Kernel 2.6.24 -- gee that was fun...not!

[Robert Locke]

On Fri, 2008-03-14 at 11:34 -0700, Paul Lemmons wrote:
> I have been using Fedora since core 2 and I have never had any problems 
> with a kernel update. Yesterday that changed the new 2.6.24 kernel. I 
> booted the system and got to see it panic and halt. It appears that it 
> was doing something with networking, but that is not for sure. I gather 
> that by looking at what it barfed on my screen and picking out the big 
> pieces :)
> 
> I have uploaded a smolt profile of my machine. If you have the same 
> difficulty you may want to look and see if you see any overlap.
> 
> http://www.smolts.org/client/show/pub_bbdcaa05-e7bd-4ad7-83ca-f822b5b0fb7f
> 
> Recovery was a pain...
> 
> 1) Remove all traces of new 2.6.24 kernel
> - I could remove the new kernel, devel fairly easily
> - removing the kernel-headers took a lot of friends with it
>    - tracked the dependences to reinstall later
> 
> 2)  Tried to install the 2.6.23 headers and devel
> - none of the repos had the "old" kernel files
>    - after much searching I found: 
> http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/buildinfo?buildID=35322
>       - got headers and devel packages
>       - rpm -ihv the devel and header rpms
> 
> 3) Nvidia drivers messed up on 2.6.23
>    - Tried to install livna Nvidia drivers
>       - always tried to drag in the 2.6.24 kernel
>       - could not find a way around it
> 
> 4) Reinstalled development environment lost in step 1
>    - yum install gcc gcc-c++ gcc-java rpmdevtools
>    - will go back and get the others later
> 
> 5) Nvidia the hard way
>    - yum erase kmod-nvidia*
>    - download the driver:
>       - wget 
> http://us.download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/169.12/NVIDIA-Linux-x86-169.12-pkg1.run
>    - Turn off Xserver
>       - telinit 3
>    - Install the driver
>       - sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-169.12-pkg1.run
>    -  reboot
> 
> 6) sigh with relief as I see my twin-view screens come up correctly
> 7) share experience here
> 8) will exclude kernel from yum update until 2.6.25 comes out.
>    - I see on this list that others have had success with it.


Hey Paul,

Just out of curiosity, why did you have to reinstall the 2.6.23 kernel?
I can imagine there being a kmod problem perhaps, but yum normally keeps
a couple of kernels in place....

Also, not sure that things will get better for you with 2.6.25.  The
issue is more that upstream kernel development does not appear to have
the "two branches" anymore, so "new features" and such are getting
incorporated with each release.  I think the "issue" for some is a low
number after the 2.6.24, namely the current .3 that has yet to squash
some regressions that have caused some folks pain.  The hope being that
it might improve with later rev's of the 24 series....

--Rob