Blinking cursor after reboot with Preupgrade

[Richard Shaw]

Since I know I don't have enough ram to do a fresh install I'm trying
to upgrade my old EEEPC 701 from F13 to F15 via Preupgrade. I ran
preupgrade-cli from runlevel 3 to maximize the amount of ram available
at everything appears to run fine prior to the reboot.

When I try to run the upgrade from GRUB upon reboot nothing happens. I
just get a blinking cursor in the upper left and it sits with no disk
activity.

Choosing the previous Kernel from GRUB and it boots up fine to F13.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Richard

[Terry Polzin]

On Tue, 2011-07-05 at 13:35 -0500, Richard Shaw wrote:
> Since I know I don't have enough ram to do a fresh install I'm trying
> to upgrade my old EEEPC 701 from F13 to F15 via Preupgrade. I ran
> preupgrade-cli from runlevel 3 to maximize the amount of ram available
> at everything appears to run fine prior to the reboot.
>
> When I try to run the upgrade from GRUB upon reboot nothing happens. I
> just get a blinking cursor in the upper left and it sits with no disk
> activity.
>
> Choosing the previous Kernel from GRUB and it boots up fine to F13.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Thanks,
> Richard

What are the kernel versions involved?

[Richard Shaw]

On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 1:41 PM, Terry Polzin  wrote:
> What are the kernel versions involved?
> From memory the F13 kernel was 2.6.34.9. Can't remember the release,

but does that matter? Doesn't the preupgrade process install a new
(presumably F15) kernel in /boot/upgrade?

Thanks,
Richard

[Dr. Michael J. Chudobiak]

Richard Shaw wrote:
> Since I know I don't have enough ram to do a fresh install I'm trying
> to upgrade my old EEEPC 701 from F13 to F15 via Preupgrade. I ran
> preupgrade-cli from runlevel 3 to maximize the amount of ram available
> at everything appears to run fine prior to the reboot.
>
> When I try to run the upgrade from GRUB upon reboot nothing happens. I
> just get a blinking cursor in the upper left and it sits with no disk
> activity.
>
> Choosing the previous Kernel from GRUB and it boots up fine to F13.
>
> Any ideas?

Wait. Maybe for an hour, or overnight if you can.

I gave up on some upgrades, before I realized that the blinking-cursor 
screen does disappear after ~ 5 minutes (for me), and the upgrade 
continues just fine. Others have reported longer delays.

- Mike

[Richard Shaw]

On Tue, Jul 5, 2011 at 2:26 PM, Dr. Michael J. Chudobiak
 wrote:
> Richard Shaw wrote:
> > Since I know I don't have enough ram to do a fresh install I'm trying
> > to upgrade my old EEEPC 701 from F13 to F15 via Preupgrade. I ran
> > preupgrade-cli from runlevel 3 to maximize the amount of ram available
> > at everything appears to run fine prior to the reboot.
> >
> > When I try to run the upgrade from GRUB upon reboot nothing happens. I
> > just get a blinking cursor in the upper left and it sits with no disk
> > activity.
> >
> > Choosing the previous Kernel from GRUB and it boots up fine to F13.
> >
> > Any ideas?
>
> Wait. Maybe for an hour, or overnight if you can.
>
> I gave up on some upgrades, before I realized that the blinking-cursor
> screen does disappear after ~ 5 minutes (for me), and the upgrade
> continues just fine. Others have reported longer delays.

Good call. It finally got to booting the kernel, not sure how long it
took. Then it stalled in trying to load the initramfs. I'm assuming
the new time indicator is in seconds, right? So it stalled at about
0.25 seconds. I left it for several more hours and came back to a
blank screen, left it overnight and still nothing... I may try again
but I'll probably end up in the same place...

Thanks,
Richard