Bug#499231: updated initramfs-tools now kernel oops during boot sequence

[Rick Thomas <rbthomas55@pobox.com>]

On Sep 17, 2008, at 3:31 AM, maximilian attems wrote:

> severity 499231 normal
> tags 499231 moreinfo
> stop
>
> On Wed, Sep 17, 2008 at 02:38:04AM -0400, Rick Thomas wrote:
> > PowerPC (G4 Macintosh) running sid.
> > Ran nightly dist-upgrade which updated initramfs-tools.
> > Now the system crashes with a kernel oops.
> >
> > I restored the old initrd.img...bak and it now boots OK.
> >
> > curiously, after gunzip-ing and un-cpio-ing the two initrd.img files,
> > the only difference is:
> >
> > greybox:/tmp# diff -r initrd initrd.BAD/
> > diff -r initrd/conf/initramfs.conf initrd.BAD/conf/initramfs.conf
> > 7,8d6
> > < # In particular, Debian installer may set MODULES in the file
> > < # /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/driver-policy.
> > greybox:/tmp#
> >
> > /var/log/syslog.0 attached (contains the kernel Oops and  
> > surrounding stuff)
>
> not attached and aboves change cannot lead to unbootable state,
> try to reproduce.
>
> thanks
>
> --
> maks


Ummmm.  It was attached.  It's definitely there on the CC I sent to  
myself.  But here it is again.

I know those changes can't cause an unbootable state.  That's why I  
said "curiously".  It's definitely reproducable.  If I put the bad  
initrd.img back, it dies during the boot sequence repeatably.  I have  
another system running Sid.  I haven't done a dist-upgrade on it  
yet.  So I'll see what happens there.

For what it's worth, I'm also attaching the dpkg.log file that show  
what got updated in the fatal dist-upgrade.

Attachment: syslog.0.gz
Description: GNU Zip compressed data

Attachment: dpkg.log.gz
Description: GNU Zip compressed data