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Re: Upgrading the kernel on a woody box



Firstly I'm moving this to the debian-user list as it's got nothing to do 
with KDE.

In future please ask such questions on debian-user, feel free to CC me on 
such questions as I maintain the devfsd and lilo packages.

On Wed, 31 Oct 2001 08:11, rikiwarren wrote:
> I've downloaded the kernel-image-2.4.12-686 (and the corresponding headers,
> source, and doc file)
> I double checked to make sure the initrd=/boot/initrd line was added to
> lilo.conf (I believe it was added automatically when I tried this the first
> time, but I could be wrong). It's like the third uncommented line in the
> file.

If there was a problem with lilo or the initrd you would never have got a 
login prompt.  The fact that you logged in and got a working command shell 
means that this part is fine.

> I made sure the initrd link pointed to the correct (2.4.12) file.
> I made sure that the following were installed: devfds, initrd-tools,
> iptables, mkcramfs, libxml2, libxml2-dev and usbmgr.
> I added the following to my source.list:
> deb http://people.debian.org/~bunk/debian potato main
> deb-src http://people.debian.org/~bunk/debian potato main

Did you omit modutils?  The locations of all modules have changed in 2.4.x 
kernels.  Old modutils will not work at all on new kernels (in fact I'm 
surprised that the modules on your initrd even worked).

> When I reboot, I get a lot of errors. They flash by fast--but this is the
> general gist.

The "general gist" is not adequate for problem solving.  We need exact error 
messages.

> There was some error regarding partitions, cramfs and magic numbers.
> Then there are a ton of missing module messages.
> Then it tries to boot into X and fails--leaving me at a command line.
>
> I do have basic functionality from the command line. If I restart and boot
> into my old kernel, everything works.

I think that one of two things has happened.  One possibility is that there 
was a devfsd problem and the compatibility links matching the entries in 
/etc/fstab weren't created leading to fsck failing and the boot process 
aborting.

Another possibility is that the modules for X weren't loaded and the X server 
could not start.

But without any log entries I'm just guessing.


NB  Serial console is a really handy feature.  It makes it easy to cut/paste 
kernel boot messages into an email (including in situations where the kernel 
panics on boot).

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