----- Original Message -----
From: "Thomas Lockhart" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Mandrake List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, July 26, 2000 10:35 PM
Subject: [expert] failed kernel update for 7.1
> (resent from two days ago; did not get through to the list! Retrying
> with a "cap E" in the address)
>
> OK, I've got a hosed system, and would appreciate some suggestions on
> how to fix it. System details are: dual PPro, SCSI disks only (except
> for a CDROM), tulip-chipset PCI ethernet, a sound card, Matrox
> Millennium graphics card, and not much else.
>
> I was (happily, at least after dealing with sendmail->postfix) running
> mdk-7.0, but needed the 2.2.16 kernel security updates. afaict these are
> not available for a 7.0 system, at least as built RPMs, so I decided to
> go to mdk-7.1, for which kernel updates are available.
>
> The Mandrake update from 7.0 to 7.1 failed, perhaps for the same reason
> as discussed below. So, I clean installed, which was successful, at
> least after selecting the Expert mode (the other modes either did not
> clear the disks, so failed due to claimed insufficient space, or they
> declined to install a full set of RPMs).
>
> But as of this morning I had a 7.1 system up and running. So, I went
> ahead and installed the appropriate 2.2.16-9mdk kernel rpms to complete
> the upgrade. And the system will no longer boot :(
>
> The symptoms:
>
> 1) after RPM installation, the softlinks in /boot were not consistant
> for using the 2.2.16 kernel. Several links pointed at 2.2.15 items.
> 2) there is no initrd file for 2.2.16
> 3) mkinitrd declined to create one, saying that it couldn't find a loop
> device. It suggested running insmod loop.o, but that file is missing
> (see (5) below).
>
> Well, afaik initrd isn't necessary (otherwise, the kernel update would
> have provided it, right?). I fixed up the soft links, since there isn't
> enough of 2.2.15 to actually work, and then reran lilo and rebooted.
> Then
>
> 4) unable to boot. I suspect that it is missing the necessary Adaptec
> SCSI driver.
> 5) some 2.2.15-4mdk kernel resources are missing, so I can't go back
> afaik. For example, the RPM upgrade removed the contents of
> /lib/modules/2.2.15xxx.
>
my guess is if you rpm w/replacepkg/nodeps, upgrade might preserve these.
-dm
> I assume that these problems come up for SCSI-only systems, since others
> have seen success at upgrading. btw, this is actually the second machine
> which has failed to upgrade cleanly here, and both machines have similar
> SCSI-only setups (just with different cards, etc).
>
> Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. TIA
>
> - Tom
>
> ps New information: I was able to recover my 2.2.15-4mdksmp system by
> writing a CDROM with the missing files taken from another machine. So
> I'm back up and running with 2.2.15-4, but 2.2.16 is still hosed. And
> we have since tried to update another machine with the same result:
> the Adaptec SCSI driver is not being included in the initrd, so the
> kernel can't figure out how to find the root directory/disk as it
> boots.
>
> --
> Thomas Lockhart
> Caltech/JPL
> Interferometry Systems and Technology
>
>
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