Arch Linux

smitty

Member

Registered: 2008-01-17

Posts: 73

having problems with pacman -R

I am having problems removing packages sometimes. I use "pacman -R <package-name>" and I had certain ones break the system. The recent one it broken down to a ramfs shell. I used "pacman -R nvidia". I couldn't startx and thought I had to reboot.  I have no idea what to do at the ramfs shell. I can't even list directories in it. My question in relation to pacman -R is, is there a safer way to remove packages than pacman -R? Also, are there certain packages I shouldn't be uninstalling? In other words, IMHO, I believe that there are probably packages that can be broken if you are not careful in ArchLinux. The problem is, I don't know which ones! I never have had problems when using other package managers, such as apt-get, so I wonder if this is a package manager specific issue. Any thoughts or suggestions would be highly appreciated.

chicha

Member

From: France

Registered: 2007-04-20

Posts: 271

Re: having problems with pacman -R

Hello smitty

When you want to remove a package the first questions you should ask yourself before removing it is : What is this package for ?   Why would I remove it ?

pacman -Qi yourpackage will give you a quick description of what is the package for and an url to the package's website where you can find more information. If you still do not have enought information then you can ask here on the forums.

In the case of the package nvidia : its is a kernel module (a driver) which allows your linux system to use a video card from NVidia Corporation. If you have such a graphic card in your hardware and you or somebody installed the nvidia package to make it work, do not be surprised if your system crashes when you remove it !!!

In general do not remove a kernel module or a package which is in the group 'base' (this info is provided when you do a pacman -Qi on the package) unless you know what you are doing.

For other package feel free to ask or (better) search by yourself in the package description and website.

I hope it helped.
Cheers,

Chicha

Last edited by chicha (2008-01-17 13:12:38)

chicha

Member

From: France

Registered: 2007-04-20

Posts: 271

Re: having problems with pacman -R

Hello again,

About the ramfs shell :

Sometimes it may happen that the kernel is not able to boot properly.
In this case, and if the problems are not too bad, it will launch a minimal shell on a filesystem directly into your memory (not on your harddisk) :  it is a ramfs filesystem. With such a shell you can do very basic commands to investigate what went wrong and try to repare things.

Before trying some commands into such a shell it would be easier to tell us what errors were displayed at boot time.
Can you tell us more about what happenned ? Which program did you removed ? What are the error messages displayed at boot time ?

We cannot help without more details.

tomk

Forum Fellow

From: Ireland

Registered: 2004-07-21

Posts: 9,839

Re: having problems with pacman -R

smitty - the other two threads are now locked. Please do not cross-post.

smitty

Member

Registered: 2008-01-17

Posts: 73

Re: having problems with pacman -R

thanks for locking them. I hope this helps. this took me alot of writing and typing! But, I hope it sheds lit on what I can do. Thanks

Archlinux Boot Screen as written:
console switching to colour frame buffer device 8x48
fb0: VESA VGA frame buffer device
Real Time Clock Driver v1.2ac
Serial: 8250/16550 driver $Revision 1.90 4 ports, IRQ sharing disabled
Serial8250: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
Serial8250: ttyS1 at I/O 0x2f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A
RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 16384K size 1024 blocksize
loop module loaded
input: Macintosh mouse button emulation as /dev/virtual/input/input0
PNP: PS/2 Controller [PNP0303:PS2K] at 0x60, 0x64 irq 1
PNP: PS/2 appears to have AUX port disabled, if this is incorrect please boot with i4082.nopnp
serio: i8042 KBD port at 0x60, 0x64 irq 1
mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice
input: AT Translated Set 2 Keyboard as /devices/platform/i8042/serio0/input/input1
TCP cubic registered
NET: Registered protocol family 1
NET: Registered protocol family 17
Freeing unused kernel memory: 252K freed
:: Loading Initramfs
:: Running Hook [udev]
:: Running udev ...done.
:: Running Hook [usb]
:: Running Hook [keymap]
:: Loading Keymap ...done.
:: Running Hook [encrypt]
:: Running Hook [lvm2]
:: Running Hook [filesystems]
Loading root filesystem module...
Attempting to create root device '/dev/sdd3'
Waiting for devices to settle... done.
ERROR: failed to parse block device name for '/dev/sdd3'
unknown
ERROR: root fs cannot be detected. Try using the rootfstype= kernel parameter
Root device 'dev/sdd3' doesn't exist, attempting to create it
ERROR: failed to parse block device name for '/dev/sdd3'
ERROR: unable to create/detect root device '/dev/sdd3'
Dropping to a recovery shell... type 'exit' to reboot
NOTE: klibc contains no 'ls' binary, use 'echo *' instead

