kernel upgrade bug?

Sun Dec 4 10:56:53 UTC 2011

On 3 Dec 2011, at 21:57, Scott Doty wrote:

> On 12/03/2011 12:14 PM, Scott van Looy wrote:
>> On 3 Dec 2011, at 15:56, Scott Doty wrote:
>> 
>>> On 12/03/2011 04:30 AM, Scott van Looy wrote:
>>>> Isn't there supposed to be an initramfs for 3.1.2-1?
>>> My system has:
>>> 
>>> -rw-r--r--  1 root root 15945815 Dec  1 21:24
>>> initramfs-3.1.2-1.fc16.x86_64.img
>>> 
>>> So yes, you should have one.
>>> 
>>>> Is this a bug?
>>> Depends.  If you used preupgrade to move from f15 to f16, it's probably
>>> a bug.  If you used yum to do so, I'm not sure that that is an
>>> "approved" method of upgrading...one does so at their own risk.
>> I did. It's been doing this for a little while now, I just wanted to double check the new kernel is the same.
>> What's new is that it didn't even tell me there was an error this time…I thought it might have just worked :)
>> 
>>>> If there's supposed to be one, if so, how can I generate one? Once I have, do I need to reinstall grub?
>>>> 
>>> You could use dracut to build the initrd, but you're probably better off
>>> re-installing the kernel package.  Something like:
>>> 
>>> $ su -
>>> # yumdownloader kernel
>>> # rpm -ivh --force kernel.package.file.name.rpm
>> I tried yum reinstall kernel and got the same error.
> 
> What error?  (You didn't mention one before.)

Sorry, for the whole of F15 I was getting an error when upgrading.

Installing : kernel-3.1.2-1.fc16.x86_64                                                                                                                                                                                                  1/1 
Non-fatal POSTTRANS scriptlet failure in rpm package kernel-3.1.2-1.fc16.x86_64

Installed:
  kernel.x86_64 0:3.1.2-1.fc16                                                                                                                                                                                                                

Complete!

Which in itself is a lie, as it leaves the system unbootable... 

> 
> Also, you might try using the rpm command, unless you'd rather not. ;)

kernel-3.1.2-1.fc16.x86_64.rpm                                                                                                                                                                                          |  24 MB     00:03     
[root at novak ~]# rpm -ivh --force kernel-3.1.2-1.fc16.x86_64.rpm 
Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
   1:kernel                 ########################################### [100%]
Usage: /sbin/dracut [OPTION]... <initramfs> <kernel-version>
...... the whole of dracut's help file .....
mkinitrd failed
warning: %posttrans(kernel-3.1.2-1.fc16.x86_64) scriptlet failed, exit status 1

I have no idea what would cause dracut to fail in this way. I can only think maybe environment settings or something?

> 
>>> You don't need to re-install grub, but you should double-check grub.conf
>>> before rebooting to the new kernel.
>> I currently have grub and grub2 - how can I tell which my system is using? Or do I just amend grub2 then run grub2-install /dev/sda?
> 
> I am not sure what the status of grub2 is -- and as I said before, I'm a 
> grub2 noob.  ;)
> 
> But you can find out the version of grub installed on /dev/sda with:
> 
> # file - < /dev/sda
> 
> (You need the dash to tell file(1) to read from stdin).

/dev/stdin: x86 boot sector, LInux i386 boot LOader; GRand Unified Bootloader, stage1 version 0x3, stage2 address 0x2000, stage2 segment 0x200; partition 1: ID=0x83, active, starthead 1, startsector 63, 208782 sectors; partition 2: ID=0x83, starthead 0, startsector 208845, 117210240 sectors; partition 3: ID=0x83, starthead 254, startsector 117420032, 78137344 sectors; partition 4: ID=0x5, starthead 254, startsector 195559245, 390508020 sectors, code offset 0x63
bash-4.2# 

Not sure if that's grub or grub2, mind ;)

> 
>>> Also, I do believe f16 includes a move to grub2 -- at least, the tools
>>> are installed after I ran preupgrade&  upgraded.  But my system was left
>>> still using grub.  That's not such a bad thing, since the grub2.conf
>>> syntax has completely changed, making us all grub noobs again.
>>> 
>>> There's also a wiki page somewhere that talks about post-upgrade
>>> cleanups one should perform to make sure old packages are thoroughly
>>> removed...ask in #fedora about that, or maybe someone will post the link.
>> Yeah, I followed all that.
>> I was given some advice a while back to run dracut in sh -x - that works for me (but installing the rpm in sh -x doesn't work for me)
>> But it doesn't work in bash.
>> 
>> /sbin/dracut initramfs-3.1.2-1.fc16.x86_64.img 3.1.2-1.fc16.x86_64 in bash just prints out the help associated with dracut, as if I'd not given it any arguments.
>> sh -x /sbin/dracut initramfs-3.1.2-1.fc16.x86_64.img 3.1.2-1.fc16.x86_64 works
>> 
>> I have no real idea what the issue could be, if you or anyone else has any suggestions it'd be appreciated!
>> 
> 
> Is the error you mentioned earlier from dracut?  Might want to check to 
> ensure you have one (and only one) dracut installed:
> 
> $ rpm -qa | grep dracut
> dracut-013-18.fc16.noarch

dracut-013-19.fc16.noarch yup.

I've checked through the dracut.conf file, it's the default, but I have the following line in it:

# install local /etc/mdadm.conf
mdadmconf="yes"

# install local /etc/lvm/lvm.conf
lvmconf="yes"

/etc/lvm.conf exists, /etc/mdadm.conf doesn't and yum whatprovides /etc/mdadm.conf gives me nothing. I don't know if that would cause this behaviour though.

Am perplexed and confused :)

Scott