Re: Could do with some help - Wheezy, Kernel updated, now cannot boot
On 03/12/2015 10:40 PM, Ron Leach wrote:
> List, good evening,
>
> Been adding some security upgrades on a Wheezy server, these included upgrading the kernel to the latest - I cannot be precise but I think it changed from --u5 to --u7. It's pae 386. 3.65, I think, but that's from memory. I can't check any of this because I cannot boot the system from the sda or sdb.
>
> The main use of the server is email (inbound, outbound, and IMAP mail store). I have a backup of the mailstore up to the last hour.
>
> System was Lenny, then upgraded to Squeeze and then to Wheezy; it's not a clean Wheezy install. System uses LILO to boot. sda and sdb are RAID1. The boot error message is:
>
> "LILO 23.2 Loading LinuxEBDA is big; kernel setup stack overwrites LILO second stage"
>
> and then the boot hangs.
>
> During the kernel update, I saw remarks such as looking for, and finding, vmlinuz, kernel, and things like that, and it found them on sda and on sdb.
>
> I have a 7.7.0 i386 install DVD. I have a USB CD ROM. Setting the BIOS to boot from that, I can start the rescue mode but it gets no further than trying to use its 'CDROM'. The rescue mode won't see the USB DVD device, it only seems to be happy with an IDE CDROM, which I don't have (nor any CDs).
>
> I can get to an 'ash' shell, instead of proceeding further with the rescue installer, but I don't know what to do - neither in the sense of what has gone wrong with booting anyway, nor how to use the shell to begin to solve the problem.
>
It's probably some initrd environment
try to run fdisk to list the partitions
try mounting stuff
try ls <whatever>
try mounting proc on the root part
try chroot(or whatever they do)...
> I could do with a little help here, to get the system running, and to fix the booting.
>
> I won't receive list posts - because the email server is down - but I will be able to check the web archive of this list which, I think, is updated only periodically, so it might seem as though I am not responding to posts very enthusiastically but I will be here, for sure!
>
> Grateful for any help, at all,
>
> regards, Ron
>
>
First,
you should try to mount your hard disk partitons.
Try to identify which ones are root and boot(if separate).
It may be necessary to start the raid stuff before that.
What may have gone wrong:
the raid drives may be inconsistent, messing up the boot.
the LILO may not be happy with your drive layout/the RAID thing.
something wrong with your partition table.
something wrong during LILO install(the configuration)
you could try to look into your LILO config for stuff that's gone wrong...
(wrong drive designators sda instead sda1 or whatever...)
you could try to put /boot on a non-raid place.
AFAIR you can run LILO installer from a rescue disk, but you have to copy the config file and change all the paths
from /<something>
to /mnt/<bla>/<something>
or wherever you have mounted your root fs so it finds the files.
(except device nodes etc...)
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