if the device 'dev/sdd3' gets created while you are here,
try adding 'rootdelay=8' or higher to the kernel command-line.
ramfs$:

smitty

Member

Registered: 2008-01-17

Posts: 73

Re: having problems with pacman -R

sorry, I meant to say that I removed the nvidia install program via "pacman -S nvidia" and then re-installed it. Before that point I didn't have xorg.conf, except for the example in the /root direrctory. I forgot to transfer this to /etc/X11 directory, so I backtracked to that point and copied the xorg example conf file to /etc/X11. After that I  installed the Nvidia program title (prior to uninstalling before I copied the file over). As a side question, you don't have install the vga or vesa driver in addition to the nvidia, do I? Thanks

chicha

Member

From: France

Registered: 2007-04-20

Posts: 271

Re: having problems with pacman -R

This is perfect smitty
You gave a lot of useful information.

The problem probably comes from the way your kernel's initrd was generated, when you installed your kernel. Or maybe you installed a new hardware and did not reinstalled your kernel (regenerated the initrd).
If you feel like I speak chineese to you, have a look at this page when you will have free time.

At first we are going to try to boot using the initrd's fallback image.
It is hard to tell you exactly the steps because I am at work and I do not have access to my Arch box, so I cannot perform those steps with you at the sametime. Anyway I am going to try

At boot time Grub (the boot loader) askes to choose a kernel to boot. If it does not, press Esc (Escape) when you are asked, it will unhide Grub's menu.
If you already have the choice to boot the kernel 'fallback' choose it (with your keyboard arrows) and press enter.
If you do not have the choice edit the entry by pressing 'e'. Then edit the line with 'initrd' by entering 'e', and replace kernel26.img by kernel26.img-fallback.img.
Then press enter to save your modification and then press 'b' (like boot) to boot with this new configuration.

It should work !
In any case come back here if it did not, or to go through the next step : regenerating your kernel image to be able to boot without your fallback image.

chicha

Member

From: France

Registered: 2007-04-20

Posts: 271

Re: having problems with pacman -R

sorry, I meant to say that I removed the nvidia install program via "pacman -S nvidia" and then re-installed it. Before that point I didn't have xorg.conf, except for the example in the /root direrctory. I forgot to transfer this to /etc/X11 directory, so I backtracked to that point and copied the xorg example conf file to /etc/X11. After that I  installed the Nvidia program title (prior to uninstalling before I copied the file over). As a side question, you don't have install the vga or vesa driver in addition to the nvidia, do I? Thanks

First we try to solve your boot problem.
Then I will try to help solving your X11/Nvidia problem

smitty

Member

Registered: 2008-01-17

Posts: 73

Re: having problems with pacman -R

I just realized another thing I might have did that could possible affect this. I uninstalled LVM2, which I believe is a base package, however it shows up as you can tell on the boot screen. The reason why I did this is because I figured it could free up more resources, since it said there wasn't any LVM volumes (don't know how that can be, because it worked when I was trying out Gentoo). Just a penny for thoughts, I guess...

chicha

Member

From: France

Registered: 2007-04-20

Posts: 271

Re: having problems with pacman -R

Ok. I am not sure whether removing LVM2 is bad if you do not use it. I would not remove it anyway because it is a low level package, deeply linked to filesystems and the kernel, and it does not take a lot of space on the system.

What I am sure is that LVM2 was computed with your initrd and you removed it. It may certainly be a problem.
That is why I would like to know if you managed to boot your system with a fallback kernel image like explained above ?

Also I have a quick question : why do you want to remove all those packages ? Do you really lack space on your harddisk ?

