Broken kernel in FC5

Phyrkrakr · 09-18-2006, 09:37 PM

So, I'm trying to move from 2.6.15 to 2.6.17 in order to get ivtv working. I accidentally uninstalled all of my kernels and now my installation won't boot. Is there any way short of completely reinstalling to fix this?

Here's what I did:
yum remove kernel-2.6* #here's where I deleted all of my kernels :-(
yum install kernel #here's where I tried to reinstall one of them

It then loaded up 2.6.17 (i thought), but when I boot, it tells me that the file isn't found for the kernel 2.6.15. Then, it reboots and does it again.

Quick specs for the machine (don't think it's necessary, but you can never tell):
Via EPIA m10000 (i386 architecture)
onboard video, lan, etc.
Hauppauge PVR-150 card.
E-IDE Seagate HD at 320 GB
512 MB RAM

It's frustrating because I'd just finished updating everything I thought, but when I tried to load ivtv for the PVR card, it told me it hadn't updated the kernel. This was after reboot, so I thought the new kernel should have been in there. Oh well.

Any help appreciated.

stormtracknole · 09-18-2006, 10:58 PM

Man, that's a tough one. You could try booting from a live disc and see if you could make changes to GRUB that way. You could also use the Fedora Rescue disk, but I don't have too much experience with that. For future reference, when updating the kernel, just go ahead a let yum do it. By default, yum will leave the previous kernel intact. That way, if there are any problems with the new kernel, you can just go back to the old one. So, just do "yum -y update". Good luck!

Phyrkrakr · 09-18-2006, 11:21 PM

Ok, here's what I did, from the helpful folks at fedoraforum.org:

Boot with the install disc one, then type
linux rescue
enter
at the boot: prompt. Load everything up including your old FS and network support. After it's booted type
chroot /mnt/sysimage
enter
which loads your preexisting install into memory. Then type
rpm -aq | grep kernel
enter
which finds out if there's still a kernel installed. In my case, there was, so I edited the /etc/grub.conf to set it to the new kernel that was there, and it booted successfully. Basically, change the kernel information to match what you got with the grep command. You can edit it either from the grub bootloader with "e" on the entry that's there and change the lines that need to be changed, or I was able to load vim from the rescue prompt and do it that way. From there, everything was back and I finished my yum updates successfully.
HTH, TFTH

stormtracknole · 09-18-2006, 11:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phyrkrakr

Ok, here's what I did, from the helpful folks at fedoraforum.org:

Boot with the install disc one, then type
linux rescue
enter
at the boot: prompt. Load everything up including your old FS and network support. After it's booted type
chroot /mnt/sysimage
enter
which loads your preexisting install into memory. Then type
rpm -ap | grep kernel
enter
which finds out if there's still a kernel installed. In my case, there was, so I edited the /etc/grub.conf to set it to the new kernel that was there, and it booted successfully. Basically, change the kernel information to match what you got with the grep command. You can edit it either from the grub bootloader with "e" on the entry that's there and change the lines that need to be changed, or I was able to load vim from the rescue prompt and do it that way. From there, everything was back and I finished my yum updates successfully.
HTH, TFTH

Ah, good to hear. I'll make a note of that.