I downloaded a file from github. When I entered the get/install command in Konsole, I got two lines of text whipping past too fast to read and my laptop shut off. Now I get a message after BIOS announcing Boot device not fund. Please install Operating Sustem on HD. Code HD (3FO)
Using my live USB I can see the hard drive, But not its contents. Have I just torpedoed myself, or is there a way to repair or reinstall without loosing my data?
What kind of file was it, and what command did you run?
You didn’t specify what you meant by “I can see the hard drive, but not its contents”.
When you start KDE Partition Manager on your live USB an select your internal hard drive, do you see your normal partitions? If so, can they be mounted? Or perhaps you can repair the partition with sudo fsck -a /dev/sda2 (replacing sda2 with the main partition you see in Partition manager)
If your partitions are all gone, wow, I don’t know what the heck would have gone wrong there. A good reminder to make regular backups of your data and that you shouldn’t run commands and files from the internet that you don’t understand.
In this case you could use a utility called photorescue on your live USB to recover files to an external drive, although that is a lengthy process and your files will be in random order with cryptic names, so lets hope you can avoid having to do that.
In any case, don’t reinstall Neon before you’re sure your data is safe.
Welcome to the community.
We would need a LOT more info to make any sense of the situation.
What OS are you running? Version? Kernel Version? KDE Version?
What file system is the computer running? BTRFS?
Is your /home on a separate partition?
Can you post a link to the github file you ran, so we can inspect it to see what it does?
What command did you run to install the file? Sudo?
You may or may not get any output for these next two commands.
With or without BTRFS, please post output of
lsblk -o path,label,uuid,fstype
If BTRFS, please post the output of
sudo btrfs subvolume list -t /
Thank you for the reply.
Keep in mind that I have NO access to my hard drive, the laptop tells me to install an OS when I try to boot it. This means I have zero answers to your amazing questions - it shows me just how little I know about this OS. Any OS I suspect. I will try to send a path to the github file, but I’m not going to give myself or this community an ulcer - I’ll cut my losses, save two weeks of my life, and do a complete reinstall.
Again, thank you for the kind answer and education.
~Pat
If you boot from a (Neon or other Linux) live USB, you can easily reach and copy your files from Dolphin (by default most of them will be under /home/[your previous username), so at least you won’t loose the data and can copy to a USB drive.
(assuming the BIOS and hardware are intact)
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Don’t give up yet. At least get your data before you reinstall.
When you get a save of your /home/username folder, you will have all your settings intact as well. Do a reinstall and copy that into the new system and all your stuff will just work. Linux is a wonderful thing. 
The only thing you don’t need is /home/username/.cache
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