smitty

Member

Registered: 2008-01-17

Posts: 73

Re: having problems with pacman -R

Ok... at least I don't have to write / type as much as before, but this is the boot screen upon selecting ArchLinux Fall-back:

console switching to colour frame buffer device 8x48
fb0: VESA VGA frame buffer device
Real Time Clock Driver v1.2ac
Serial: 8250/16550 driver $Revision 1.90 4 ports, IRQ sharing disabled
Serial8250: ttyS0 at I/O 0x3f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
Serial8250: ttyS1 at I/O 0x2f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A
RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 16384K size 1024 blocksize
loop module loaded
input: Macintosh mouse button emulation as /dev/virtual/input/input0
PNP: PS/2 Controller [PNP0303:PS2K] at 0x60, 0x64 irq 1
PNP: PS/2 appears to have AUX port disabled, if this is incorrect please boot with i4082.nopnp
serio: i8042 KBD port at 0x60, 0x64 irq 1
mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice
input: AT Translated Set 2 Keyboard as /devices/platform/i8042/serio0/input/input1
TCP cubic registered
NET: Registered protocol family 1
NET: Registered protocol family 17
RAMDISK: compressed image found at block 0
List of all partitions:
No filesystem could mount root tried:
Kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: unable to root fs on unknown - block(0,0)

also, caps lock and scroll were blinking.
Based on my experience, that happened every time there was a kernel panic.

Why would I want to remove the packages? The reason for me is to optimize boot time. It's also less to get confused about when it loads up. I also
did notice on install that it always says "warning: too many arguments" concerning /etc/sysinit.rc line 201, I believe it was. The boot screen always said that.

smitty

Member

Registered: 2008-01-17

Posts: 73

Re: having problems with pacman -R

Oh, before I forget. I do have all the repositories on DVD, so re-installing is not an issue. I just want to learn the nature of what happened.
I figured out how utilize the repositories on the machine. The whole reason I downloaded this was for this reason! I may create an article on how utilize the repositories on hard disk. It's a combination of techniques I discovered. Although, I don't want people to use up all the bandwidth on servers, so I'm debating...!

chicha

Member

From: France

Registered: 2007-04-20

Posts: 271

Re: having problems with pacman -R

Removing packages will not make your system boot faster or run faster !

What will make your system boot faster is disabling the modules you do not use with mkinitcpio and disable the daemons you do not use in /etc/rc.conf. There are plainty of docs in the wiki and the forums about this.

Anyway it seems either your harddisk has a serious problem (I do not think so), or either you seriously messed things up (more likely).

You have 2 options :

Reinstall properly your system. Maybe the dumbest, but also maybe the cleanest solution having in mind that you removed some packages without really knowing what you did ....

Use a liveCD or liveUSB to see what is wrong with your harddisk and your installation. Arch install CD is fine for doing that. This is the smartest solution, but not the easiest ! I can drive you in this process if you want to learn things.

Basicelly we boot the liveCD, enter a shell, scan your harddisk for problems (partition table errors, filesystem errors ...), mount your partitions, chroot into your Arch installation and eventually reinstalling things you broke up (Kernel and other things).

At your option !

smitty

Member

Registered: 2008-01-17

Posts: 73

Re: having problems with pacman -R

Normally, I would say re-install, but I want to learn more about the innards of the system. Are you referring to the liveCD Core? I'm ready to learn more!

P.S. I also doubt it's a physical problem with the hard drive.

Last edited by smitty (2008-01-17 16:20:06)

chicha

Member

From: France

Registered: 2007-04-20

Posts: 271

Re: having problems with pacman -R

Ok so here are the steps :

- Boot on the liveCD of your choice.
- Enter a shell.
- Have a look at the partition table of your harddisk using a tool such as fdisk or cfdisk. With fdisk you can do :

fdisk -l /dev/sda

If /dev/sda is your harddisk. Try /dev/sdb, /dev/sdc or /dev/hda, /dev/hdb as it may vary depending on your hardware and your liveCD's kernel configuration
If the partition table seems okey then go through next step :

- Run fsck or e2fsck (if your partition is ext2) or other tools related to your filesystem type.
Example to check the first partition on /dev/sda, provided the partition is ext3 :

fsck -F ext3 /dev/sda1

Read the man page if you want to know more about fsck ...
If every thing is ok on all your partitions go through next step :

- Mount your root partition (adapt the case to your configuration if you have several partitions) :
Example (if /mnt is not used, else use anothor directory at your option) :

mount -t ext3 /dev/sda1 /mnt

If every thing is ok go through next step :

- Chroot into your broken installation :

mount -t proc none /mnt/proc
mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev
chroot /mnt /bin/bash

If every thing is ok you now can have a shell into your broken installation, but your are using your liveCD's linux kernel. Go through next step :

- Have a look at /var/log/pacman.log to see all the packages your removed. Reinstall the important ones (such lvm) using pacman.
Reinstall your kernel : pacman -S kernel26. If pacman asks for a confirmation because kernel26 is already installed say yes.
Make sure no errors are reported by the installation process.
If every thing is ok go through next step :

- Exit the chroot using ... exit. Unmount your partition : umount /mnt. Remove your livecd and reboot your pc using ... reboot or halt or whatever. Now you should boot on your harddisk and everything should be OK.

