Messed up Grub!

[Arthur Dent]

Hello All,

I can't update my Fedora 17 box until sometime in July due to issues I
won't bore you with.

In the meantime I have another problem. Some time ago I had a crash
during a yum update, the net result of which was the fact that the
kernel it was installing at the time became corrupted (amongst other
problems). I can boot into the previous kernel and everything works
fine, except when I reboot. Naturally it wants to boot into the "latest"
kernel.

I have set the grub timeout to 5 seconds so I can select the older
kernel and all is well.

However, I thought I would be clever and set it to automatically boot to
the second kernel, so I edited /etc/default/grub and changed
GRUB_DEFAULT=saved to GRUB_DEFAULT=1.

I then ran grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg and rebooted. Now I
appear to have lost my earlier kernel options and it boots into the
corrupted version.

[edit] No wait - It seems I have to go into "advanced" options from grub
where I can pick the older kernel [/edit]

What did I do wrong - and how do I get it to default to my working
kernel?

Thanks

Mark

=============8<===================================================
cat /etc/default/grub 
GRUB_TIMEOUT=5
GRUB_DISTRIBUTOR="Fedora"
GRUB_DEFAULT=saved
#GRUB_DEFAULT=2
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="rd.md=0 rd.lvm=0 rd.dm=0 SYSFONT=True  KEYTABLE=uk
rd.luks=0 LANG=en_US.UTF-8 rhgb quiet"
#GRUB_THEME="/boot/grub2/themes/system/theme.txt"
=============8<===================================================

[poma]

On 24.06.2013 22:35, Arthur Dent wrote:
…
> What did I do wrong - and how do I get it to default to my working
> kernel?

…

rpm -q kernel
ll /boot

poma

[Arthur Dent]

On Tue, 2013-06-25 at 00:06 +0200, poma wrote:
> On 24.06.2013 22:35, Arthur Dent wrote:
> …
> > What did I do wrong - and how do I get it to default to my working
> > kernel?
>
> …
>
> rpm -q kernel
> ll /boot

# rpm -q kernel
package kernel is not installed

ll /boot
total 76176
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root   123505 Dec 11  2012 config-3.6.10-2.fc17.i686.PAE
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root   123504 Nov 27  2012 config-3.6.8-2.fc17.i686.PAE
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root   124296 Jan 18 17:51 config-3.7.3-101.fc17.i686.PAE
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root   124285 Feb 18 22:54 config-3.7.9-101.fc17.i686.PAE
drwxr-xr-x. 2 root root     4096 Mar  2 00:11 grub
drwxr-xr-x. 6 root root     4096 Jun 24 21:09 grub2
-rw-------. 1 root root 16601756 Jan  1 17:30 initramfs-3.6.10-2.fc17.i686.PAE.img
-rw-------. 1 root root 16562865 Dec  1  2012 initramfs-3.6.8-2.fc17.i686.PAE.img
-rw-------. 1 root root 16788458 Jan 31 21:03 initramfs-3.7.3-101.fc17.i686.PAE.img
-rw-------. 1 root root  1987023 Dec 11  2012 System.map-3.6.10-2.fc17.i686.PAE
-rw-------. 1 root root  1986805 Nov 27  2012 System.map-3.6.8-2.fc17.i686.PAE
-rw-------. 1 root root  1994539 Jan 18 17:51 System.map-3.7.3-101.fc17.i686.PAE
-rw-------. 1 root root  1993318 Feb 18 22:54 System.map-3.7.9-101.fc17.i686.PAE
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root  4868560 Dec 11  2012 vmlinuz-3.6.10-2.fc17.i686.PAE
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root  4868688 Nov 27  2012 vmlinuz-3.6.8-2.fc17.i686.PAE
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root  4914208 Jan 18 17:51 vmlinuz-3.7.3-101.fc17.i686.PAE
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root  4901696 Feb 18 22:54 vmlinuz-3.7.9-101.fc17.i686.PAE

[Reindl Harald]

Am 25.06.2013 00:14, schrieb Arthur Dent:
> On Tue, 2013-06-25 at 00:06 +0200, poma wrote:
> > On 24.06.2013 22:35, Arthur Dent wrote:
> > …
> > > What did I do wrong - and how do I get it to default to my working
> > > kernel?
> >
> > …
> >
> > rpm -q kernel
> > ll /boot
>
> # rpm -q kernel
> package kernel is not installed

so what about "yum install kernel"?
you should get the last recent which should be 3.9.5
and grubby usually add it to the grub-menu

rpm -q kernel
kernel-3.9.5-101.fc17.x86_64

[Joe Zeff]

On 06/24/2013 03:14 PM, Arthur Dent wrote:
> -rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root  4914208 Jan 18 17:51 vmlinuz-3.7.3-101.fc17.i686.PAE

yum remove kernel-3.7.3-101

[poma]

On 25.06.2013 00:14, Arthur Dent wrote:
…
> # rpm -q kernel
> package kernel is not installed
>
> ll /boot
> total 76176

…

OK, nice.
For F17 try this one,
rpm -qa kernel*

We can manually set the existing kernels via grubby or automatically
with rpm/yum install.
Pick one.
I'll leave you with Joe if you don't mind, it's beauty sleep time. :)

poma

[Joe Zeff]

On 06/24/2013 01:35 PM, Arthur Dent wrote:
> What did I do wrong - and how do I get it to default to my working
> kernel?

My suggestion is to uninstall the bad kernel and then update.

[Arthur Dent]

On Mon, 2013-06-24 at 15:50 -0700, Joe Zeff wrote:
> On 06/24/2013 01:35 PM, Arthur Dent wrote:
> > What did I do wrong - and how do I get it to default to my working
> > kernel?
>
> My suggestion is to uninstall the bad kernel and then update.

OK Thanks - That turned out to be the best advice.

I had been nervous about doing this because I wasn't sure what else had
been corrupted when yum crashed during the update, but I bit the bullet
and erased the newer (corrupted) kernel (and headers and the devel
package) and did a complete system update.

All seems fine now.

I'll do a proper upgrade (to F19) in a few weeks time...

Thanks to all who commented. Your help is, as always, much appreciated.

Mark