I'm a part time computer tech and I service the occasional Ubuntu machine that comes through our door (my boss actually actively recommends Ubuntu to customers he thinks can handle using it).

Any how, the point is in the last two days I've seen two machines running Ubuntu 10.10 that have somehow had a non functional version of kernel 2.6.38-8 in the /boot directory, but not listed when greping the list of installed packages (dpkg -l | grep 2.6.38), and does not appear as available or installed in the synaptic package manager either (the highest version for 10.10 appears to be 2.6.35 something).

Symptoms of the problem range from X not working to the machine having a kernel panic on boot or booting into the initramfs busybox complaining of either a missing module or timeout waiting on root device.

To fix the problem I have to boot to the previous kernel in the list, manually delete the files from /boot and run sudo update-grub to remove the offending entry from the grub menu, then everything seems to work after that.

The question is, has anyone else had this problem? Does anyone know HOW or why it happened? Is there a better way of fixing this?

That sounds like the way to handle it.

As to how this happened, I haven't got a clue. I have quit fooling with Ubuntu, my last active participation was 11.04 testing. The 10.10 testing cycle was pretty smooth really. Don't recall anything like that in the testing forum.

You might want to go run a search on the;
http://ubuntuforums.org/index.php

in their beginners talk and general help sections.

I do not believe this to be wide spread and it should not have the 2.6.38 kernel anyway. I think it should be the 2.6.35 or 36 kernel unless they have backported it but I kind of doubt it at this point

1 members found this post helpful.

Hello there

I have the same problem. And i got it when the updateprocess in kubuntu didn't hapen propely. That is the new gernel didn't load. Errorlog reported locking problems. All other changes was don. So now i work with Libre-office instead Openoffice and so on.

Ilmari