apt-get upgrade always complains about my kernel

mrider · 08-28-2008, 11:03 AM

I don't know what I did wrong. Every time I run "apt-get upgrade", I get a message that says the kernel version I'm running is the same as the one being installed. It goes on to say that the modules directory is likely changed, and that it needs to be rebuilt.

My initial install was from the net install disk. We use a NTLM proxy server, so net install could not access the Internet until after the install was complete. I modified my sources.list file by hand (shown below). Could that be the problem?

Code:

My /etc/apt/sources.list file:
#
# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 r3 _Etch_ - Official i386 NETINST Binary-1 20080218-14:15]/ etch contrib main

# deb cdrom:[Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 r3 _Etch_ - Official i386 NETINST Binary-1 20080218-14:15]/ etch contrib main
deb http : //http.us.debian.org/debian stable main contrib



# Line commented out by installer because it failed to verify:
deb http : //security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib
# Line commented out by installer because it failed to verify:
deb-src http : //security.debian.org/ etch/updates main contrib

(Note that I purposely put a space on either side of the colon in the urls for this post since I do not have rights to post urls)

rickh · 08-28-2008, 12:12 PM

sources.list looks OK. I think you're just getting security updates to the kernel, which is a good thing.

Quakeboy02 · 08-28-2008, 12:28 PM

Any chance you're getting a NO_PUBKEY error that you're not telling us about?

mrider · 08-28-2008, 12:32 PM

Oh. So you're saying the kernel version number is the same, but the version I'm receiving is a different patch than the one I have? That makes sense - sort of.

I thought I had caused some problem with my funky install. Took me ages to get everything going what with our NTLM proxy. I thought perhaps the thrashing I did caused this.

Thanks!

EDIT: In answer to the question just above this - I haven't noticed one, but I suppose it's possible.

EDIT 2: Would I find that in the logs? And if so, where?

makuyl · 08-28-2008, 01:02 PM

You probably have a meta-package of the kernel installed. Check the output of apt-get more closely.
Also check your kernel package with "dpkg -l | grep linux-image" or "... grep kernel".

mrider · 08-28-2008, 01:21 PM

Quote:

You probably have a meta-package of the kernel installed. Check the output of apt-get more closely.

At the risk of being dense (okay, so maybe I am dense), what am I checking more closely for?

Quote:

Also check your kernel package with "dpkg -l | grep linux-image" or "... grep kernel".

$ dpkg -l | grep linux-image
ii linux-image-2.6-686 2.6.18+6etch3 Linux kernel 2.6 image on PPro/Celeron/PII/P
ii linux-image-2.6.18-6-686 2.6.18.dfsg.1-22etch2 Linux 2.6.18 image on PPro/Celeron/PII/PIII/

You're probably correct in that I'm almost certain to be running a meta-package. This is not a mission critical server, it's a small server that I use to test code deployments (to a Tomcat server). It's nicely clean, so that I can make sure I include all dependencies when I set up a war file. The upshot of that is that I didn't log everything I did like I would on a production server. But I seem to recall that the original kernel was xxx-386, so I used the xxx-686 meta-package.

What should I watch out for?

rickh · 08-28-2008, 02:28 PM

All these people are feeding you confusing stories. As long as you stick with Stable (currently Etch) You have nothing to worry about.

mrider · 08-28-2008, 02:51 PM

To rickh:

That sounds reasonable, thanks. I'm not a noob to Linux - I've been a steady user since I purchased SuSe 7.3 at a computer store (in spite of the fact that I'm posting this from a Windows box at work) - but I'm only modestly knowledgeable. I'm following the rule of "assume all warnings are errors unless you understand why the warning does not apply".

The box itself is rock solid stable. It just bothered me to get that warning every time I ran updates.

To everyone thanks for the insights. I really do appreciate the help.

Quakeboy02 · 08-28-2008, 04:41 PM

I'm still a bit concerned. I just ran "apt-get update" followed by "apt-get upgrade". (Is this the order you are doing them in?) I did not receive any complaints from security.debian.org during either the 65.6MB download or the upgrade process.

mrider · 08-28-2008, 06:14 PM

Quote:

I just ran "apt-get update" followed by "apt-get upgrade". (Is this the order you are doing them in?)

Yes. That's precisely what I do. I also get the error message if I do "apt-get update" followed by "apt-get dist-upgrade".

rickh · 08-28-2008, 06:47 PM

Quakeboy02 is not getting the "message" (it's not an error or even a warning), because he's running a kernel version higher than the one getting the security update, 2.6.18.

I wonder if Quakeboy02 is even running Etch. 65.6 MB is a heckuva big download for a release that only gets security related upgrades (Stable).

Quakeboy02 · 08-28-2008, 08:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rickh

Quakeboy02 is not getting the "message" (it's not an error or even a warning), because he's running a kernel version higher than the one getting the security update, 2.6.18.

I wonder if Quakeboy02 is even running Etch. 65.6 MB is a heckuva big download for a release that only gets security related upgrades (Stable).

I've gotten your message, rickh. But, I'm posting, anyway. I am running etch, but I haven't run upgrade on it since maybe February. I do use a custom kernel, though. Could be either or both. Don't care.

mrider · 08-29-2008, 09:21 AM

I think I'll follow your lead rickh, and not worry about the message. It will be interesting to see what happens when I upgrade to Lenny (sp?) after it goes stable.

As I say, the box is rock solid. I was just concerned that I mucked something up while thrashing around trying to get apt to work through the proxy.

Thanks all.