On Wednesday 28 September 2005 05:27, David Goodenough wrote: >I have an elderly machine which I use as a sacrificial machine and > update every morning to the latest unstable. That way I know when it > is sensible to update other machines. > >But I have a problem updating it to 2.6.12. It has been running 2.6.11 > for a while, quite happily. But I wanted to move to 2.6.12 so I > installed the new kernel package and tried to boot it. > >I can not see the early messages (there were some and what I saw of them >as they wizzed past on the screen looked OK), but it ends up complaining >that modprobe could not find /lib/modules/2.6.12-1-396/modules.dep which >is a file that I know exists and looks correct (its not zero length or > the like). Then it says "pivot_root: No such file or directory" and at > /sbin/init 432: cannot open dev/console: No such file. > >The disk it is booting (the same one as for 2.6.11) is a SCSI device, > /dev/sdb and it is driven by an Adaptec AHA-2940. So I suppose it is > possible that support for this device has not been built into the > kernel or that it has not been included in the initrd. The other thing > about this machine is that it is an MCA machine. Now the MCA stuff on > this machine has not worked for a long time (linux does not seem able > to get the card IDs) but there are no MCA cards installed, they are all > PCI, including the Adaptec card. > >Given that it does not seem able to find the hard drive of course none >of the console has been written to disk. I suppose I might be able to >persuade it to write to a serial port and record it using minicom. > >Any ideas as to how to debug this? > >David
No. What I'd do is make sure all the -devel stuff is installed, and build your own kernel. I long ago, committed most of that detail work to a couple of scripts that get edited regularly to keep the version numbers compliant to what I'm building. One grabs the old .config and makeit files from the previous version, hides it, unpacks the newer one, applies any patches, restores the .config & makeit files, runs a make oldconfig which incorporates all your special options into the new .config, and asks you questions about any changed/new options. Then I run a make xconfig to double check, edit the copy of makit (my 2nd script) to fix the version to match the Makefiles version & then run that script which does the compile and install stuff. A couple of sips of coffee later I can edit grub.conf (may be menu.lst on some distros) to add the new kernel and initrd & reboot. 20 minutes if I get distracted, 2.8G athlon XP here. Then you know you have a kernel that matches your hardware. And currently running 2.6.14-rc2, uptime 7d 15:42. And I'm not exactly a youngster, I'll be 71 next week. -- Cheers, Gene "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) 99.35% setiathome rank, not too shabby for a WV hillbilly Yahoo.com and AOL/TW attorneys please note, additions to the above message by Gene Heskett are: Copyright 2005 by Maurice Eugene Heskett, all rights reserved. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
