I tried to remove the guest account following the instructions on this page Removing Guest Session at login in Ubuntu 14.04

I followed the steps and then restarted the laptop. As usual the Lenovo icon came and then the Ubuntu icon, but, after that when usually lock screen showed up, the display went off but the laptop was on. I pressed the power button and the Ubuntu icon came and the Laptop shut down. I can't see the lock screen and the desktop. How can I bring back the display? I have a 320 Gigs HDD without any partition and Ubuntu as the main OS (no dual boot). Is there any way to resolve the problem without losing any data? I have really important data in the Laptop. Please help!

Billa
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1 Answers1

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Try this,

Boot the "live flash drive", press CTRL+ALT+T to get a terminal. In that terminal type (press enter on each line):

nautilus &

Press F9 in nautilus so that you see the panel with "Places" on top. Farther down you see "Devices" Click on each of these that you need to access, i.e. the source and destination partitions for your file copy. Each click will mount the partition in question, making it accessible.

Now take good note on which window this nautilus uses; e.g. Move it slightly to the side... you will get A NEW one by the following:

Go back to the terminal and type:

sudo bash
nautilus &

In the NEW "nautilus", you should be able to copy files to the destination you wish.

CTRL-L will allow editing the path to the files you have visible, which also allows you to COPY the path (CTRL-C)

Now note: The files you copy will likely still 'belong' to the user in the failed installation... so you need to take ownership,

once again back to the terminal: paste the /destination/ path (as copied from above, OR RETYPE it)

cd /destination/
chown root:root *
ls -lR | grep -v root
cd

The ls -lR | grep -v root should show NO FILES, other data may appear. cd moves 'current dir' back to the $HOME of root.

Now go back to the FIRST nautilus and click on ALL _^_ ('eject CD' symbol) at the side of the Devices. This will 'unmount' them and ensure that all data has been written.

As you have reinstalled and need to copy back the files, use sudo chown $USER:$USER * after a cd as above, to take ownership of the files as the new user.

Hannu
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