Starting rpi3, OS raspbian loads but freezes when it reaches the home screen

Question

could anyone please help? After I have done an update and run 'sudo apt-get dist-upgrade' my screen froze when I closed the console. When unplugging and restarting, the OS (raspbian) loads, but once it reaches the home screen it remains frozen, i.e. no reaction to mouse or keys.

I assume this may be due to an error which the console reported during update. Apparently some unpacking wouldn't work and it requested me to do so manually. I do not remember the exact command I was told to enter - something along the line of sudo ... -- .... -a. After that the upgrade completed alright but once I'd closed the console, the problem started.

Is there any way to save my sd with the recovery mode or do I have to reinstall raspbian?

Answer 1

Since your RPi boots to your home screen, there's a chance that it's possible to recover your system, but if you don't have much knowledge about Linux, reinstalling may be the easiest option. For starters, without a working keyboard you will not be able to run any commands people may suggest, so unless you have an SSH connection, you'll have to read your SD card on a PC running Linux to fix your system manually. apt-get won't work while you'll be doing this (not without some dark magic anyway), so in case a potential fix involves running apt-get dist-upgrade again, you'll be stuck.

If SSH does work, please login, and check sudo dmesg and less /var/log/Xorg.0.log for errors. If you find something, add it to your question.

I know late warnings won't help you, but sudo apt-get dist-upgrade is dangerous by design. The whole point of having releases like Wheezy and Jessie is that there's not 100% safe way to upgrade from one the another.