Upgrade to 2.6.32-5-amd64 failing miserably
I have been attempting to upgrade a Debian "Squeeze" Linux box from
2.6.32-3-amd64 to 2.6.32-5-amd64, but the upgrade is a non-starter.
GRUB2 comes up just fine, but when I select the new kernel version, a
number of announcements flash by too fast to seen. I am not 100%
certain, but I believe the initrd starts to load OK. Some text flies by
far too quickly to be seen, but then an error pops up concerning an
address space collision of some PCI device. Then it shows three errors
for RAID devices md1. md2, and md3, saying they are already in use.
Immediately thereafter the system shows errors concerning the RAID
targets being already in use, after which point the system complains it
can't mount / (md2), /dev, /sys, or /proc (in that order) because the
sources do not exist (if /dev/md2 does not exist, how can it be busy?).
Thereafter, of course, it fails to find init, since / is not mounted.
It then tries to run BusyBox, but Busybox complains:
/bin/sh: can't access tty; job control turned off
After that, it attempts to put up an initramfs prompt, but of course
with no tty access, it just hangs completely. Not surprisingly,
recovery mode doesn't boot, either. It gives a bit more detail in the
output, but nothing illuminating. The old kernel (2.6.32-3-amd64)
boots just fine.
Obviously there is a problem in the initramfs, probably with mdadm, but
what? What should I try to manipulate in the initrd so I can find out
what is failing?
Reply to: