Arch Linux

purple12

Member

Registered: 2008-08-16

Posts: 73

Just Another "Can't Boot After Kernel Upgrade" Issue.....

ok, it decided that since i had 29 days of uptime since the last upgrade, i'd give 'pacman -Syu' a shot.  first it asked that I u/g pacman itself, then it asked me a couple of questions about replacing something ...i wish i'd copied these questions, because i think they might have something to do with the fact that the u/g process took about two hours (!) and seemed to be basically replacing or upgrading every package on the system, including kernel-related stuff (yikes!)...i don't get it.  Anyway, when i did a restart to pick up changes (right?) and tried to bring the thing back up, it didn't get far...several references to missing init file(s)...
I didn't actually grab the output--prolly should have--before booting from an ubuntu live cd so i could get on the web and start reading.  Basically, i just need to know if there's a reasonably quick fix for getting back into my system.  Can i copy and / or edit some config file(s) from the old setup to let the new kernel know what to do?
HALP!!
--and thanx

kazuo

Member

From: São Paulo/Brazil

Registered: 2008-03-18

Posts: 413

Website

Re: Just Another "Can't Boot After Kernel Upgrade" Issue.....

If you dont post the errors ppl cannot help you.

purple12

Member

Registered: 2008-08-16

Posts: 73

Re: Just Another "Can't Boot After Kernel Upgrade" Issue.....

ok..that answers my question about a possible quick solution.  sorry for the vagueness.  anyway, i just restarted the box and transcribed most of what i saw on the screen.  i hope it's enough.  maybe i can chroot in and grab dmesg, but the errors seem mainly to result from a failure of the kernel to assemble and mount my arrays.  here's what i'm seeing.  I transcribed this by hand, so beware of typos and I put inline comments in <>:

::Running Hook [raid partitions]
md: will configure md1 (super-block) from /dev/sda2,/dev/sdb2,/dev/sdc2,/dev/sdd2...
modprobe: FATAL: could not load /lib/modules/2.6.31-ARCH/modules.dep: no such file or directory
<2 more of the above fatals>

::Running Hook [keymap]
Waiting 0 s for device /dev/md1...
::Initramfs Completed.  Control passing to kinit
IPConfig: no devices to configure
Waiting 0 s before mouting root device
modprobe: FATAL: could not load /lib/modules/2.6.31-ARCH/modules.dep: no such file or directory
modprobe: FATAL: could not load /lib/modules/2.6.31-ARCH/modules.dep: no such file or directory
modprobe: FATAL: could not load /lib/modules/2.6.31-ARCH/modules.dep: no such file or directory
modprobe: FATAL: could not load /lib/modules/2.6.31-ARCH/modules.dep: no such file or directory
<4 more similar fatals, prolly one for each array...guessing>

kinit: unable to mount root fs on device (9,1)
kinit: init not found!
kernel panic - not syncing. Attempting to kill init.

<small stack trace>

---thanx for your response, and i hope the new info helps...

Last edited by purple12 (2009-11-01 21:47:25)

purple12

Member

Registered: 2008-08-16

Posts: 73

Re: Just Another "Can't Boot After Kernel Upgrade" Issue.....

SOLVED!

thanks for letting me bug you over the w/e.  i just got my system
upgraded and it's booting and working totally error-free.  the root
cause of the broken kernel issue was actually quite simple: the kernel
installer didn't really know how to deal with my weird RAID setup,
which has /boot and /root on individual arrays. i ended up going in
with rescue disk, assembling the arrays, mounting everything,
chrooting in and re-running the kernel install--fixed!
yay!
thx again.