Kernel panic on upgrade/repair mode

I tried upgrading via the menu option in 7.95, but on reboot, I get the splash screen then an alarming message about a kernel panic and the system just stops.

I can boot from a USB stick but it only gives me the option of a clean install - previously, there used to be a repair option with 7.0 that rebuilt the kernel but left the storage partition alone. Is this still possible? There is a backup but as this is an SSD inside a PC I don't have a way of accessing it and copying it at present.

Quote from vitorp07

You could boot "live" with Ubuntu to copy your LibreELEC backup file to an external media(USB stick).
From there you can reinstall LibreELEC and finally restore with your backup file.

Actually I managed to find another way, but that's a very good tip and probably a neater solution than the one I came up with.

I made a bootstick with 7.0.3, which still has the repair option and used that. It claimed to overwrite the System portion but once it booted up again I found that all my settings were still in place (although obviously a lot of stuff wasn't working properly because I had previously been on 7.95).

I then Samba'd in to copy my backup file, and then copied across the update file, rebooted, waited for the update and hey presto, on 8.0 with all settings etc. in place and working. Had to Samba in the update file as the LibreELEC configuration manager appeared to have a corrupted display with no selectable options (although that may be because I was using Arctic Zephyr as a skin).

So in short:

You can functionally repair a corrupted 8.0 installation with a 7.0.3 bootstick and retain your settings.

As a suggestion, if it's possible to create an 8.0 boot image with a repair option, this would then alleviate the need to manually update.