Problem when moving from kernel 2.4.* to 2.6.*

halsum · 12-16-2005, 12:03 PM

I ran into exactly the same problem. Apparently the 2.6.8 kernel regards my hard drives as /dev/sda, whereas the 2.4.27 kernel is happy with /dev/hda. So what happens is that grub finds the kernel image, but the kernel image can't find the root partition and so can't find /dev (or anything, for that matter).

So if you replace /dev/hde3 with /dev/sde3 for the two 2.6.8 entries, it should work. Leave it as /dev/hde3 for the 2.4.27 entries.

macondo · 12-16-2005, 01:09 PM

Well...why don't you start from scratch?

Boot the 2.4 kernel, install debfoster, launch it, when it shows the 2.6 kernel-image purge it (press p) or # dpkg -P kernel-image-2.6.8-2-386, apt-get clean, reboot, come back, and install

# apt-get -y install kernel-image-2.6.8-2-686 (unless your box is older than a PII)

Got nothing to lose

halsum · 12-16-2005, 02:45 PM

Got nothing to lose? Seems like a lot of trouble when just editing a few lines of menu.lst will do the trick.

Anyways, I just upgraded the recently bugfixed 2.6.8 kernel-image using aptitude, and it re-built the menu.lst file using /dev/hdxx instead of /dev/sdxx for the 2.6.8 kernel. So I had to edit the file again by hand. Explain, please, how purging the kernel-image and re-installing it will solve this problem.

macondo · 12-16-2005, 06:37 PM

halsum wrote:
"Got nothing to lose? Seems like a lot of trouble when just editing a few lines of menu.lst will do the trick."

IF you know what you're doing, it SHOULD work, and if it doesn't?

"Anyways, I just upgraded the recently bugfixed 2.6.8 kernel-image using aptitude, and it re-built the menu.lst file using /dev/hdxx instead of /dev/sdxx for the 2.6.8 kernel. So I had to edit the file again by hand. Explain, please, how purging the kernel-image and re-installing it will solve this problem."

It doesn't take long to purge/reinstall from a safe 2.4 kernel, and if indeed the bug is fixed, all will go fine.
If he messes up the grub menu, it will be longer, and another can of worms will open, won't you say?

Debian/Linux is just an operative system, no life and death here. I gave my opinion because after 3 pages he is still nowhere. It's just common sense.