Re: linux-image-2.6.32-trunk-686 causing grub problems: alphabetical

[Stephen Powell <zlinuxman@wowway.com>]

On Tue, 16 Mar 2010 08:26:40 -0400 (EDT), Mitchell Laks wrote:
> 
> I notice that others had problems with grub not updating the kernel
> from linux-image-2.6.32-trunk-686 to linux-image-2.6.32-3-amd64
> and I had this  same problem.
> 
> I suspect that this is because the heuristic that dpkg or apt or aptitude update
> is using
> finds that linux-image-2.6.32-trunk-686 is greater than linux-image-2.6.32-3-amd
> 64 alphabetically
> even though it is the older kernel
> and this is breaking all of your automatic grub updates done by debian packaging.
> 
> that is the reason we are all suffering....

I don't think this has anything to do with the package management system.
My guess is that grub2 simply makes a list of all files in /boot which begin
with linux-image, sorts them in descending order by the ASCII collating
sequence, and the one which comes out on top is the default kernel.
The problem is the decision to use "trunk" in the original 2.6.32 kernel
image name.  This sorts higher than any numeric value.  I use lilo; so this
doesn't affect me; but doesn't grub2 have some option for remembering
the last kernel booted and making that the default?  If you don't want to
remove/purge the old kernel, it seems to me that that would be the way to go.

-- 
  .''`.     Stephen Powell    <zlinuxman@wowway.com>
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