If this is not the case their might be also a problem with your /boot/grub/menu.lst file which could need to be changed because of PATA kernel modules stuffs. We will see if the problem is still there ...

Also have a look at this documentation : http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Ins … m_a_LiveCD
All is there !

Tell me if you managed to do all this without problem !
++
Chicha

smitty

Member

Registered: 2008-01-17

Posts: 73

Re: having problems with pacman -R

ok, alas! I tried every command up to "pacman -S kernel26" (reinstalling the kernel. Here is the response on screen:

warning: kernel26 local (2.6.23.12-3) is newer than core (2.65.22.9-1)
warning: kernel26-2.6.23.12-3 is up to date -- reinstalling
resolving dependencies...
looking for inter-conflicts...
error: failed to prepare transaction (could not satisfy dependencies)
:nvidia: requires kernel26>=2.6.23.8-2

This other part may help you a little, too. I tried typing "arch root=/dev/sdd3" , because that is where the root partition is. The boot is on /dev/sdd1.
Here is the response:

arch root=/dev/sdd3
... (whole bunch of data here, apparently working so far)
FATAL: could not load /lib/modules/2.6.22-ARCH/modules.dep

But, believe it or not it did boot in the system this way, but with those error messages.

This may help even further. I hope this isn't too big. This is my /var/log/pacman.log  :

