While I was conducting a web meeting with a number of people yesterday my keyboard stopped working. Thats the second time its happened and I was forced to reboot! Imagine my acute frustration that because of a kernel update the boot loader failed and I was left with a blinking cursor! While 10 people patiently waited on the phone I had to boot the installer and go through the "change boot loader" part of an os upgrade. Luckly that worked and I was back in business in about 15 minutes. I suspect that all my raving about the stability of linux over windows is now the source of some humor in my company and the 3 other companies represented on the call....
The kernel update that "got me" was: kernel-2.6.27.19-170.2.35.fc10.x86_64 ackkptewee :-) wcn
On Fri, 29 May 2009, Wendell Nichols wrote:
While I was conducting a web meeting with a number of people yesterday my keyboard stopped working. Thats the second time its happened and I was forced to reboot! Imagine my acute frustration that because of a kernel update the boot loader failed and I was left with a blinking cursor! While 10 people patiently waited on the phone I had to boot the installer and go through the "change boot loader" part of an os upgrade. Luckly that worked and I was back in business in about 15 minutes. I suspect that all my raving about the stability of linux over windows is now the source of some humor in my company and the 3 other companies represented on the call....
The kernel update that "got me" was: kernel-2.6.27.19-170.2.35.fc10.x86_64 ackkptewee :-) wcn
I suspect the problem here is that when you last updated the OS grub wasn't updated properly, meaning that the boot sector part of grub was looking for the stage2 file at one location of the disk but this was now blank space from the filesystem point of view. From then on, whenever you updated your kernel, or did something else in the /boot filesytem, you ran the risk of overwriting this data and killing grub.
Michael Young
-----Original Message----- From: M A Young [mailto:m.a.young@durham.ac.uk] Sent: Friday, May 29, 2009 9:30 AM To: Community assistance, encouragement,and advice for using Fedora. Subject: Re: Kernel update broke my system.
On Fri, 29 May 2009, Wendell Nichols wrote:
I suspect the problem here is that when you last updated the OS grub wasn't updated properly, meaning that the boot sector part of grub was looking for the stage2 file at one location of the disk but this was now blank space from the filesystem point of view. From then on, whenever you updated your kernel, or did something else in the /boot filesytem, you ran the risk of overwriting this data and killing grub.
Michael Young
That may be true, but the Updater is doing that job, and it nuked my system too. How often does that happen? This is the first time I've seen it since I've been using RH8 up to now, but it does give me pause.
Herb Smith
On 5/29/2009 1:16 PM, David Burns wrote:
Is there a way to test whether my system has this problem without rebooting? Dave
the Updater is doing that job, and it nuked my system too.
You do realize that the kernel that was running when you did the update is still installed? This one that "broke my system.". This one that "nuked my system too.". And that you can boot into it instead of this new one?
Why don't you do that and report this kernel problem to bugzilla? That would surely get the attention of the kernel maintainers more effectively than post to a general 'help me' list.
Can't boot into anything when all you get is the GRUB_ prompt. Wrote to the help me list to figure out what to do to get my system back. Once I get it back I'll be able to try a lot of different things. From the respones of some, it seems that it's an issue with GRUB, but it's unclear that there is an underlying kernel issue or not. It would seem that the kernel might be ok, but just that GRUB got hosed in the update process.
Yes, I do realize that the previous kernel is still there, but was also curious as to what could cause this. It appears, from the lack of traffic on the topic that not many have had this issue. Wondered if it was a hiccup in the download process that caused an install to go bad, or if there was something unique to my system that caused it to go bad...
Sorry for trying to understand...
Herb Smith
-----Original Message----- From: David [mailto:dgboles@comcast.net] Sent: Friday, May 29, 2009 12:49 PM To: Community assistance, encouragement,and advice for using Fedora. Subject: Re: Kernel update broke my system.
On 5/29/2009 1:16 PM, David Burns wrote:
Is there a way to test whether my system has this problem
without rebooting?
Dave
the Updater is doing that job, and it nuked my system too.
You do realize that the kernel that was running when you did the update is still installed? This one that "broke my system.". This one that "nuked my system too.". And that you can boot into it instead of this new one?
Why don't you do that and report this kernel problem to bugzilla? That would surely get the attention of the kernel maintainers more effectively than post to a general 'help me' list.
--
David
-- fedora-list mailing list fedora-list@redhat.com To unsubscribe: https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Communicate/MailingListGuidelines
On 5/29/2009 2:27 PM, Smith, Herb wrote:
Can't boot into anything when all you get is the GRUB_ prompt. Wrote to the help me list to figure out what to do to get my system back. Once I get it back I'll be able to try a lot of different things. From the respones of some, it seems that it's an issue with GRUB, but it's unclear that there is an underlying kernel issue or not. It would seem that the kernel might be ok, but just that GRUB got hosed in the update process.
Yes, I do realize that the previous kernel is still there, but was also curious as to what could cause this. It appears, from the lack of traffic on the topic that not many have had this issue. Wondered if it was a hiccup in the download process that caused an install to go bad, or if there was something unique to my system that caused it to go bad...
Sorry for trying to understand...
Herb Smith
I was not trying to be nasty herb. The GRUB part I missed.
Repair boot loader
http://fedoranews.org/cms/node/2871
On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 09:42:37 -0500, "Smith, Herb" herb.smith@boeing.com wrote:
That may be true, but the Updater is doing that job, and it nuked my system too. How often does that happen? This is the first time I've seen it since I've been using RH8 up to now, but it does give me pause.
