[SOLVED] botched kernel26 upgrade

fatlarry · 2008-05-14 17:21:29

Just tried a "pacman -S kernel26". Everything went OK, mkinitcpio launched and made the new ramdisks, so according to pacman, complete success.

Reboot ... well, another story: lots of messages about missing the old /lib/modules/2.6.22-ARCH directory and drivers; uname -a confirms still alive and kicking the old kernel version, 2.6.22 that is.

Now the funny part: double checked LILO, it launches /boot/vmlinuz26. Checked vmlinuz26, and has the same datestamp and size as the one inside the 2.6.24.4-1 package that supposedly upgraded successfully. What the heck? How can I still surrepticiously launch the old bugger, and how do I make it "kaput" and launch the new stuff instead? As I said, my lilo.conf points to /boot/vmlinuz26, and my bet is that this WAS upgraded. Even did /sbin/lilo to make sure that's what I launch.

I know I probably should boot in recovery mode and revert to the old kernel, that's not the answer I'm looking for, eventually I could do that if all else fails.

Last edited by fatlarry (2008-06-26 17:34:09)

bender02 · 2008-05-14 20:45:44

Instead of updating just the kernel, you should probably update the whole system. At least the kernel dependencies (coreutils, module-init-tools, mkinitcpio, and their deps... pretty much the whole base group would be good). I think a lot of errors you're getting are because some scripts/programs which need to "cooperate" with the kernel and modules were not updated.

fatlarry · 2008-05-14 20:58:43

I thought pacman takes care automatically of that (well, more or less: upgrading klibc-kbd, it did not figure out it needed to update kbd as well ... so I had to do it manually ...)

But I'll check to see if I am up to date on some of the packages you suggested. (Iknow for sure I had to update mkinitcpio and klibc, klibc-udev and the like ...)

bender02 · 2008-05-14 21:34:17

The way pacman works is that "pacman -S <package>" installs *only* that package (and deps if they're not already installed). If you want to update only certain packages, you need to "pacman -Su --ignore <package1> --ignore <package2> ..." At least that's the only way I know about.

Generally, I think it's better to have the whole system up-to-date, or at least updated at more-less the same time. If you don't, you're likely to have a problem, and if you come to forums with it, you're going to get "update this and that".

Zepp · 2008-05-14 22:40:04

Had this happen to me, it was way back so I can't remember if I just upgraded the kernel or what but it was very frustrating finding out that arch automatically deletes the old modules directory. Especially annoying when the box is a remote headless machine with no cdrom drive and no longer has function network or usb support since the modules don't exist

fatlarry · 2008-05-15 11:30:18

Thanks to everybody who replied and helped !

I do not know exactly what fixed it, but here's what I did:

- booted in recovery mode, and "dumped" the /lib/modules/2.6.22-ARCH to my boot partition

- normal boot, now pacman restarted to work, so I updated "coreutils" and again "kernel26"

- took another look an my lilo.conf and found some bugs that I didn't catch first: the ramdisks referred to pointed to "hda3" instead of "sda5" (although my drive is IDE, the installer saw it as sda, so I went with what worked before)

- /sbin/lilo and this time it showed adding the entries to the partition table, and then success upon reboot.

Still bummed though where that 2.6.22 kernel was coming from though, as I do not recall any significant difference in lilo.conf: before the upgrade, the image was /boot/vmlinuz26, after the upgrade I believe it was the same, just the actual file changed for kernel 2.6.24 !

And I do strongly agree Zepp- for something as daring as a kernel update, I think it would be SANE to keep the old kernel/modules around as a backup option.

bender02 · 2008-05-15 14:43:23

fatlarry wrote:

And I do strongly agree Zepp- for something as daring as a kernel update, I think it would be SANE to keep the old kernel/modules around as a backup option.

As an arch user, you're more than welcome to implement it yourself, if you want. There are some scripts around, which actually do (some part of) the job already: savekernel, so you might start with that.

Raqua · 2009-06-21 17:49:09

I am having the same problem.

I upgraded from 2.6.28 to 2.6.29 (and tried to go to 2.6.30 as well, with the same result as with 2.6.29).
Upgrade went smooth. Mkinitcpio reported double success. My whole system is up to date btw.

After reboot I got a lot of messages saying that /lib/modules/2.6.28 sometihing is missing. System booted to kdm, but I could not log in because I have USB keyboard and the module was not loaded. I was tinkering a bit with this and found out, that modules were recreated in a correct way to directory /lib/modules/2.6.29, but my system was still booting 2.6.28 kernel.
I even tried to manually remove /boot kernel images, but it did not help.
I did back up 2.6.28 modules and when I copy them back to /lib/modules my system boots, with old kernel just fine.

jpe30 · 2009-06-23 18:06:35

I think I may be having a similar problem. I just updated to the newest 2.6.30 kernel, and it appears that the majority, if not all, of my .conf files are gone. KDM does not start, so I'm not exactly sure what I need to do here. I know I must need the .conf files, but I have no idea where they went, or how to generate new ones.

bender02 · 2009-06-23 18:38:13

Well if .conf files are missing that it's for sure not the same problem as described above. You can get the default .conf files back by reinstalling the packages that are missing them.
By what you write, it looks more like you did a hard reboot and that screwed up your filesystem slightly. If that's the case, try fscking it.

jpe30 · 2009-06-23 18:44:59

Just ran an fsck with no luck. Any other suggestions?

Raqua · 2009-06-23 20:41:15

@jpe30: Please, your problem is something else than this thread is about, open a new one, so we keep on topic.

Anyone have a clue about what is going on with my kernel update? I still have not solved this.

fphillips · 2009-06-23 23:12:39

Raqua, if you use lilo, you have to run it after each kernel upgrade.

Raqua · 2009-06-24 07:24:15

I use grub.

Arch Linux

#1 2008-05-14 17:21:29

[SOLVED] botched kernel26 upgrade

#2 2008-05-14 20:45:44

Re: [SOLVED] botched kernel26 upgrade

#3 2008-05-14 20:58:43

Re: [SOLVED] botched kernel26 upgrade

#4 2008-05-14 21:34:17

Re: [SOLVED] botched kernel26 upgrade

#5 2008-05-14 22:40:04

Re: [SOLVED] botched kernel26 upgrade

#6 2008-05-15 11:30:18

Re: [SOLVED] botched kernel26 upgrade

#7 2008-05-15 14:43:23

Re: [SOLVED] botched kernel26 upgrade

#8 2009-06-21 17:49:09

Re: [SOLVED] botched kernel26 upgrade

#9 2009-06-23 18:06:35

Re: [SOLVED] botched kernel26 upgrade

#10 2009-06-23 18:38:13

Re: [SOLVED] botched kernel26 upgrade

#11 2009-06-23 18:44:59

Re: [SOLVED] botched kernel26 upgrade

#12 2009-06-23 20:41:15

Re: [SOLVED] botched kernel26 upgrade

#13 2009-06-23 23:12:39

Re: [SOLVED] botched kernel26 upgrade

#14 2009-06-24 07:24:15

Re: [SOLVED] botched kernel26 upgrade

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