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#1 2011-06-17 05:47:42

zhobbs
Member
Registered: 2010-08-01
Posts: 11

[SOLVED] System keeps booting old kernel

What I did:
- was on kernel-2.6.38
- pacman -Syu
- this included an upgrade to kernel-2.6.39
- rebooted

What happened:
- During reboot I see "FATAL: Could not load /lib/modules/2.6.38-ARCH/modules.dep: No such file or directory"
- uname shows it's booting into 2.6.38
- I see /lib/modules/2.6.39-ARCH/modules.dep and of course a basically empty folder for 2.6.38

So I recovered from this by downgrading the kernel back to 2.6.38 via: "pacman -U /var/cache/pacman/pkg/<kernel-2.6.38>"

How can I fix this?  I've tried to "re-upgrade" to 2.6.39 and the same thing happened and I downgraded again.  I've noticed I have to use an old nvidia driver, which is ok today, but I'd like to figure out what is going on so I can upgrade eventually.

Last edited by zhobbs (2011-08-21 23:15:48)

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#2 2011-06-17 05:53:24

ewaller
Administrator
From: Pasadena, CA
Registered: 2009-07-13
Posts: 19,740

Re: [SOLVED] System keeps booting old kernel

Check to make sure your boot partition is mounted before you do the update.  If is not mounted, the new kernel is saved inside the /boot directory that is supposed to be the mount point for the boot partition.  Grub still uses the kernel on the boot partition, not the one at /boot.

If the partition is mounted at /boot, then the files actually get written to the boot partition.  When you did the update, the modules did get updated and the old ones removed.  The old kernel (the one still on the boot partition) cannot find its modules.


Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature -- Michael Faraday
Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine. -- Alan Turing
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#3 2011-06-17 06:06:52

zhobbs
Member
Registered: 2010-08-01
Posts: 11

Re: [SOLVED] System keeps booting old kernel

I don't have a separate /boot partition, it's part of my root mount point, so it's definitely mounted.

Grub still uses the kernel on the boot partition, not the one at /boot.

What I did previous to this is was clone my hard drive, so I actually did "grub-install" from a "/boot/grub" on a whole different drive.  How can I tell where Grub thinks by /boot should be?

Thanks,
Zach

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#4 2011-06-17 06:25:05

ewaller
Administrator
From: Pasadena, CA
Registered: 2009-07-13
Posts: 19,740

Re: [SOLVED] System keeps booting old kernel

Well, at boot time, hit 'e' during the countdown.  That will put you into a simple editor that shows the grub commands.  Make sure that the root command corresponds to the root partition called out in the kernel command line.  Here are mine

root   (hd0,4)
kernel /vmlinuz26 root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/73796934-070f-4e79-a973-229432222e58 ro
initrd /kernel26.img

On my system, that UUID is /dev/sda8, but I use different root and boot partitions.  Yours should both point to the same partition.
Note: The grub format is zero based, whereas the /dev format is unity based.   i.e. (0,0) maps to sda1, (0,1) to sda2, (1,0) to sdb1, etc...

Other things to verify:
See that the file at /boot/grub/menu.lst correlates to the commands in the grub menu
See that the kernel at /boot corresponds to the modules in /lib/modules (Check the date codes on the modules v.s. that of the kernel)


Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature -- Michael Faraday
Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine. -- Alan Turing
---
How to Ask Questions the Smart Way

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#5 2011-08-21 23:15:05

zhobbs
Member
Registered: 2010-08-01
Posts: 11

Re: [SOLVED] System keeps booting old kernel

In case anyone is having similar issues, I never got this working with legacy grub.  However, I did upgrade to grub2 and it's working now.

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#6 2023-03-03 13:58:17

Firestar
Member
From: Beijing, China
Registered: 2021-07-19
Posts: 80
Website

Re: [SOLVED] System keeps booting old kernel

I have the same problem, but on grub2


Write programs that do one thing and do it well.
Write programs to work together.
Write programs to handle text streams, because that is a universal interface.

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#7 2023-03-03 16:56:30

ewaller
Administrator
From: Pasadena, CA
Registered: 2009-07-13
Posts: 19,740

Re: [SOLVED] System keeps booting old kernel

Firestar, I am going to close this 12 year old thread.  If you have a problem, please feel free to start a new thread.
Thanks.

Closed.


Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature -- Michael Faraday
Sometimes it is the people no one can imagine anything of who do the things no one can imagine. -- Alan Turing
---
How to Ask Questions the Smart Way

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