[Solved] Kernel won't finish upgrading

phunni · 2011-08-31 20:35:47

I did a pacman -Syu today and part of the update was the linux package. Unfortunately, it froze on

-> Parsing hook: [autodetect]

After several hours, I killed the upgrade process and did

pacman -S linux

It froze again in exactly the same place. I'm now somewhat nervous of rebooting my machine, since I'm not sure that the kernel is installed properly... How can I get passed this and have a properly booting and upgraded machine?

Last edited by phunni (2011-09-01 07:19:48)

lilsirecho · 2011-08-31 20:46:42

Perhaps you haven't changed the grub menulist to reflect the new kernel ID as described in archlinux home page news.

phunni · 2011-08-31 20:52:12

If you mean the changes from when the package became linux (http://www.archlinux.org/news/changes-t … filenames/), then I have. Did it a while ago.

lilsirecho · 2011-08-31 20:54:10

Have you tried the fallback?

phunni · 2011-08-31 21:31:20

I haven't tried rebooting at all - I'm too scared to be honest! Obviously, if there's no other option, I'll have to. I'm rather hoping, though, that there's a way of successfully completing the upgrade.

I noticed that there were a number of mkinitcpio processes - presumably from all my attempts. I tried killing them all incase that would free it up, but I got exactly the same result.

phunni · 2011-08-31 21:37:39

I've also tried clearing the cache and redownloading the package - but the result is the same...

phunni · 2011-08-31 21:42:21

Currently downloading an older version of the kernel to see if a downgrade will work...

phunni · 2011-08-31 21:43:55

Nope - same result... :-(

graysky · 2011-08-31 21:50:04

You can also boot from live media and rebuild the kernel. See the "install existing" article on the wiki. How about trying a totally different kernel package like kernel26-lts?

lilsirecho · 2011-08-31 21:53:28

Maybe the hardware time is wrong?

ataraxia · 2011-08-31 22:25:56

Several thoughts:

Edit: Is your mkinitcpio up to date? There used to be a bug that caused it to hang like this. If you've got an upgrade to mkinitcpio coming in with your kernel upgrade, upgrade mkinitcpio first, and then do the kernel with the new mkinitcpio.

The autodetect hook runs the code in the build function of /lib/initcpio/install/autodetect, which in turn runs the auto_modules function from /lib/initcpio/functions. Look at these and try to figure out what in there could be hanging.

Does "mkinitcpio -M" also hang? It runs the same autodetect function (but with different output).

Check what child processes (if any) the hung mkinitcpios have before you kill them. (pstree may help with this)

Don't forget that /sbin/mkinitcpio itself is actually a shell script. Change the first line of it (temporarily) from just "#!/bin/bash" to "#!/bin/bash -x" and you will get gobs of debugging info when mkinitcpio runs.

You don't have to actually reinstall the kernel package again to retry mkinitcpio - you can just do "mkinitcpio -p linux", which is what pacman runs for you on kernel upgrades.

Last edited by ataraxia (2011-08-31 22:53:00)

phunni · 2011-09-01 07:04:18

Thanks for the help! It appears to be getting stuck running the following:

 /sbin/mdadm -Esv /dev/sda /dev/sda1 /dev/sdb /dev/sdb1 /dev/sdc /dev/sdc1 /dev/sdc2 /dev/sdd /dev/sdg /dev/sdg1 /dev/sdg2 '/dev/ida/*' '/dev/cciss/*' '/dev/ataraid/*' /dev/mapper/control /dev/mapper/vg-syshome /dev/mapper/vg-sysroot /dev/mapper/vg-sysswap

According to ps, there are several mdadm processes running. I have tried killing them with 'killall -9 mdadm' but they won't die...

phunni · 2011-09-01 07:05:25

BTW -I'm not using RAID at all, but I am using LVM2

cbowman57 · 2011-09-01 07:10:37

Are you running RAID on your system?

If not it looks like you are running a module that is unneeded, if that is the case wouldn't rc.d stop mdadm kill it? (as root of course)

phunni · 2011-09-01 07:19:29

I'm not running RAID. I tried the process outlined here: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 84#p542584 and it has worked. Still a little bit nervous about a repeat since I still don't know the cause, but at least it's working for now...

cbowman57 · 2011-09-01 07:55:34

Glad you got it working.

Seems odd though that autodetect found mdadm initially. I'd go though all the configuration files and see if I could find where it's getting loaded & disable it if it were me, but maybe it's run by default? Which doesn't make sense, I run Raid and I had to edit the mkinitcpio.conf myself to include mdadm.

If you do truly solve the problem I'd like to know how you did it.

Arch Linux

#1 2011-08-31 20:35:47

[Solved] Kernel won't finish upgrading

#2 2011-08-31 20:46:42

Re: [Solved] Kernel won't finish upgrading

#3 2011-08-31 20:52:12

Re: [Solved] Kernel won't finish upgrading

#4 2011-08-31 20:54:10

Re: [Solved] Kernel won't finish upgrading

#5 2011-08-31 21:31:20

Re: [Solved] Kernel won't finish upgrading

#6 2011-08-31 21:37:39

Re: [Solved] Kernel won't finish upgrading

#7 2011-08-31 21:42:21

Re: [Solved] Kernel won't finish upgrading

#8 2011-08-31 21:43:55

Re: [Solved] Kernel won't finish upgrading

#9 2011-08-31 21:50:04

Re: [Solved] Kernel won't finish upgrading

#10 2011-08-31 21:53:28

Re: [Solved] Kernel won't finish upgrading

#11 2011-08-31 22:25:56

Re: [Solved] Kernel won't finish upgrading

#12 2011-09-01 07:04:18

Re: [Solved] Kernel won't finish upgrading

#13 2011-09-01 07:05:25

Re: [Solved] Kernel won't finish upgrading

#14 2011-09-01 07:10:37

Re: [Solved] Kernel won't finish upgrading

#15 2011-09-01 07:19:29

Re: [Solved] Kernel won't finish upgrading

#16 2011-09-01 07:55:34

Re: [Solved] Kernel won't finish upgrading

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