... (this is where I installed KDE. I actually got paste from Ex2Mgr program which reads ext2 and ext3 drives for XP)
[2007-01-18 05:12] installed kdepim (3.5.8-2)
[2007-01-18 05:12] installed kdeaddons (3.5.8-1)
[2007-01-18 05:12] installed kdeadmin (3.5.8-1)
[2007-01-18 05:12] installed kdeartwork (3.5.8-1)
[2007-01-18 05:12] installed kdeedu (3.5.8-1)
[2007-01-18 05:12] installed ppp (2.4.4-4)
[2007-01-18 05:12] installed openslp (1.2.1-1)
[2007-01-18 05:12] installed rdesktop (1.5.0-2)
[2007-01-18 05:12] installed qca-qt3 (1.0-1)
[2007-01-18 05:12] installed qca-tls (1.0-5)
[2007-01-18 05:12] installed perl-net-ssleay (1.30-1)
[2007-01-18 05:12] installed perl-io-socket-ssl (1.08-1)
[2007-01-18 05:12] installed kdenetwork (3.5.8-1)
[2007-01-18 05:12] installed kdesdk (3.5.8-1)
[2007-01-18 05:12] installed kdetoys (3.5.8-1)
[2007-01-18 05:12] installed net-snmp (5.4.1-2)
[2007-01-18 05:12] installed tpctl (4.15-1)
[2007-01-18 05:12] installed unzip (5.52-3)
[2007-01-18 05:12] installed unrar (3.7.8-1)
[2007-01-18 05:12] installed kdeutils (3.5.8-1)
[2007-01-18 05:18] removed libgl (7.0.1-1)
[2007-01-18 05:18] >>>
[2007-01-18 05:18] >>> If you use the LILO bootloader, you should run 'lilo' before rebooting.
[2007-01-18 05:18] >>>
[2007-01-18 05:18] >>> Updating module dependencies. Please wait ...
[2007-01-18 05:18] >>> MKINITCPIO SETUP
[2007-01-18 05:18] >>> ----------------
[2007-01-18 05:18] >>> If you use LVM2, Encrypted root or software RAID,
[2007-01-18 05:18] >>> Ensure you enable support in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf .
[2007-01-18 05:18] >>> More information about mkinitcpio setup can be found here:
[2007-01-18 05:18] >>> http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mkinitcpio
[2007-01-18 05:18]
[2007-01-18 05:18] >>> Generating initial ramdisk, using mkinitcpio.  Please wait...
[2007-01-18 05:18] ==> Building image "default"
[2007-01-18 05:18] ==> Running command: /sbin/mkinitcpio -k 2.6.23-ARCH -c /etc/mkinitcpio.conf -g /boot/kernel26.img
[2007-01-18 05:18] :: Begin build
[2007-01-18 05:18] :: Parsing hook [base]
[2007-01-18 05:18] :: Parsing hook [udev]
[2007-01-18 05:18] :: Parsing hook [autodetect]
[2007-01-18 05:18] :: Parsing hook [pata]
[2007-01-18 05:18] :: Parsing hook [scsi]
[2007-01-18 05:18] :: Parsing hook [sata]
[2007-01-18 05:18] :: Parsing hook [usb]
[2007-01-18 05:18] :: Parsing hook [usbinput]
[2007-01-18 05:18] :: Parsing hook [keymap]
[2007-01-18 05:18] :: Parsing hook [encrypt]
[2007-01-18 05:18] ==> FAIL
[2007-01-18 05:18] ==> Building image "fallback"
[2007-01-18 05:18] ==> Running command: /sbin/mkinitcpio -k 2.6.23-ARCH -c /etc/mkinitcpio.d/kernel26-fallback.conf -g /boot/kernel26-fallback.img
[2007-01-18 05:18] :: Begin build
[2007-01-18 05:18] :: Parsing hook [base]
[2007-01-18 05:18] :: Parsing hook [udev]
[2007-01-18 05:18] :: Parsing hook [ide]
[2007-01-18 05:18] :: Parsing hook [pata]
[2007-01-18 05:18] :: Parsing hook [scsi]
[2007-01-18 05:18] :: Parsing hook [sata]
[2007-01-18 05:18] :: Parsing hook [usbinput]
[2007-01-18 05:18] :: Parsing hook [raid]
[2007-01-18 05:18] :: Parsing hook [filesystems]
[2007-01-18 05:18] :: Generating module dependencies
[2007-01-18 05:18] :: Generating image '/boot/kernel26-fallback.img'...SUCCESS
[2007-01-18 05:18] ==> SUCCESS
[2007-01-18 05:18] upgraded kernel26 (2.6.22.9-1 -> 2.6.23.12-3)
[2007-01-18 05:18] -------------------------------
[2007-01-18 05:18] By using this package you accept the NVIDIA license,
[2007-01-18 05:18] which has been installed in /usr/share/licenses/nvidia/LICENSE
[2007-01-18 05:18] If you do not accept this license, you must remove the package immediately.
[2007-01-18 05:18] Dont forget to update your /etc/X11/xorg.conf
[2007-01-18 05:18] In order to use nvidia-settings, you need to install the gtk2 package.
[2007-01-18 05:18] In order to use nvidia-xconfig, you need to install the pkgconfig package.
[2007-01-18 05:18] -------------------------------
[2007-01-18 05:18] nvidia 9746 drops support for Geforce 3 and 4 cards
[2007-01-18 05:18] If you have such a card, install the nvidia-96xx, nvidia-96xx-utils,
[2007-01-18 05:18] nvidia-96xx-ck, nvidia-96xx-beyond, nvidia-96xx-suspend2 packages
[2007-01-18 05:18] For a list of supported cards, see /usr/share/doc/nvidia/supported-cards.txt
[2007-01-18 05:18] -------------------------------
[2007-01-18 05:18] :: Updating symlinks to use built-in libwfb
[2007-01-18 05:18] installed nvidia-utils (169.07-1)
[2007-01-18 05:18] installed nvidia (169.07-1)
[2007-01-18 05:26] In order to use the new nvidia module, exit Xserver and unload it manually.
[2007-01-18 05:26] upgraded nvidia (169.07-1 -> 169.07-1)
[2007-01-18 05:28] In order to use the new nvidia module, exit Xserver and unload it manually.
[2007-01-18 05:28] upgraded nvidia (169.07-1 -> 169.07-1)
[2007-01-18 05:29] removed nvidia (169.07-1)
[2007-01-18 05:29] installed nvidia (169.07-1)
[2007-01-18 05:36] upgraded module-init-tools (3.2.2-4 -> 3.2.2-4)
[2007-01-18 05:40] upgraded module-init-tools (3.2.2-4 -> 3.2.2-4)
[2007-01-18 05:40] upgraded module-init-tools (3.2.2-4 -> 3.2.2-4)
[2007-01-18 13:45] installed lvm2 (2.02.29-1)

chicha

Member

From: France

Registered: 2007-04-20

Posts: 271

Re: having problems with pacman -R

You are mixing up a lot of info here, it is hard to understand what you did and in which order !

The info you extracted from /var/log/pacman.log corresponds to what you did before entering the chroot and reinstalling your kernel, or does it comes from when you followed the steps above ?

