Just yesterday, this Ubuntu Dapper Drake (LTS) laptop was working fine.

then,
...things happened.. and.. .

to try and "correct" the problem, i start tooling around in the terminal, looking for things, that don't exist. then i go to the root ( / )
and I see "vmlinux" and "vmlinux.old", that are 2 symbolic links to booting sequences. "old" points to 2.6.17-11-generic and the new one points to 2.6.17-12-generic . so stupid me, I try to switch the 2. making old be the -12 and the new be -11 using the cp command.

4) now I try to boot, and nothing happens. it can't even boot. get's stuck at the mouse splash screen

5) try to boot on the 2.6.17-12-generic recovery mode, and it gets as far as looking for a root directory aqnd then gets stuck.

6) try to boot with 2.6.17-11-generic and that works. but again, still no wireless connection, and if i look at the vmlinuz files that i messed around with in the root directory, they appear to be back to normal. with vmlinuz back to pointing to 2.6.17-12-generic , as if i never touched them (but there is an extra vmlinux.old2 file there, remnants of me trying to switch both around, and needing a temporary holding spot.)

So as it stands now, there is no wireless (the original problem that i glossed over in this post), and i have to boot with the old kernel version to see anything, and i don't see how i can go back and fix my mistakes, if they appear corrected already (but while booted under the old kernel version, which i think may be significant, but what the hell do i know, at this point?)

HELP PLEASE.

You can always relink them from a liveCD:

rm /vmlinuz /vmlinuz.old
ln -s /boot/vmlinuz-[...]. /vmlinuz
ln -s /boot/vmlinuz-[...] /vmlinuz.old

Btw, how did you get the wireless to work the first time round? Did you install drivers yourself? If so, they need to be reinstalled after every kernel update - that's just how it works.

will try. thanks.

but you know, they appear correctly linked if i'm in terminal after booting under the old configuration.



does ubuntu make a version of live cd or emergency boot disk?

just how it work, eh?


sigh...ok.

Yes, Ubuntu has a liveCD. Unless you installed from the alternate cd, you should already have it. If not, you can the 7.04 cd instead but any liveCD should be fine; you aren't going to install anything, you're just going to do some repairs.

As for the drivers, yes, those need to be reinstalled. Drivers need to match a specific kernel so you can't use those that match one kernel release with the next one. Think of the windows equivalent: installing xp drivers on vista, that wouldn't work either, would it? That's a second advantages of not having to install any drivers oneself: not only do you get none of the fussing and tinkering, they will also get automatically updated when a newer kernel is installed. Btw, video drives will probably need to be reinstalled as well unless you were using the open source driver instead of a proprietary one (wouldn't this explain why you suddenly don't get any display anymore with the newer kernel?).

You could also use the grub shell and load in the kernel and initrd manually. It has autocompletion making typing easier. Enter the actual file instead of the link.