I upgraded my Fedora Core distribution from 12 to 14. Everything worked fine, except for SQUID which refused to upgrade. I then went to rescue and installed SQUID using yum and then restarted the upgrade. It did finally upgrade the system and then asked for a reboot.

Well, when I selected the new kernel option in the GRUB options, since I also have Winduhs, it gave a kernel panic. I tried booting into the older kernel and it worked.

Now I see the users that are there in the system in the Graphical GUI login greeter screen. But none of the users get authenticated.

I used the rescue option and removed graphical login and changed boot level to 3. I also enabled the root user.

In the rescue mode, if I do a startx, everything works fine.

I logged off rebooted the system.

When I login, I see the version is shown as Fedora Core 14, but the kernel was still the older one with Core 12.

I again went to rescue and checked out GRUB and saw that it had no initrd for the new kernel.

I created a initrd image with the mkinitrd command and then added it to grub.

I again rebooted.

This time it shows the correct kernel, but still the system does not allow any of the users to login. All the Logins fail.

I have tried going to rescue and going to the system using 'chroot /mnt/sysimage' and doing a startx for Graphical.

Everything works, but only with the Rescue mode in the DVD. The normal boot/login sequence does not work.

Incidentally when I do a 'yum distro-sync', I get something like this :

---> Package dialog.i686 0:1.1-9.20080819.fc12 set to be downgraded
---> Package dialog.i686 0:1.1-11.20100428.fc14 set to be erased
---> Package diffstat.i686 0:1.51-1.fc12 set to be downgraded
---> Package diffstat.i686 0:1.51-2.fc14 set to be erased
---> Package diffutils.i686 0:2.8.1-25.fc12 set to be downgraded
---> Package diffutils.i686 0:2.8.1-29.fc14 set to be erased

It still seems to believe its a Fedora Core 12 system.

Another information is that when I leave rescue mode and do a normal boot without installation media, it starts doing some SELinux relabelling and reboots.

Any pointers on how I can get the system working. I am able to work with the rescue mode way, with any user, as it does not ask for any password. I can even do startx and work on the GUI. All my data is also there. I just am unable to get the user authenticated using normal boot/login.

I have tried using passwd -d username, but it gives an error :
passwd: libuser initialization error: could not open configuration file `/tmp/libuser.ElY0r9': No such file or directory

In fact, I am now in rescue mode only when I am writing and sending this.

My GRUB file is :

default=4
timeout=25
splashimage=(hd0,9)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
hiddenmenu
title Fedora (2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686) with Initrd
root (hd0,9)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686 ro root=UUID=c91b69c3-0d89-4242-99db-6e0cc04ce3de LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/initramfs-2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686.img
title Fedora (2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686)
root (hd0,9)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35.6-45.fc14.i686 ro root=UUID=c91b69c3-0d89-4242-99db-6e0cc04ce3de LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet
title Fedora (2.6.32.21-168.fc12.i686.PAE)
root (hd0,9)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32.21-168.fc12.i686.PAE ro root=UUID=c91b69c3-0d89-4242-99db-6e0cc04ce3de LANG=en_US.UTF-8 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/initramfs-2.6.32.21-168.fc12.i686.PAE.img
--- snip

Greetingz!

Well, first I have to start with "backup all of your data...NOW!" advice. Once that's out of the way, I'd really suggest just reinstalling the entire Operating System. However, in the interest of addressing the problem, I'd like to suggest two things;

1) Make sure "SElinux" is in "permissive" mode.
Check for /etc/selinux/config and set SELINUX to "permissive"
then

2) Boot you "Fedora (2.6.32.21-168.fc12.i686.PAE)" kernel.