Also notice that at some point the kernel initrd generation failed :

[2007-01-18 05:18] >>> Generating initial ramdisk, using mkinitcpio.  Please wait...
[2007-01-18 05:18] ==> Building image "default"
[2007-01-18 05:18] ==> Running command: /sbin/mkinitcpio -k 2.6.23-ARCH -c /etc/mkinitcpio.conf -g /boot/kernel26.img
[2007-01-18 05:18] :: Begin build
[2007-01-18 05:18] :: Parsing hook [base]
[2007-01-18 05:18] :: Parsing hook [udev]
[2007-01-18 05:18] :: Parsing hook [autodetect]
[2007-01-18 05:18] :: Parsing hook [pata]
[2007-01-18 05:18] :: Parsing hook [scsi]
[2007-01-18 05:18] :: Parsing hook [sata]
[2007-01-18 05:18] :: Parsing hook [usb]
[2007-01-18 05:18] :: Parsing hook [usbinput]
[2007-01-18 05:18] :: Parsing hook [keymap]
[2007-01-18 05:18] :: Parsing hook [encrypt]
[2007-01-18 05:18] ==> FAIL

This must not be good !

We have  to go step by step.
The first step is to get your kernel back into a good shape without this there is no point at trying to get Xorg and nvidia working ! Forget Xorg related stuffs such your nvidia module for the moment !

Apparently your harddisk is in a good shape, this is good

What I suggest is to reinstall your kernel properly using the liveCD + chroot method above.
Please can you post the messages displayed at kernel installation only ?
Also please post here what does your /etc/fstab and /boot/grub/menu.lst files look like.

To make things more readable and take less space at display, post all those info within [ code ] [/ code ]

Thank you very much !
I am sure you will be able to solve your problem, the point is to go step by step with method

++
Chicha

smitty

Member

Registered: 2008-01-17

Posts: 73

Re: having problems with pacman -R

Ok. What I am going to do is walk you through what I did step by step, so you don't get confused!

first on bootup everything look normal. I will post starting with what doesn't look normal to me:

mknod: File exists - /dev/mapper/control
Scanning logical volumes... Reading all physical volumes. This may take awhile...
No volume groups found

To me this looks unusual, because I orginally installed LVM. I heard it is good to manage your drives.
That was the only strange thing on boot screen. Then, I am performing step by step the commands you told me

$ fdisk -l /dev/sdd

    Device Boot  Start    End       Blocks  Id  System
/dev/sdd1     *       1      13      104422  83 Linux
/dev/sdd2            14    166   1228972+ 82 Linux Swap / Solaris
/dev/sdd3           167 35224 281603385 83 Linux
/dev/sdd4       35225 38913 29631892+ 83 Linux

Here is more information, using cfdisk:

$ cfdisk /dev/sddd

Name Flags       Part Type FS Type                  Label Size (MB)
sdd1   Boot, NC Primary   Linux ext2                            106.93
sdd2                 Primary   Linux Swap / Solaris            1258.47
sdd3                 Primary   Linux ext3                       288361.87
sdd4                 Primary   Linux ext3                         30343.06

In a nutshell, I followed the instructions per WIKI, using Auto-prepare option and gave 100MB for /boot, 1,200MB for swap and the rest of the hard drive (320 GB)
for Linux. I'm realizing maybe I should have done custom, because I was reading on a different forum that you don't really need a seperate root and boot partition.
Am I thinking correct? Anyway, continuing on..

I tried using fsck -F, but that's not in the menu option, so I was looking for something similar that it offered. Here's the output:

$ fsck.ext3 -f /dev/sdd3
e2fsck 1.40.2 (12-Jul-2007)
Pass 1: checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: checking directory structure
Pass 3: checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: checking reference counts
Pass 5: checking group summary information
/dev/sdd3 183847/35209216 files (0.2% non-contiguous, 4713135 / 170400846 blocks)

$fsck.ext2 -f /dev/sdd1
e2fsck  1.40.2 (12-Jul-2007)
Pass 1: checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: checking directory structure
Pass 3: checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: checking reference counts
Pass 5: checking group summary information
/dev/sdd1 32126208 files (6.3% non-contiguous, 11177 / 104420 blocks)

Nothing really changed in /var/log/pacman.conf
Here is the information in /etc/fstab:

# 
# /etc/fstab: static file system information
#
# <file system>        <dir>         <type>    <options>          <dump> <pass>
none                   /dev/pts      devpts    defaults            0      0
none                   /dev/shm      tmpfs     defaults            0      0


