Re: big problem
On Sun, Jul 01, 2001 at 03:51:05PM +0200, neonatus@neonatus.net wrote:
> I am running debian unstabe on a couple of my machines. I have run apt-get
> update and apt-get upgrade yesterday, and on two machines it ran perfectly, but
> the third machine which is a server on LAN which had an 32 days of uptime
> crashed with kernel panic caused by dpkg... so I rebooted (kernel 2.4.5). The
> fs is reiserfs so the disk check was ok, but after reboot dpkg/apt dont work
> any more... it just starts the process and hangs there for ever... I stopped
> the process with ctrl+c and than ran it again, it said to do dpkg --configure
> -a, but that also failed (countinues infinatelly).
What if you did "strace -o /tmp/dpkg.strace dpkg $options" instead?
Look at the output file if dpkg is stuck on some system call.
> Could someone please help me fix this, I really wouldn't like to reinstall the
> whole system, since apt/dpkg arent usable anymore :/
I'm afraid it sounds like you have a problem and no backups.
Even a weekly cronjob:
dpkg --get-selections '*' | mail -s `hostname` archives@your.site
would count as a bit of a backup. Together with a regular snapshot of
/etc (and /var/state/debconf/* if you run >potato), you can rebuild the
machine fully, in no time.
Anyway, if dpkg caused a kernel panic, you should reconsider parts of
this system anyway. Maybe go back to a 2.2 kernel or drop reiserfs.
Maybe get latest and greatest patches from namesys.com and kernel.org,
track all relevant mailinglists and keep hoping for the best. Or pay
up the $$$ it takes to get a reiserfs expert for in-house consulting,
if your use of reiserfs really warrants that.
Cheers,
Joost
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