pacman -Su, kernel upgrade, kernel panic, change distro?
 

I think the subject title says it all but for those needing a lengthier explanation...
I like to stay as up-to-date as I can and so I #pacman -Su as often as possible. However I have re-installed Arch 3 times already because every time I upgrade the kernel using pacman and reboot I get I get this error with any kernel version and using lilo. I switched to grub but got this error instead I have even tried using mkinitrd then adding the line to lilo.conf because it said to do so somewhere in these forums.
Is there something I am meant to do but am not? I found nothing on the Arch wiki. I have already searched the web and this forum.
What do you do when you want to upgrade your kernel using pacman?
Is this just one of those things that are unsolvable and mean I need a different distro? I never had this trouble with the rpm kernel upgrades in fedora core and suse or upgrading the kernel manually in slackware and arch.

I assume you're trying to install from the 0.7 CD. The problem is that your config files for lilo or grub are still set up to use the old DevFS /dev/disks/disk1/part1 naming scheme. DevFS has been dropped from the Kernel in favour of Udev (which, incidentally, is a much better system), which uses the traditional /dev/hda1 disk naming scheme.

The simplest solution is to install from the 0.7.1 CD instead, which uses Udev from the word go. Alternatively, after updating the Kernel but before rebooting, change all the references in /etc/lilo.conf , /etc/fstab and so on to the new naming scheme before you reboot.

See here for more info:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/DevFS_to_Udev

ewww. Right I shall give it a try but to be honest I am slightly disgusted by what I read. Why would devfs get ditched!? especially for that ancient and difficult naming scheme. To be honest I would much rather know nothing and find my device with understandable straightforward names than have to learn and memorise some naming scheme just to know whether sda1 is my mp3 player or whether hda1, hdb1 or hdc1 is my root partition. It requires a level of system knowledge only required by someone employed to know this shit and not for a desktop/dummy user. I run my desktop from command line and have already learned UDev but I still see a need for ease of use here people! Is there no way I can keep the DevFS naming scheme whilst still using UDev for detecting hardware?

ignore the rant upstairs. I did everything you asked and followed the Arch wiki but to no avail. I get
I love Arch and I think it is great but I feel we have a personality clash.

Ah, sorry, I had forgotten about that. Another significant change to the kernel (this time just in Arch rather than upstream) is the move to compiling several drivers as modules and using an initrd to boot the system.

I think the Kernel package automatically creates the initrd file when you install/upgrade it, so all you should need to do is modify your bootloader to accommodate the new system:
http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/...tloader_Config

I think you should download a 0.7.1 ISO, I recently installed from that inside a Qemu machine because I'm planning on building a small live CD for personal recovery missions when I break stuff ;) Worked fine, I installed from FTP so it pulled in all the newest packages then I upgraded the kernel to 2.6.15-archck4 and that worked fine on a reboot too. Definitely seems like the way to go, just make sure you read the output from pacman when you update your packages, it often spits out warnings that which when read, save you from all the troubles you seem to be experiencing.

Ah yes perhaps a good idea however I assume they are irrelevant because they fly from the bottom and off the top of my screen in no more than 4 seconds.
Excuse me for not keeping up-to-date with the Arch community but it seems I should be informed about all these changes and tinkerings so that I can adjust my configs accordingly and avoid a disgusting mess like the one I am currently in. Maybe pacman should offer this vital information about configuration at the end of its run or with a special command, I am sure I am not the only one unaware of the loss of DevFS and this alteration in drivers.

thankyou much for this vital information but as I said in my first post I read about this kernel panic error from someone running suse and it was suggested they do this initrd smak so I already tried it. HOWEVER I shall slap in my Arch wombat install CD and have some fun following the wiki entry.
I have initrd26.img and initrd26-full.img in /boot with in my grub menu.lst already.

On another note, is there any way of me keeping DevFS?

hi there,
compiling the kernel,i.e. not using the arch provided kernel.
regards,
slackie1000

You need to switch to udev and initrd

actually devfs is out of the kernel as of 2.6.13

should be :

kernel /boot/vmlinuz26 root=/dev/hda2 ro
initrd /boot/initrd26.img

That's true. devfs is old, big and nasty. The code is so full of hacky work-arounds that the kernels devs said "Hey, this is crap I'm not maintaining this junk anymore" and moved on. Udev is a great system and has worked 100% for since I updated to it, is there a reason you can't download the 0.7.1 ISO?

You could try looking at ndevfs which is (I think) a patchset someone is maintaining that will reapply devfs to the kernel. Sounds like a dumb idea to me but if that's your thing then give it a go, there was discussion on the Arch forums when the change was first made and it was decided that ndevfs wouldn't be included in the stock packages.

That's weird, whenever I pull down a new Udev version pacman displays a warning and counts down 5 seconds before installing it. Since we're both using the same packages it's odd you aren't seeing the same behaviour.

hi there,
indeed. i know it. i just answered the question. if he wants to keep devfs he can use an old kernel version and compile devfs.
no, this is not an advice. ;)
regards,
slackie1000

How very odd. Perhaps it's my inability to correctly percieve passing of time combined with my poor reading skills. I shall time how long these messages stay on the screen and see if we do infact share 5 seconds to read the instructions. If I time less than 5 seconds I could tape this phenomenon for you.

No luck with bootloader tinkering so far. I am going to burn Noodle iso and install packages over the top of versions currently installed then try all this crap from there.

pacman -S udev-migrate

or maybe just

>> udev-migrate

...after installing udev

That probably won't help much, since arch is a rolling dist. The only good thing is it ships with udev.

