Re: The sad demise of an etch.
On Wed, Oct 25, 2006 at 08:26:20AM -0700, Andrew Sackville-West wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 25, 2006 at 11:18:40AM -0400, hendrik@topoi.pooq.com wrote:
> > On Wed, Oct 25, 2006 at 08:03:58AM -0700, Andrew Sackville-West wrote:
> > > On Wed, Oct 25, 2006 at 08:52:08AM -0400, hendrik@topoi.pooq.com wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > But only after you have finished
> > > > > investigating what is causing the badness in the current install.
> > > >
> > > > If I knew how to do this (besides a few variations on rebooting and
> > > > fsck) I wouldn't be considering a reinstall.
> > > >
> > >
> > > I assume that all your efforts so far are producing no results.... Do
> > > you have any older kernels on the etch system that you can try? Maybe
> > > there's a kernel bug that you're hitting (some random combination of
> > > kernel version and hardware). If you can boot an older kernel that
> > > might help. If you don't have one, and want to try, you could chroot
> > > into the system and install an older kernel maybe (from debian
> > > snapshots?). I only suggest this because I had a booting problem after
> > > a kernel upgrade on an older machine (300 mhz celeron). I just went
> > > back to an old kernel and stayed there.
> > >
> > > Anyway. I'm concerned that you've got some problem that will come back
> > > after the reinstall. Or maybe, by reinstalling, you'll leapfrog the
> > > problem, I suppose. Regardless, if you can't figure out what the
> > > problem is you may have trouble avoiding it in the future.
> > >
> > > Just a hunch, did you change kernel architecture? to the wrong one
> > > accidently perhaps?
> >
> > I reran lilo on the sarge system.
> > Rebooted to etch.
> > It got a lot firther than last time, but after a while reached the black
> > screen of death.
> >
> > Rebooted to etch in maintenance mode.
> > Got to maintenance mode. Didn't know what else to do, do did
> > dpkg-reconfigure xserger-xorg (or was it xorg-server?)
> >
> > Accepted all the defaults (probably taken from my old cofig file)
> >
> > checked the dates on /etc/X11/xorg*
> >
> > hendrik@lovesong:~$ ls -l /etc/X11/xorg.conf*
> > -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3177 2006-09-15 06:32 /etc/X11/xorg.conf
> > -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3079 2006-07-02 12:42 /etc/X11/xorg.conf~
> > -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3473 2006-06-07 18:38
> > /etc/X11/xorg.conf.200606071838
> > hendrik@lovesong:~$
> >
> > All old dates, so presumably nothing was actually changed.
> >
> > rebooted into etch, trying to see what was on the screen immediately
> > before the black screen of death.
> > Saw it was starting gdm.
> > Then the screen went black, and then almost immediately X and gdm
> > started coming up.
> >
> > Now mailing this from ssh within a terminal window within icewm within
> > gdm.
> >
> > Whatever was wrong? Or is this a fluke? I'll try rebooting again and
> > see if success is consistent.
>
> well, that's all good news. sounds like lilo got borked there and that
> was your problem. THe X problem was surely unrelated, but may have
> come from the same upgrade. I have to say, it must be nice to have two
> installs on the same machine as it makes diagnosing really easy... I
> may look into it: just a minimal install of sarge on a small partition
> just so that I have something bootable and usable if I bork my sid
> system.
>
> As far as the X problem, who knows. its a finicky thing sometimes,
> right?
>
It survived another reboot. I'll tentatively consider it fixed.
Thanks for all the help.
- hendrik
> A
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