#comment cdrom and dvd out if you want to use hal daemon
#/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom   iso9660   ro,user,noauto,unhide   0      0
#/dev/dvd /mnt/dvd   udf   ro,user,noauto,unhide   0      0
/dev/sdd1 /boot ext2 defaults 0 1
/dev/sdd2 swap swap defaults 0 0
/dev/sdd3 / ext3 defaults 0 1
/dev/sdd4 /home ext3 defaults 0 1

I commented out cdrom, because per instructions, it mention that you could use HAL daemon to autodect them.
And, finally, here is what is in /boot/grub/menu.lst:

# Config file for GRUB - The GNU GRand Unified Bootloader
# /boot/grub/menu.lst

# DEVICE NAME CONVERSIONS 
#
#  Linux           Grub
# -------------------------
#  /dev/fd0        (fd0)
#  /dev/hda        (hd0)
#  /dev/hdb2       (hd1,1)
#  /dev/hda3       (hd0,2)
#

#  FRAMEBUFFER RESOLUTION SETTINGS
#     +-------------------------------------------------+
#          | 640x480    800x600    1024x768   1280x1024
#      ----+--------------------------------------------
#      256 | 0x301=769  0x303=771  0x305=773   0x307=775
#      32K | 0x310=784  0x313=787  0x316=790   0x319=793
#      64K | 0x311=785  0x314=788  0x317=791   0x31A=794
#      16M | 0x312=786  0x315=789  0x318=792   0x31B=795
#     +-------------------------------------------------+

# general configuration:
timeout   5
default   0
color light-blue/black light-cyan/blue

# boot sections follow
# each is implicitly numbered from 0 in the order of appearance below
#
# TIP: If you want a 1024x768 framebuffer, add "vga=773" to your kernel line.
#
#-*

# (0) Arch Linux
title  Arch Linux 2007 - Normal
root   (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sdd3 ro vga=773
initrd /kernel26.img

# (1) Arch Linux
title  Arch Linux 2007 - Safe Mode
root   (hd0,0)
kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/sdd3 ro vga=773
initrd /kernel26-fallback.img

# (2) Windows XP
title Windows XP - Service Pack 2
rootnoverify (hd2,0)
makeactive
chainloader +1

Suffice it say I can't load XP from the boot menu. I have to switch my drives in the BIOS to get into XP. I didn't want my boot loader on the XP partition. I would use USB stick, but my BIOS doesn't support booting off it, I don't believe. I was going to fix this part later. I hope all of this helps narrow down the situation!

Last edited by smitty (2008-01-18 16:01:21)

chicha

Member

From: France

Registered: 2007-04-20

Posts: 271

Re: having problems with pacman -R

Hi smitty !

Thank you for all those informations. They are very clear and usefull
Your menu.lst and /etc/fstab files seem OK to me
Your partitions seem OK according to the fsck tool (you managed very well with it by the way )

There are a few things which remain not clear :

- LVM : Did you installed your system within a LVM configuration ? Also did you removed the lvm2 package ?

- BIOS and disk order : It is not clear what the problem is. Have in mind one thing : In the menu.lst file hd0 is your first disk. If you change the configuration in the BIOS grub will not be able to boot your kernel properly.

- Did you manage to reinstall your kernel using a liveCD and the chroot WITHOUT ERRORS ?

- Did you manage to boot your system properly without the liveCD, ie whithout entering a ramfs + minimal shell ?

Thank you !

smitty

Member

Registered: 2008-01-17

Posts: 73

Re: having problems with pacman -R

Did I install LVM and remove it? Yes, because it wasn't even detecting any logical volumes. So, I figured, why even have it on boot up process.

As far the BIOS and disc order, I didn't edit anything before this kernel panic happened, except for trying to get my Windows partition booted.
The break down of this is that I have four complete hard drives. This is before I switch the two SATA channels (2nd and 3rd channel, in that order).
The BIOS sees as it this, and in Windows:

hd0 as SATA equivalent to C: drive in Windows as XP partition
hd1 as SATA equivalent to D: drive in Windows as ArchLinux partition
hd2 as IDE  equivalent to E: drive in Windows as free space for other OS
hd3 as IDE  equivalent to F: drive in Windows as free space for other OS

Here's what linux sees:

hd0 as 1st IDE  equivalent to /dev/sda in Arch as free space for other OS
hd1 as 2nd IDE  equivalent to /dev/sdb in Arch as free space for other OS
hd3 as 3rd SATA equivalent to /dev/sdc in Arch as XP parition
hd4 as 4th SATA equivalent to /dev/sdd in Arch as Archlinux partition

Then, after switching SATA channels, in Linux I get:

hd0 as SATA equivalent to /dev/sdd as ArchLinux parition
hd1 as IDE  equivalent to /dev/sdb as free space for other OS
hd2 as SATA equivalent to /dev/sdc as NTFS partition
hd3 as IDE  equivalent to /dev/sdd as free space for other OS

This is all verified according to Super-Grub, too.

