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kaspi

Member

From: CERN, Geneva

Registered: 2007-10-05

Posts: 24

Website

my computer does not boot after upgrade to 2.6.24

Hi all,

I've spent whole day to solve this problem, but I haven't manage Now, I rely on you ...

I had stock kernel 2.6.23 and (unfortunately) decided to install new ATI catalyst drivers. The new kernel 2.6.24 was required as a dependency. Besides the new kernel there were a few more dependencies, which I do not remember exactly. I'm sure there was klibc-kdb which conflicted with kdb. Hence, I removed the kdb package. Then the installation went smoothly, but I could not boot afterwards. There were some error messages:

:: Loading Initramfs
:: Running Hook [udev]
:: Loading udev ... done
:: Running Hook [keymap]
:: Loading keymap
:: Running Hook [resume]
:: Running Hook [filesystems]
:: Loading root filesystem module ...
Attempting to create root device '/dev/sda2'
ERROR: Failed to parse block device name for '/dev/sda2'
unknown
ERROR: root fs cannot be detected. Try using the rootfstype= kernel parameter.
Waiting for devices to settle ... done

Evidently, the problem is that /dev/sda2 does not exist. Running
ramfs$ echo dev/*
yields many things but no sda*, no hda*, no sdb*, nothing resembling a harddisk.

As I was (and still am) quite desperate I compiled another kernel (via Knoppix and chroot tricks). In particular, 2.6.23-vanilla from AUR. Booting that kernel leads to the same problem as described above. So, it may not be fault of kernel but something else (udev, hooks, ... I have no clue).

I would be extremely grateful for any hint, idea, simply for anything which may help

Thanks in advance, Kaspi.

Blind

Member

From: Desert mountain

Registered: 2005-02-06

Posts: 386

Re: my computer does not boot after upgrade to 2.6.24

What hooks do you have in your mkinitcpio.conf, what modules are in the MODULES array?
You should have, depending on your system, one of either ide, pata, sata or scsi hooks, or load the relevant modules by hand (I think).

Cheers,
Blind

kaspi

Member

From: CERN, Geneva

Registered: 2007-10-05

Posts: 24

Website

Re: my computer does not boot after upgrade to 2.6.24

Thanks much for your reply. The hooks in mkinitcpio.conf are

HOOKS="base udev autodetect pata scsi sata keymap resume filesystems"

When building a kernel, the hooks are properly built

>>> Generating initial ramdisk, using mkinitcpio.  Please wait...
==> Building image "default"
==> Running command: /sbin/mkinitcpio -k 2.6.24-ARCH -c /etc/mkinitcpio.conf -g                        /boot/kernel26.img
:: Begin build
:: Parsing hook [base]
:: Parsing hook [udev]
:: Parsing hook [autodetect]
:: Parsing hook [pata]
:: Parsing hook [scsi]
:: Parsing hook [sata]
:: Parsing hook [keymap]
:: Parsing hook [resume]
:: Parsing hook [filesystems]
:: Generating module dependencies
:: Generating image '/boot/kernel26.img'...SUCCESS
==> SUCCESS

The only problem is that the hooks are not run when booting.

My modules in rc.conf are

MODULES=(tg3 snd-mixer-oss snd-pcm-oss snd-page-alloc snd-pcm snd-timer snd snd-hda-intel soundcore fuse fglrx)

But I doubt this has any effect as booting stopped before mounting the root fs where the rc.conf resides.

Surprisingly, I solved my problem by installing (again with help of Knoppix and chroot) 2.6.25mm kernel from unstable. But still I wonder what went wrong, hence if someone has idea...

Thanks, Kaspi.

brain0

Developer

From: Aachen - Germany

Registered: 2005-01-03

Posts: 1,382

Re: my computer does not boot after upgrade to 2.6.24

This selective upgrade process is not a good idea with mkinitcpio and klibc-*, please do a complete pacman -Syu. You should try to upgrade mkinitcpio to version 0.5.18.1 and run 'mkinitcpio -p kernel26' to make your 2.6.24 bootable again. If that doesn't help, I'd need a complete filelist of the kernel26.img file.

kaspi

Member

From: CERN, Geneva

Registered: 2007-10-05

Posts: 24

Website

Re: my computer does not boot after upgrade to 2.6.24

Thanks much brain0,

it really helped Just for my information, what's wrong with the selective upgrade? Is the newer kernel incompatible with the old mkinitcpio? If so, shouldn't that be governed by dependencies?

Thanks, Kaspi.