Arch Linux

andrew123456

Member

Registered: 2008-08-31

Posts: 32

regular kernel updates?

hey everyone, i migrated to arch about a week ago after having used ubuntu for the past while. and in the last 3 days i've had to roll my kernel back about 3 times. each time i tried a new kernel, i was unable to boot, and i've had to roll back to the CD version (2.6.25 i think) which works great for me.

so my question is this; should i be updating my kernel on a regular basis when a new one comes out? have the last few been a fluke? or should i just freeze my kernel where it is for a little while?

fukawi2

Ex-Administratorino

From: .vic.au

Registered: 2007-09-28

Posts: 6,223

Website

Re: regular kernel updates?

Having used Arch for probably around 12 months now, on at least 5 different computers... You situation sounds pretty unusual. Then again, it could be a hardware conflict and is going to happen anytime you upgrade the kernel from now on perhaps?

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SnapShot

Member

Registered: 2008-08-26

Posts: 43

Re: regular kernel updates?

Really strange situatuion. I am using arch in the last 3 months, and have updated kernel more than 5 times and never had any problems with booting. You need to give us more info.

What error does the kernel display when it doesn't boot? Did you let mkinitcpio finish its job after the kernel update? Have you modified /etc/mkinitcpio.conf? What configuration are you runing for your root partitiion? Is it located on SATA, SCSI, RAID, USB HDD....? Anything you think could be rleated to the problem.

fumbles

Member

Registered: 2006-12-22

Posts: 246

Re: regular kernel updates?

More importantly, what sort of devices do you have? ie anything that needs to be installed against the current kernel. eg nVidia/ATi drivers, ndiswrapper, etc . These need to be resinstalled on a kernel update.

Xyne

Administrator/PM

Registered: 2008-08-03

Posts: 6,963

Website

Re: regular kernel updates?

Hi andrew123456,

When you update the kernel, read the pacman output. It will give you warnings of things that you need to manually change if there are any. As this thread explains, pacman is not an automatic system maintenance program.

I think most Archers use the latest kernel without any problems. That doesn't mean that it always works for everyone, but in general you should not run into trouble when updating as long as you do it correctly. If you want to be on the safe side, hold off on kernel updates for a few days after they end up in the core. That will let you see if anyone else has issues with it. You can use this command to update everything except the kernel:

pacman -Syu --ignore kernel26

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iphitus

Forum Fellow

From: Melbourne, Australia

Registered: 2004-10-09

Posts: 4,927

Re: regular kernel updates?

Or instead of blindly rolling it back and ignoring it, how about we fix the problem here and make sure the newer versions work....

how does it fail? what is the last ten lines of output on boot at least?

zenlord

Member

From: Belgium

Registered: 2006-05-24

Posts: 1,221

Website

Re: regular kernel updates?

First thing that comes to mind is that mkinitcpio.conf is not setup correctly so that some modules are not loaded upon boot.

logs?

Zl.

bangkok_manouel

Member

From: indicates a starting point

Registered: 2005-02-07

Posts: 1,556

Re: regular kernel updates?

First thing that comes to mind is that mkinitcpio.conf is not setup correctly so that some modules are not loaded upon boot.

logs?

Zl.

can be easily confirmed if fallback is booting properly.