[SOLVED] Re-Installing the Kernel.. (damaged after upgrade)

WhisperiN · 06-01-2010, 01:20 AM

Hello dear fellows..
How you doing all?

I've my Slackware 13 box.
Recently, I have upgraded to -current, and while the upgrade I noticed that my connection went down while it was downloading the new kernel.
I had doubts that it got damaged.

Any way, later I did:

Code:

slackpkg upgrade-all

and found every thing is up to date.

While upgrading, the system asked me to run lilo, and I did..
But after rebooting, I got the (Kernel Panic) error.
I logged back in using setup disk, and the chroot to my original system root directory.
I removed the current Kernels, and now I need to re-install it.. there I'm stuck.

Slackpkg isn't working because the box is not connecting to the internet.

Any help, or links is more than appreciated since I'm not geek enough to sort it by my own.
Also few googling didn't set me up with a solution so far.

disturbed1 · 06-01-2010, 01:44 AM

First, double check if you are effected by the libata switch over. The text of the kernel panic would be a nice clue. It states something like failed to find device ..... forget, haven't seen one in a while

Read the *** LIBATA SWITCHOVER *** section in Changes and hints.
http://slackware.osuosl.org/slackwar..._AND_HINTS.TXT

To reinstall the kernels without network connection, download the packages to a usb disk, or burn to cdrom. Chroot as you did before, mount the external media, and use upgradepkg --install-new --reinstall package-name.txz

If you connect with ethernet to the network, before you chroot in, try to bring up your network. With current releases of Slackware, the installation boot sequence is handled by udev, so modules are already loaded. Check lsmod for your NIC's module. Obtain a dhcpc address with dhcpcd eth0

You can also boot into the installed system using the installation DVD.

Quote:

In a pinch, you can boot your system from here with a command like:

boot: huge.s root=/dev/sda1 rdinit= ro

In the example above, /dev/sda1 is the / Linux partition.

WhisperiN · 06-01-2010, 02:30 AM

Hello again..

Thanks a lot for your kind reply..

The Kernel Panic note was like:

Code:

VFS: Cannot open root device "hda(x)" or unknown-block(3,3)
Please append a correct "root=" option
Kernel panic: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(3,3)

WhisperiN · 06-01-2010, 02:46 AM

Quote:

*** LIBATA SWITCHOVER ***

The "old" ide subsystem in the the linux kernel is now deprecated in favor
of the newer libata subsystem, and this affects the naming of device nodes
for almost all types of disk drives -- hard drives in particular will now
have an "sd" named node. The following information should allow you to
handle that changeover gracefully.

1. Upgrade the kernel and kernel-modules packages normally.

2. Edit /etc/fstab to reflect the change from hd* to sd*.

Old Name --> New Name
/dev/hda /dev/sda
/dev/hdb /dev/sr0
/dev/hdc /dev/sdb

3. Run lilo. Note that you have made no edits at all to it yet, unless
you needed to edit it for the new kernel. Specifically, do not make
any changes with respect to hd* --> sd*.

4. Reboot. At the lilo prompt, press <TAB> and add an append for the
real root device (which will no longer be /dev/hd*). For example, if
the old root device was /dev/hda1, and it will now be /dev/sda1, and
the name of your kernel image is "Linux" then you would do this:

Linux root=/dev/sda1

5. Once the system comes back up, then fix /etc/lilo.conf, run lilo, and
reboot again to be sure everything is correct.

Humm... Alright.. I guess that mean something..
Let me do some tries.. and get back to you

disturbed1 · 06-01-2010, 02:47 AM

Keep us posted

WhisperiN · 06-01-2010, 03:24 AM

By the way,
Does the changes mentioned above apply to all kind or Hard Disks?
Because I don't think my HDs are SATA.. it's a little old hardware. (P4 2.8GHz)

Thanks

disturbed1 · 06-01-2010, 03:37 AM

It applies to all disks. The older kernels used IDE/PATA modules which listed drives as /dev/hd*. Newer kernels have switched over to using the libata modules. Libata calls all drives /dev/sd*. Does not matter if they are SATA or IDE.

libata has modules for both SATA interfaces and IDE/PATA interfaces.

WhisperiN · 06-02-2010, 01:14 AM

Hello Back

GREAT, I finally managed to log back directly to my box..
But, I figured out, that I have many packages that was badly damaged due to connection errors while downloading these packages.
Honestly, when I started the upgrade process.. my connection wasn't doing well, and so I guess several packages was damaged.
I had to re-download and install few packages other than the kernel before I was able to log to the system.

Ok, my question now..
Can I some way, reinstall ALL packages via (slackpkg) or something like that?
Just to make sure.. every thing is replaced again with a fresh and clean copy?

Deep Regards..

disturbed1 · 06-02-2010, 01:28 AM

slackpkg accepts tagsets, patterns, and series.
If you wanted to reinstall everything with slackpkg

Code:

slackpkg reinstall a ap d e f k kde l n t tcl x xap y

The above command would reinstall every package from the entire software series listed. man slackpkg has more details.

When ever I update Slackware, I usually do clean-system, upgrade-all, install-new, then slackpkg install * to pick the odd package that was not detected as new or needing upgraded.

WhisperiN · 06-05-2010, 01:43 AM

Disturbed1,

I'd really like to thank you a lot for the help you have made here.
And to let you know, my issue is solved totally

I have re-installed almost all the packages.. re-run lilo after the modifications mentioned above.

Now, I got my box to work right again

Thanks again..