Where there any errors on LiveCD and chroot? None.

Did I manage to properly boot the system without CD? No.

What I don't understand is why the depency modules were deleted when uninstalling nvidia. Just pondering why...

Last edited by smitty (2008-01-18 17:28:54)

chicha

Member

From: France

Registered: 2007-04-20

Posts: 271

Re: having problems with pacman -R

Did I install LVM and remove it? Yes, because it wasn't even detecting any logical volumes. So, I figured, why even have it on boot up process.

Having a system managed or not by LVM is not only related to adding/removing the lvm2 package.
See http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/LVM2 and http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Off … tall_Guide to have more information about this.

Using LVM involve formating and organizing your harddisk and partitions a particular way. If you have no idea of what it is, you probably do not use LVM. Anyway removing the package may also involve to modify a few config files such /etc/mkinitcipio.conf and /etc/rc.conf . We will see that later.

Now if you managed to successfully install your kernel and you have problems with modules.dep you can use the command depmod to regenerate it :
Boot with the livecd, enter the chroot like explained before and then run :

depmod -v 2.6.23-ARCH

I suppose you installed kernel 2.6.23 ... adapt if necessary
Tell me if the command failed !

This command will compute the dependencies between the kernel modules. See the man page for more info.
Try to reboot and report if there are still some errors. Also try with the fallback kernel.

I really hope we are going to fix this
I do not want to let you with this problem unsolved !

Anyway I am going to be less present the next two days (Weekend ). I will come here anyway and try to help you as I can !

smitty

Member

Registered: 2008-01-17

Posts: 73

Re: having problems with pacman -R

Consider the situation solved, but not the problem! I know how this may sound funny, because I decided to repartition my drives the way it should be for my situation. I previously had two partitions with one being a root partition (/dev/sdd3) and another a boot partition (/dev/sdd1). I, therefore, opted to re-install Arch with only one partition as root and boot partition, instead of using the auto-prepare, as the WIKI states. Every time, I tried to mount each drive, only one file system could be dealt with at a time, so for example, if I did this:

mount -t ext2 /dev/sdd1 /mnt
[i]mount -t proc none /mnt/proc
mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev
chroot /mnt /bin/bash
[/i]

It would automatically mount and seem to "chroot /mnt /bin/bash" and I would be in a complete shell, except that I wouldn't see the rest of my /boot directory files on /dev/sdd3. I tried "mount -t /dev/sdd3 /" and it wouldn't work as you think it would (no error messages, though). Also, if I did the following:

mount -t ext3 /dev/sdd3 /mnt
mount -t proc none /mnt/proc
mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev
chroot /mnt /bin/bash

I would get  the boot directory tree, but the rest of the drive on /dev/sdd1 I wouldn't see. I also tried, "mount -t ext2 /dev/sdd1 /", but it didn't work right, either.
I also tried the following:

mount -t ext3 /dev/sdd3 /mnt
mount -t ext2 /dev/sdd1 /mnt
mount -t proc none /mnt/proc
mount -o bin /dev /mnt/dev

It seemed to never operate with both commands, even though they are both Linux file systems. I wonder if the fact that one is ext2 and the other is ext3, if that has something to do with it. Just a thought perhaps...
This means you can enjoy your vacation, because this has me stumped (and you, I think)! And, it's not simple! I need to make it more simple, though and without knowing myself how the internals of this OS works, it makes it a lot tougher. So, I thank you for your time and your help in this. You have given me different insights and helped me learn more things on how the kernel works. I wish my school had taught me more on operating system design (coding and everything), but as it is, it was more focused on computer programming than computer science.
So, have a great vacation!

Last edited by smitty (2008-01-18 23:25:16)

chicha

Member

From: France

Registered: 2007-04-20

Posts: 271

Re: having problems with pacman -R

Thank you smitty.
I hope you will feel confortable with Arch on a long term. Do not be discouraged by the amount of things to learn . Once it is done
you will be very happy with such a system.

Also I really encourage you to read the Wiki. There are a lot of interesting things over there !

++
Chicha