Re: upgrade->dead system, help.
On Sat, 1 Nov 2003, wil wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Sorry I have very little info on this...no logs or anything:(
>
> Running SID, with a custom 2.4.22 kernel, ext3 file system.
> HD was checked with the diagnostic utility from IBM, including
> surface (advanced) check and was fine.
>
> Did an update via dselect yesterday and after that the whole
> system has died. When i boot the process stops at
> INIT: version 2.85 booting
> followed by a blinking cursor.
>
> When i ran the upgrade the thing striking me as very odd was
> under "new packages to install" 'kernel-headers 2.5.x.x.' were
> mentioned.
> Not sure of the exact version anymore but it was 2.5 for sure.
> I think it was 2.5.99.
> I was kinda flabbergasted by that and saw no reason why those
> kernel headers should be installed...since i'm on 2.4.
> So i went back into the dselect selection 'mode' and set that
> kernel package to 'purge' so it wouldn't install.
> This gave me a load of 'xxxx depends on kernel-headers 2.5.x.x. ' like
> from gcc and so on.
> Struck me as utterly weird aswell cause my system never had anything
> 2.5.xxx kerlnel related stuff on it...anyways...thinking 'dpkg knows best'
> i let
> it have it's way and the package in question was installed.
> After getting the packages during install/configure something went wrong
> aswell but silly me didn't pay too much attention since this happens
> quite a lot with unstable and always gets resolved quickly...and
> never ended in something like i'm having now.
> Can't imagine the cause to be those kernel headers even if it's weird
> they were installed, but one of the 20 orso packages which got
> updated.
>
> An older 2.4.18 kernel does go thru the entire boot process but
> with may many errors mostly in the line of 'can't find /var/xxxxxxxxxx'
>
> After that i tried toms floppy linux to boot the system.
> mount /dev/hda9 results in just getting the'special device
> not found message'.
> And hda9 happens to be /var. fdisk shows hda9 as there and
> as ext3 but i think the complete filesystem went out da door on
> that partition.
> e2fsck gives me a 'the superbloack could not be read or does not....'
> etc..etc..etc.
>
> Any ideas on how to get out of this one?...and why this happened?
>
> Cheers
Hi,
get a knoppix cdrom.
boot from it.
chroot to your hd partition and see if you can then download a good
kernel and reinstall it.
-Kev
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