Arch Linux

Haiyadragon

Member

Registered: 2006-03-21

Posts: 56

System completely broken after update

First X wouldn't start. I hit enter on yes but it didn't show me the report anyway. In the log it said it was missing font type "fixed". I tried installing some font types but Pacman is giving me permission denied errors even though I'm root. ls /usr also produces permission denied errors... So then I tried pacman -Scc and it gave me a kernel null pointer error and completely crashed Linux. A hard reset was necessary. I've done this a few times now with same results.

Is there something wrong with the new kernel? I'm kind of reluctant to boot back in there until I have some indication what it could be. Any help and suggestions would be appreciated.

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: System completely broken after update

A kernel null pointer error on pacman -Scc? No way that should happen... I am not exactly knowledgable in this sort of thing, but when I hear about (or see) the kernel crashing like that, the first thing I think is "memtest". Wait for someone else's word on that though, as I said I am not very knowledgable about such things.

Aside from that, when was the last time you updated your system?

Haiyadragon

Member

Registered: 2006-03-21

Posts: 56

Re: System completely broken after update

Updated yesterday. Problems occured first boot after that. Windows has no problem (I know nobody wants to hear that) so it's probably not a memory thing. I could be the disk but even that shouldn't crash the kernel right? The disk is very new as is the rest of the system.

Haiyadragon

Member

Registered: 2006-03-21

Posts: 56

Re: System completely broken after update

Woh I tried a rescue disk to chroot into the system. Both pacman and manual rm /var/cache/pacman/pkg/* crashed the system. When doing it without chroot it rebooted  :shock:

Seems like it's a disk thingy. I've formatted and installed Ubuntu on that partition. So far no problems. I tried a fsck but it revealed very little. Maybe reiser did something weird. Is there a way to do a full integrity scan?

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: System completely broken after update

Use the -f option, also look at what --help says... Also, if you think your HDD is the culprit you might want to try the proprietary utilities that the vender provides. There should be a version you can put on a floppy...

Updated yesterday. Problems occured first boot after that. Windows has no problem (I know nobody wants to hear that) so it's probably not a memory thing. I could be the disk but even that shouldn't crash the kernel right? The disk is very new as is the rest of the system.

Uh, sorry... I meant, when did you last update before the one that caused the problems?

Haiyadragon

Member

Registered: 2006-03-21

Posts: 56

Re: System completely broken after update

Oh, don't know precisely. But I update pretty much every day.

Haiyadragon

Member

Registered: 2006-03-21

Posts: 56

Re: System completely broken after update

Ok, so I filled the partition up to 100% (on the new install) because I don't know another way to test it. Anyway I did that and deleted the huge files again without any problems.

What the hell is going on?

codemac

Member

From: Cliche Tech Place

Registered: 2005-05-13

Posts: 794

Website

Re: System completely broken after update

I think your partition could be UBERLY borked.

Just a thought.  Get you fsck on.

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user

Member

Registered: 2006-03-29

Posts: 465

Re: System completely broken after update

Maybe reiser did something weird. Is there a way to do a full integrity scan?

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?t=22466

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Haiyadragon

Member

Registered: 2006-03-21

Posts: 56

Re: System completely broken after update

Hmm, maybe I'll switch to ext3. Ubuntu sucks for compiling my own stuff. I need Arch

I think it was a reiserfs thing. I hope.

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: System completely broken after update

Could be, ReiserFS is not exactly known for being uber-stable from what I know, in spite of its long period of use.

As I said though, you might want to run memtest if you experienced a kernel crash like that.