Re: jessie won't install/boot on a Dell Poweredge R815

[deloptes <deloptes@gmail.com>]

Brian wrote:

> On Mon 20 Jun 2016 at 13:06:30 +0200, Michael Lange wrote:
> 
>> On Mon, 20 Jun 2016 10:43:35 +0200
>> Sven Hartge <sven@svenhartge.de> wrote:
>> 
>> > deloptes <deloptes@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > > Jeffrey Mark Siskind wrote:
>> > 
>> > >> I am attempting to install jessie on a Dell Poweredge R815. It has
>> > >> been running wheezy reliably for years. And running squeeze reliably
>> > >> for years before that. But no matter what I try it won't install or
>> > >> boot.
>> > 
>> > > why is an upgrade not an option?
>> > 
>> > Upgrade to what? He wants to install Jessie, you can't get a newer
>> > stable Debian than that.
>> 
>> I guess he meant a dist-upgrade from an installed wheezy to jessie, if
>> jessie won't do a fresh install.
> 
> I think the OP's attempt at a dist-upgrade was described in item 2 of
> his first mail.

The problem is the kernel and some other changes that cause troubles.

Upgrade usually is done by

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get dist-upgrade

I failed today to upgrade wheezy to jessie on raided system as well.

The kernel/initramfs is the key to this and perhaps eliminate systemd first
time booting after the upgrade.

In the initramfs shell I usually 
1. check if disks are found (might be /dev/[hs]d* are missing.
2. mount the root partition (in the example to dir called new) and 
3. run

cd /new
exec /usr/sbin/chroot . /bin/sh <<- EOF >dev/console 2>&1
exec /sbin/init ${CMDLINE}
EOF

4. when system is up update initram
update-initramfs

This magic worked always

It is a bit more complicated if you use raid, lvm and luks, but still it
comes to the magic at the end

I hope this helps

regards