Your sarcasm is clearly noted. May I suggest Suse Linux for people not skilled enough to read properly? It's all warm and fuzzy etc I am led to believe :)

For the other non-wankers out there possibly considering using Arch, any Udev upgrades will stop all pacman output for a 5 sec countdown and display a nice little warning letting you know what it's installing and what it'll break if you don't follow the instructions properly. I thought it was nice of the developers but maybe it's just not enough. This said by the people who don't actually contribute themselves.

It does actually help considerably, all the Udev change over has been and gone by the Noodle release so it's just a clean update from there to a current system. As I said earlier in this mess of a thread, I did so myself the other day in a virtual machine and it was peachy :D

Newbies shouldn't be allowed anywhere within 4 feet of an Arch Linux CD! :D You'll thank me for it later... ;)

Yes, seriously though, Arch requires that you know a bit more than other Linuxes like SUSE or Fedora. However, Slackware users might feel comfy with it.

Personally I like Arch, although the initial system is too barebones (no KDE, no Gnome, just a collection of WMs to choose from.

As to the DevFS/UDev problem I didn't have a problem when I upgraded from DevFS to UDev because pacman did everything necessary to resolve it. Guess I was just lucky.

First of all I am no noobile! I have god damn configured this to shit! I have reinstalled packages and rewritten configs till my wrists hurt! I use vi ffs! I program in perl! I am no noob but unless my harddrive is corrupt I cannot figure out what to do here! I usually run slackware ffs! which is no way easier than Arch! I am currently building my own distro from scratch and I promise it will never have this stupid as shit problem! The trouble with Arch is that is stays so up-to-date it's fucking all over the place.
I am off to use gentoo, apparently they have a friendly community.

Mmmmm leet. Wow, I'm so impressed by you.

jkh,

If you felt that my post was directed at you, then you probably are a newbie...

who the hell else would it be directed at?

Interesting thread - pity about the vitriol that crept in.
I've seen all the problems the OP mentions. Took a couple of goes to get it installed as the doco was ...umm ... average at best.
As a casual user, I don't (didn't) frequent their fora, and missed the announcement re the change to use the initrd. During an update I saw a message about the bootloader scroll by as I wandered past the office. Mmmmm - message later gone and not kept anywhere for later perusal (prior to reboot).
I mentioned this on the Arch lists, but no resolution has appeared.

As for the udev fiasco, I think they dropped the ball on this. The kernel devs have been warning the community for ages that devfs was going away. Leaving the change in Arch until the absolute last minute was a mistake.

As has been pointed out, the wiki and/or fora has fixes for most of these issues, but it can be a trial sometimes finding it when you need it.

It was a general statement. To be very honest, I couldn't care less whether you're a newbie or an expert. I merely made an observation about Arch Linux.

If you think you're such a cool guru, you shouldn't use this forum at all. Anybody who thinks he's an expert probably isn't. On the other hand, acknowledging that you're a newbie might be the best way to actually learn something new. Being called a newbie isn't an insult. It's a fact - that somebody has less knowledge in a certain field and would like to learn something different.

And one more thing: on the internet there are a million people besides you. Who the hell are you to think that you're the only one everybody's talking about?

I think this thread is over. Time to click my heels together three times and see if it gets closed.

i don't see what the big problem with udev is. It took me all of five minutes to switch over. The arch devs even included a script to do it for you. Really, its not that hard.

Too barebones? Thats the entire point of arch.

No, there isn't any on the cd, but you can easily install them once you've installed. If you have to have a graphical interface to install...well...that's what Archie is for

Nah, it seems better now. New mod upgrade - stand in front of a mirror and repeat "moderator" 5 times......and we appear!

Well I tried ;)

First of all I apologise for coming off as eleet and without need of help but when an entire thread is about my inability to complete a task and someone says "Newbies shouldn't be allowed anywhere within 4 feet of an Arch Linux CD! You'll thank me for it later..." I assume I am the newbie. "Being called a newbie isn't an insult. It's a fact - that somebody has less knowledge in a certain field and would like to learn something different." then that makes me a newbie and you told me to stay away from Arch but all I was trying to tell you was I think I am skilled enough to use Arch.

Sorry to all the others who contributed real help.

Sorry also for the bad language on my part, I am just easily offended and wound up or so my school mates say.

Not if a n00b has half a brain. I tell you, installing Arch is a scale of magnitude easier than gentoo. I don't think I've had ONE successful gentoo install in about 15 tries. Given how long that damned distro takes, that's a lot of time. In contrast, it took me three attempts to have an Arch system up once I understood X configuration. In fact, none of my base-installs failed. It was only the X that was driving me nuts.

Wow, you can almost copy-paste a Gentoo install from their handbook! How did you manage to mess it up?

That's just it, I don't know. I was following their install directions to the letter and it would fail for me.

*shrugs*

It took me three runs at it but I got Arch and X running on my box in well under half the time I tried to build a gentoo install.

Yeah, thats why I like Arch so much. After install it leaves you to your own devices (ala *BSD, Gentoo, Crux) and with binary packages it's so quick and another big winner, when was the last time _anyone_ found that a package depended on a different version of something they had installed or some crap like that? Unlike apt and rpm, pacman could care less about the versions of software installed and when the machine the packages are all built on is always up-to-date this just doesn't happen.

Love it :D

Dude, get over it already. It wasn't a personal insult for the hundredth time... duh.