dpkg -i kernel_image, vmlinuz, and lilo questions
I'm currently running debian unstable on a IBM Thinkpad X22 laptop. I
have become accustomed to using make-kpkg and dpkg for building and
installing kernels, and have been doing this without much difficulty
until yesterday.
I thought it would be cool to play with kernel 2.5.69. I apt-get'ed the
kernel source, configured the kernel, compiled it, and installed it with
dpkg. The kernel starts to boot, but then all I get is a blank screen.
I rebooted into my other kernel, 2.4.19 (LinuxOLD). I tried to apt-get
remove kernel-image-2.5.69, but this breaks lilo.conf ( I think). It
wont let me reinstall kernel-image-2.4.20. I tried to apt-get remove
both kernel images and start from scratch to reinstall the kernel-images.
I ended up erasing vmlinuz.old (some error about a dangling link). So to
get the machine to boot I had to, dpkg -i kernel-image-2.5.69, because
it won't let me install an earlier kernel-image. Copy vmlinuz-2.4.19
from /boot to / and rename it vmlizuz.old. Hit shift when the machine
powers up and pick LinuxOLD and the kernel to boot.
My questions for trying to repair this mess are:
The docs say that vmlinuz, and vmlinuz.old should be (soft?) links from
/ to the kernel images in boot. How do i make a vmlinuz.old file and
link it to vmlinuz-2.4.19 in my boot directory?
How do I safely apt-get remove a kernel-image and replace it with and
earlier version?
Why does dpkg -i kernel-image-x-x-xx replace the the most recent kernel
image and bump that down to LinuxOLD?
Where can I find documentation on vmlinuz, the system map files, how
dpkg handles kernel images. I tried looking in man lilo, man lilo.conf,
man dpkg, and /usr/share/doc/lilo.
Why are vmlinuz links to /boot, instead of having them in the root
directory?
This is what my root directory looks like now:
thinkpad:/# ls -alt
total 909
drwxrwxrwt 6 root root 1024 May 24 09:55 tmp
drwxr-xr-x 79 root root 4096 May 24 08:47 etc
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 23552 May 24 08:36 dev
dr-xr-xr-x 71 root root 0 May 24 04:36 proc
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 1024 May 23 15:18 boot
drwxr-xr-x 23 root root 1024 May 23 09:41 .
drwxr-xr-x 23 root root 1024 May 23 09:41 ..
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 852232 May 23 09:40 vmlinuz.old
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 19 May 23 08:22 vmlinuz ->
boot/vmlinuz-
2.5.69
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 May 23 00:16 lib
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 3072 May 23 00:16 sbin
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 2048 May 23 00:16 bin
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 1024 May 21 10:49 usbkey
drwxr-xr-x 17 root root 1024 Apr 18 09:10 root
drwxrwsr-x 6 root staff 4096 Feb 8 21:24 home
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 1024 Dec 30 19:30 777
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 1024 Dec 30 19:30 camera
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 1024 Dec 30 19:30 m
drwxr-xr-x 13 root root 1024 Dec 7 10:46 var
drwxr-xr-x 14 root root 4096 Oct 23 2002 usr
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 12288 May 29 2002 lost+found
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 1024 Jul 5 2000 cdrom
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 1024 Jul 5 2000 floppy
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 1024 Jul 5 2000 initrd
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 1024 May 27 2000 mnt
thinkpad:/# uname -a
Linux thinkpad 2.4.19 #8 Sat Mar 15 21:39:10 EST 2003 i686 GNU/Linux
thinkpad:/#
Any comments appreciated.
Nick
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