Arch Linux

laumars

Member

Registered: 2008-02-28

Posts: 27

upgrading the kernel has brought the whole system down

it seems that on my custom built NAS system, pacman only did half a job upgrading the kernel. Though uname reports the correct kernel version (2.6.26), none of the modules get pulled from the correct location as they're all still looking at /lib/modules/2.6.24-ARCH.

what this means is that my NAS system is currently without a network interface (amongst a couple of other devices which are less critical) - which pretty much rendered the whole device pointless/useless as now none of the data held on the NAS drive is accessable.

i tried symlinking a 2.6.24-ARCH -> 2.6.26-ARCH but that had no effect

after doing a search through google, it seems it's not that uncommon for this to happen either. yet nobody has provided any solution beyond "reinstall" (which is far from ideal as i have to take the whole bleeding system apart just to fit in a CD drive - which wouldn't normally be required)

not a happy man as it took me the best part of a weekend, building and configuring the system in the 1st place - so if anyone has any proper fixes then i'd love to hear it

Last edited by laumars (2008-09-23 22:11:04)

jacko

Member

Registered: 2007-11-23

Posts: 838

Re: upgrading the kernel has brought the whole system down

I am just gonna ask the stupid question, but did you restart?

depmod

http://linux.about.com/library/cmd/blcmdl8_depmod.htm

always double check pacman logs, did you miss any special instructions? Why did you wait so long to update? arch is a rolling release distribution, updates need to be run regularly for the system to stay stable.

Last edited by jacko (2008-09-24 00:19:22)

laumars

Member

Registered: 2008-02-28

Posts: 27

Re: upgrading the kernel has brought the whole system down

Thanks for a speedy response

I am just gonna ask the stupid question, but did you restart?

depmod

http://linux.about.com/library/cmd/blcmdl8_depmod.htm

I did and it didn't seem to do anything (just hung ther for an age)

I'll give it another try tonight though.

always double check pacman logs, did you miss any special instructions?

I went through the logs twice before the initial reboot so i don't think i missed anything, but I'll happily have another check just in case.

Why did you wait so long to update? arch is a rolling release distribution, updates need to be run regularly for the system to stay stable.

That's one of the reasons i was drawn to arch, however I only built the system using the latest ISO about 6 months ago. How regularly do does the updates need to be applied?

klixon

Member

From: Nederland

Registered: 2007-01-17

Posts: 525

Re: upgrading the kernel has brought the whole system down

I usually pacman -Syu once a week...

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Stand back, intruder, or i'll blast you out of space! I am Klixon and I don't want any dealings with you human lifeforms. I'm a cyborg!

dav7

Member

From: Australia

Registered: 2008-02-08

Posts: 674

Re: upgrading the kernel has brought the whole system down

From my experience, at least one of the community, extra, or base repos updates more than once a day.

Sooo...

-dav7

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Windows was made for looking at success from a distance through a wall of oversimplicity. Linux removes the wall, so you can just walk up to success and make it your own.
--
Reinventing the wheel is fun. You get to redefine pi.

laumars

Member

Registered: 2008-02-28

Posts: 27

Re: upgrading the kernel has brought the whole system down

as often as that?

Blimey. I guess you live and learn

paulez

Member

Registered: 2007-07-28

Posts: 24

Re: upgrading the kernel has brought the whole system down

What is the output of pacman -Ql kernel26 ?
Have you tried to reinstall the kernel package from cache (pacman -U /var/cache/pacman/pkg/kernel26-2.6.26.5-1-i686.pkg.tar.gz) ?

laumars

Member

Registered: 2008-02-28

Posts: 27

Re: upgrading the kernel has brought the whole system down

right, i found the problem.
it turned out that it was lilo causing the trouble. The moment i set grub to the boot menu all the modules popped up happy as larry.

I suspect (bare in mind i'm no expert) that pacman was updating vmlinuz26 under /boot/ but lilo wasn't reading in the changes where as grub was.

this might be a wider problem than just my server so perhaps I need to raise a bug report on this or documentation needs to be amended to reflect this problem?

Thanks for your help on this guys.:D

Last edited by laumars (2008-10-01 20:44:39)

Snowman

Developer/Forum Fellow

From: Montreal, Canada

Registered: 2004-08-20

Posts: 5,212

Re: upgrading the kernel has brought the whole system down

If you use lilo, you need to run lilo after  you update the kernel.