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From: Justin C on 26 Oct 2009 07:15

I've just upgraded my kernel and now my machine won't boot, it does the
POST, I get the GRUB kernel selection screen, select one of two (both
the same version, but one is a diagnostic boot - whatever that means).
The screen clears, displays "Uncompressing kernel image" and then the
machine re-boots.

The kernel up-grade was part of my up-grading Debian Etch to Lenny.

This machine has been on 24/7 for the last five years so I was
suspecting hardware failure. I swapped out the RAM for that known to be
OK but still got the same problem. I swapped the drive into a different,
identical machine, and got the same problem. I then connected the drive
as a non-boot device in another machine, ran e2fsck -c -c -f -k on the
boot and root partition. This didn't help.

I re-mounted the drive as slave in a second machine, mounted the
root partition, and mounted the other partitions thereon. I then ran
chroot and tried replacing the new kernel (maybe I installed the wrong
one) using Debian's dselect program. Still no joy, the boot process gets
to the same point and the machine re-boots.

I'm thinking of using the chroot again and maybe changing my
sources.list back to Etch, putting a 2.4 kernel back in the machine.
Can't see why that would fix it, but if it does then I can spend some
time figuring the rest out - the major problem is that this machine is
my primary mail server, as per my MX records. (I really shouldn't have
up-graded so soon).

The machine is a Via EPIA m1000 with 512MB RAM, 40G (ish, I don't recall
exactly).

It is possible I chose a kernel that isn't compatible with the hardware
(twice), maybe next step is to install just a basic x86 kernel.

Any other suggestions will be gratefully received.

Justin.

--
Justin C, by the sea.
From: Gordon Henderson on 26 Oct 2009 07:50
In article <6ca6.4ae584ce.56cfb(a)zem>,
Justin C <justin.news(a)purestblue.com> wrote:

>The machine is a Via EPIA m1000 with 512MB RAM, 40G (ish, I don't recall
>exactly).
>
>It is possible I chose a kernel that isn't compatible with the hardware
>(twice), maybe next step is to install just a basic x86 kernel.

Try the basic kernel - ought to work on that processor. If stuck, drop
me an email and I can send you a statically compiled kernel for that
motherboard - I use them myself, but compile kernels from scratch for
them with no modules. It might at least let you boot it.

Or grab my config from

http://unicorn.drogon.net/configs/

and compile one yourself if you've got the means...

(You will need to boot it off a live cd or put the drive in another box
to put the kernel on it, but it looks like you can do that anyway)

Gordon
From: Justin C on 26 Oct 2009 11:40
On 2009-10-26, Gordon Henderson <gordon+usenet(a)drogon.net> wrote:
> In article <6ca6.4ae584ce.56cfb(a)zem>,
> Justin C <justin.news(a)purestblue.com> wrote:
>
>>The machine is a Via EPIA m1000 with 512MB RAM, 40G (ish, I don't recall
>>exactly).
>>
>>It is possible I chose a kernel that isn't compatible with the hardware
>>(twice), maybe next step is to install just a basic x86 kernel.
>
> Try the basic kernel - ought to work on that processor. If stuck, drop
> me an email and I can send you a statically compiled kernel for that
> motherboard - I use them myself, but compile kernels from scratch for
> them with no modules. It might at least let you boot it.

I'll try the one from the Debian archive. Thanks for the offer.

You say with no modules, do you mean that you build monolithic, or you
build/supply the modules at a different time?


> Or grab my config from
>
> http://unicorn.drogon.net/configs/
>
> and compile one yourself if you've got the means...
>
> (You will need to boot it off a live cd or put the drive in another box
> to put the kernel on it, but it looks like you can do that anyway)

TMTOWTDI! I must have the dev tools installed on one machine around
here.

Justin.

--
Justin C, by the sea.
From: Gordon Henderson on 26 Oct 2009 13:31
In article <873.4ae5c30a.98f16(a)zem>,
Justin C <justin.news(a)purestblue.com> wrote:
>On 2009-10-26, Gordon Henderson <gordon+usenet(a)drogon.net> wrote:
>> In article <6ca6.4ae584ce.56cfb(a)zem>,
>> Justin C <justin.news(a)purestblue.com> wrote:
>>
>>>The machine is a Via EPIA m1000 with 512MB RAM, 40G (ish, I don't recall
>>>exactly).
>>>
>>>It is possible I chose a kernel that isn't compatible with the hardware
>>>(twice), maybe next step is to install just a basic x86 kernel.
>>
>> Try the basic kernel - ought to work on that processor. If stuck, drop
>> me an email and I can send you a statically compiled kernel for that
>> motherboard - I use them myself, but compile kernels from scratch for
>> them with no modules. It might at least let you boot it.
>
>I'll try the one from the Debian archive. Thanks for the offer.
>
>You say with no modules, do you mean that you build monolithic, or you
>build/supply the modules at a different time?

Yes, fully monolithic/static. No (or very few) modules.

I know it's not the "norm" these days, but I build servers for a purpose,
so once built they'll never have hardware changes, etc. so I might as
well build in exactly what I need then leave it at that. (I don't use
udev or hotplug either, but that's another story!)

There are some exceptions - some software I run needs to be built
modular - the asterisk drivers for example, and the sound hardware on
my desktop seems to work better as a module than compiled in, but hey..
So on my desktop box:

$ lsmod
Module Size Used by
snd_hda_codec_realtek 189744 1
snd_hda_intel 23464 0
snd_hda_codec 61516 2 snd_hda_codec_realtek,snd_hda_intel

and

$ fgrep name /proc/cpuinfo
model name : VIA Esther processor 1000MHz
$ lsmod
Module Size Used by
zttranscode 6408 0
ztdummy 2632 0
zaptel 182788 8 zttranscode,ztdummy

Gordon
From: Justin C on 26 Oct 2009 19:18
In article <hc4me8$11sl$1(a)energise.enta.net>, Gordon Henderson wrote:
> In article <873.4ae5c30a.98f16(a)zem>,
> Justin C <justin.news(a)purestblue.com> wrote:
>>
>>You say with no modules, do you mean that you build monolithic, or you
>>build/supply the modules at a different time?
>
> Yes, fully monolithic/static. No (or very few) modules.

I suppose, for a machine with mostly unchanging hardware, it's not a bad
idea. Would be quite a sound idea for my two boxes I suppose, but it's
been a long time since I had the need or desire to build a kernel. I
just tend to use Debian stock kernels these days.

Anyway, problem resolved with another chroot session. Thanks for the
replies.

Justin.

--
Justin C, by the sea.
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