I have had grub get messed up several times during the F11 rawhide period. I still get the grub prompt though and know where the configfile is in grubspeak. So it's easy for me to fix. I haven't figured out what is causing it to do this. My suspects are using software raid, using livecd-creator, grub updates, kernel updates. I haven't seen strong correlation to any of these though.
On Fri, May 29, 2009 at 13:27:50 -0500, "Smith, Herb" herb.smith@boeing.com wrote:
Can't boot into anything when all you get is the GRUB_ prompt. Wrote to the help me list to figure out what to do to get my system back. Once I get it back I'll be able to try a lot of different things. From the respones of some, it seems that it's an issue with GRUB, but it's unclear that there is an underlying kernel issue or not. It would seem that the kernel might be ok, but just that GRUB got hosed in the update process.
If you get the grub prompt, then you can issue a configfile command to tell it where the config file is located. Typically it will be something like: configfile (hd0,0)/grub/grub.conf
This assumes /boot is a separate (and first) partition of the first disk.
Once you have booted, you can fix this by running grub as root and then using the following commands:
root (hd0,0) setup (hd0)
And if you are using raid 1 and you want the second disk to be usable if the first has been pulled, you can addition run: setup (hd1)
(In the raid case there is supposed to be a way to tell grub to use the current disk instead of a specific disk, but I don't think Fedora does that by default, and the above is easier to remember and works well enough for me.)
At the grub prompt you can run help and there is tab completion for commands. This helps prompt your memory when you aren't expecting to use it ahead of time.
On Sat, 30 May 2009 11:41:16 -0500, Bruno wrote:
I have had grub get messed up several times during the F11 rawhide period. I still get the grub prompt though and know where the configfile is in grubspeak. So it's easy for me to fix. I haven't figured out what is causing it to do this. My suspects are using software raid, using livecd-creator, grub updates, kernel updates. I haven't seen strong correlation to any of these though.
Let's hope there's not much more crap in GRUB as found in https://bugzilla.redhat.com/496093
Apply the patch that is attached there and see whether you still get only a grub prompt after installing some kernel updates (the original ticket for that issue is flooded with comments and hasn't lead to any findings).
On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 06:00:19 +0200, Michael Schwendt mschwendt@gmail.com wrote:
Let's hope there's not much more crap in GRUB as found in https://bugzilla.redhat.com/496093
Apply the patch that is attached there and see whether you still get only a grub prompt after installing some kernel updates (the original ticket for that issue is flooded with comments and hasn't lead to any findings).
I'll do that. The problem doesn't happen very often so I won't have much confidence that the bug I have been seeing is fixed even if I don't see a reoccurrence for a while.
On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 23:23:37 -0500, Bruno Wolff III bruno@wolff.to wrote:
On Sun, May 31, 2009 at 06:00:19 +0200, Michael Schwendt mschwendt@gmail.com wrote:
Apply the patch that is attached there and see whether you still get only a grub prompt after installing some kernel updates (the original ticket for that issue is flooded with comments and hasn't lead to any findings).
I'll do that. The problem doesn't happen very often so I won't have much
I installed a new version on 3 i386 machines. Rebuilding the rpm failed on my x86_64, so I'll wait for an update before trying it out there.
Smith, Herb wrote, On 05/29/2009 02:27 PM:
Can't boot into anything when all you get is the GRUB_ prompt. Wrote to the help me list to figure out what to do to get my system back. Once I get it back I'll be able to try a lot of different things. From the respones of some, it seems that it's an issue with GRUB, but it's unclear that there is an underlying kernel issue or not. It would seem that the kernel might be ok, but just that GRUB got hosed in the update process.
Which is why I am still curious ... On an installed system, WHY do we need to reinstall _grub_ when there is a kernel UPDATE????? https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2008-October/msg01189.html https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=432555 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=472829 https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=450143
Yes there may be/probably is a problem with grub or the grub reinstall process, but to what purpose (besides to keep this set of bugs open) is grub being reinstalled for a kernel update. What is the problem that reinstalling grub with kernel updates is solving? Granted I am assuming that it is something other than the kernel maintainer is just too lazy to remove the grub reinstall calls from either the kernel spec file or /sbin/new-kernel-pkg.
Yes, I do realize that the previous kernel is still there, but was also curious as to what could cause this. It appears, from the lack of traffic on the topic that not many have had this issue. Wondered if it was a hiccup in the download process that caused an install to go bad, or if there was something unique to my system that caused it to go bad...
Sorry for trying to understand...
Herb Smith
-----Original Message----- From: David [mailto:dgboles@comcast.net] Sent: Friday, May 29, 2009 12:49 PM To: Community assistance, encouragement,and advice for using Fedora. Subject: Re: Kernel update broke my system.
On 5/29/2009 1:16 PM, David Burns wrote:
Is there a way to test whether my system has this problem
without rebooting?
Dave
the Updater is doing that job, and it nuked my system too.
You do realize that the kernel that was running when you did the update is still installed? This one that "broke my system.". This one that "nuked my system too.". And that you can boot into it instead of this new one?
Why don't you do that and report this kernel problem to bugzilla? That would surely get the attention of the kernel maintainers more effectively than post to a general 'help me' list.
--
On Fri, 2009-06-05 at 11:12 -0400, Todd Denniston wrote:
On an installed system, WHY do we need to reinstall _grub_ when there is a kernel UPDATE?????
It shouldn't be. The only thing that needs changing, grub-wise, after updating kernels, is rewriting the grub.conf file.
-
Bruno Wolff III -
David Boles -
David Burns -
M A Young -
Michael Schwendt -
Smith, Herb -
Tim -
Todd Denniston -
Wendell Nichols