Am running Slack64-current on a UEFI machine booting with GRUB. Everything has been great for the last month running kernel-4.4.5 and 6 (build myself). Yesterday, since there have been a number of updates recently I built a new 4.4.6 kernel. That went fine. Ran grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg just for grins and rebooted to use new kernel and to rebuild NVIDIA driver. System wouldn't boot. Kernel panic. So since I've got good 4.4.3, 4.4.4.and 4.4.5 kernels on the machine I rebooted and picked the 4.4.5 kernel. It booted with a few complaints to the login prompt. KB and mouse (both USB) are dead so can't log in to repair things. Rebooted the 4.4.4 and 4.4.3 kernels with identical results. The complaints during booting are 1)SIOCADDRT: Network unreachable (so can't mount NAS drives) and 2) Something about the kernel's iptable support so Shorewall won't run.

Loaded KNOPPIX (7.6.1) and had a look at /var/log/messages and syslog. Did not see anything untoward concerning KB/Maus.

Can anyone point me to where to look further. Thanks in advance.

It's strange. Every kernel has it's own modules set so building 4.4.6 kernel modules doesn't affect other kernels modules.
Check once more to be sure you really running old kernels when trying to boot into 4.4.5 or earlier versions. Does grub menuitem really points to 4.4.5?

Did you try to boot into CLI as root (by adding "single" option to kernel boot options)? If yes does keyboard work when looging as root?

P.S.
I'd try to connect/disconnect mouse and keyboard when they refuses to work. It may produce some messages in dmesg and help to recognize what's going on (by reading logs later in knoppix live system)

I second Teufel, you clearly are not running the kernel you think you are.

Thanks for the input. I'll do some checking.

If you can SSH in you can run uname -a to see what kernel is running. I personally dislike Grub2, I'm using anything else (Lilo, rEFInd, Syslinux, legacy Grub).

make sure you load all modules

$ zcat menuconfig-text.gz | less -S

that shows you the "depends" for you (blue tooth or usb input devices)

another type of "depends" is sometimes mother board type and feature support (example, for intel audio one has to enable certain motherboard chipset features like pcmcia_core)

if they do NOT need /etc/modules.conf params or grub(1) /boot/grub/menu.txt opts are ok for you: build them into the kernel so they are "never not loaded" and not lingering in a initrd or something. those and anything hardware related for your particular machine. that way you aren't fumbling with botched /etc/modules not loaded or something - linux already has it and in "right order".

Rebooted the 4.4.4 and 4.4.3 kernels with identical results. The complaints during booting are 1)SIOCADDRT: Network unreachable

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didn't see that

ok maybe you have "microsoft configurable hardware" (i omit my comments so i wont be kicked off forum)

leave your power unplugged (not off, removed from power) at least 30 seconds, in bios check the "reset hardware detection"

also , try an make sure network is reachable. but that message sounds like somethign is trying to reach the network (shouldnt unless you set grub to do so)

OR it sounds like (you said it corrupt kernel driver - i got one last update though not so badly) - impossible since you said all kernels do it UNLESS you somehow have mixed up .o or .ko in the /lib/modules directory (we all do at times) or depends files (maybe wipe those clean and have linux make install modules directories fresh)

but hey don't blame kernel team yet: you may have gotten electrical damage to the card or SLOT

if you can, if such is allowed: move card to another slot. while the power is off of course

good luck sorry advice is so generic !

Got it sorted. Thank you to all for your input. Much appreciated. I booted Knoppix, mounted the system disk, removed everything in /boot related to 4.4.6 and then built a new 4.4.6 kernel again. Booted it with similar results to prior attempts with the addition of a number of complaints about missing kernel modules. Went to /lib/modules/4.4.6/kernel and most of the module directories were absent. Knoppix again and manually copied the modules from the build directory to /lib ... I had built the kernel using make bZimage, make modules and make modules_install. Looks like the modules_install bit got confused by the disk being mounted via Knoppix. Rebooted and all is well. Thanks again for your suggestions.