Kernel upgrade problem

warm · 2013-03-06 04:11:46

Today I get "kernel panic" after usual 'pacman -Syu' and next 'reboot' commands. This is not a first time. I cannot explain why but after successfull 'pacman -Syu' I printed 'reboot' in root terminal and got kernel panic. Filesystem was not umounted correctly. Then after reboot I got tzdata files with zerro size (may be because pacman has upgraded tzdata and kernel and tzdata files were not synced on the disk?). So there are at least three questions:

1. Why kernel panic happens when upgrading the kernel ? Is this because modules from new kernel are not usable for old one ?

2. How correctly upgrade the kernel to prevent kernel panic or file system crash ? Should I use 'sync' command ? Should I turn off daemons and programs ?

3. How can I find all corrupted packages installed on my system and reinstall them in true way (with no --forece) ?

straykat · 2013-03-06 06:14:21

warm, not a lot to go on here.

Can you duplicate the kernel panic?

With the "Filesystem was not umounted correctly", do you have / all on one partition? If not (e.g. /usr on it's own hard drive/partition) have you modified your /etc/mkinitcpio.conf to match?

Do you have any drivers such as Nvidia or WIFI installed from third parties?

When a kernel is updated so are the kernel modules in /usr/lib/modules/ so there should not be any old modules.

There is no way to find "corrupted packages" in /var/cache/pacman/pkg/ that I know of, however if you suspect a package is corrupt (very carefully) remove it my hand, then using pacman -S reinstall the suspect package so pacman will then need to re-download the package.

warm · 2013-03-06 06:30:02

straykat wrote:

warm, not a lot to go on here.
Can you duplicate the kernel panic?
With the "Filesystem was not umounted correctly", do you have / all on one partition? If not (e.g. /usr on it's own hard drive/partition) have you modified your /etc/mkinitcpio.conf to match?
Do you have any drivers such as Nvidia or WIFI installed from third parties?
When a kernel is updated so are the kernel modules in /usr/lib/modules/ so there should not be any old modules.
There is no way to find "corrupted packages" in /var/cache/pacman/pkg/ that I know of, however if you suspect a package is corrupt (very carefully) remove it my hand, then using pacman -S reinstall the suspect package so pacman will then need to re-download the package.

I can not reproduce this kernel panic on upgrade. I tried to upgrade one moor PC with current packages but it comletely different from my first PC (on witch I got kernel paic)

On the first PC (with kernel panic) I used default Archlinux partitions (root, boot, home and swap are the separate partitions). I did memtest when installed archlinux, tested hdd so hardware should be fine.

I have no third parties drivers but all software from pacman repos and AUR. From AUR I compiled only applications not kernel parts. I have Nvidia card and use nouveau whitch is a part of pacman repo.

straykat · 2013-03-06 07:04:33

Can we assume the kernel panic has resolved (can no longer be duplicated)?

The kernel panic you saw printed out on your console may have simply been a one of as the system halted & may have been caused by the upgraded kernel & modules. Remembering that until you reboot you are using the now old kernel & modules. Once rebooted with the new kernel & modules all should be working as expected.

Did you have any "old" modules left over in /usr/lib/modules/?

Have you been able to re-install tzdata successfully?

warm · 2013-03-06 07:09:21

straykat wrote:

Can we assume the kernel panic has resolved (can no longer be duplicated)?
The kernel panic you saw printed out on your console may have simply been a one of as the system halted & may have been caused by the upgraded kernel & modules. Remembering that until you reboot you are using the now old kernel & modules. Once rebooted with the new kernel & modules all should be working as expected.
Did you have any "old" modules left over in /usr/lib/modules/?
Have you been able to re-install tzdata successfully?

No I ahve no any old modules.

I reinstalled tzdata unfortunately only with -f key.

warm · 2013-06-05 09:22:39

Esterday I have got yet server fault when upgraded kernel from 3.8.11 to 3.9.4. Sever with no monitor so when I connected monitor today I did not see anything - monitor was blank.

Now I guess that there is kerenel oops some time when kernel upgrade happens. Server can not reboot correctly and goes to kernel oops. Although for me there is no difference between kernel_oops ans kernel_panic -- in both cases I lose remote control to the server and I need switch power off/on by hands.

I can not use hardware watchdog on every my remotely managed archlinux machine (can be desktop mother board or other reason why iTCO_wdt dos not work) which should help on panic or oops.

Now I hope that

kernel.panic_on_oops = 1
kernel.panic = 600

will help when the problem happens again. Until this morning this two strings were commented out in /etc/sysctl.conf :-).

Arch Linux

#1 2013-03-06 04:11:46

Kernel upgrade problem

#2 2013-03-06 06:14:21

Re: Kernel upgrade problem

#3 2013-03-06 06:30:02

Re: Kernel upgrade problem

#4 2013-03-06 07:04:33

Re: Kernel upgrade problem

#5 2013-03-06 07:09:21

Re: Kernel upgrade problem

#6 2013-06-05 09:22:39

Re: Kernel upgrade problem

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