ANOTHER Fedora upgrade tale of woe...

[Lamar Owen]

On Sunday 25 January 2004 01:20 pm, John T Nelson wrote:
> To make a long story short, I tried to upgrade RH8 to Fedora CORE
> upgrade but booting CORE gives me module loading errors (out the wazoo).
> The CORE kernel is being booted but /boot/map seems to be pointing to old
> RH8 module info. So the /boot/map file is not being updated.

It's deeper than that.  You originally wrote that kernel 2.4.20 was booting.  
This is NOT the CORE kernel.

> Ok, so when I run lilo hoping to update this map somehow, I get a Fatal
> error because it claims the map info doesn't exist (the file does exist
> and I get the same message if I remove the file.... yes lilo.conf does
> specify the right path).

I had this same problem upgrading a HP NetServer from 8.0 to FC1.  I installed 
a Lilo RPM (lilo-21.4.4-24 is what I have installed), and had to go through 
some hoops.  I think I had to create a /boot/message file with some string in 
it.  I'd be glad to send those files to you if they would help.  I was able 
to fix the problem after consulting the LILO man page. 

In  my case, GRUB doesn't like this box, at least the RHL8.0 GRUB didn't.  
There's critical data on this box currently, so I'm not updating to GRUB 
until I absolutely have to (which will be shortly after I get another box 
doing this function, and move the NetServer to dong something else, at which 
time I may reinstall).

Run /sbin/lilo -q -v and tell us what it says.  The -v option is your friend; 
my latest lilo run, with verbosity follows:
[root at discus boot]# /sbin/lilo -v
LILO version 21.4-4, Copyright (C) 1992-1998 Werner Almesberger
'lba32' extensions Copyright (C) 1999,2000 John Coffman

boot = /dev/sda, map = /boot/map.0801
Reading boot sector from /dev/sda
Merging with /boot/boot.b
Mapping message file /boot/message
Boot image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.22-1.2163.nptl
Mapping RAM disk /boot/initrd-2.4.22-1.2163.nptl.img
Added 2.4.22-1.2163.1
Boot image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.22-1.2163.nptlsmp
Mapping RAM disk /boot/initrd-2.4.22-1.2163.nptlsmp.img
Added 2.4.22-1.2163.n *
Boot image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl.pari
Mapping RAM disk /boot/initrd-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl.pari.img
Added 2.4.22-1.2115.2
Boot image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl.parismp
Mapping RAM disk /boot/initrd-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl.parismp.img
Added 2.4.22-1.2115.1
Boot image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl
Mapping RAM disk /boot/initrd-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl.img
Added 2.4.22-1.2115.n
/boot/boot.0800 exists - no backup copy made.
Writing boot sector.
boot = /dev/sdc, map = /boot/map.0821
Reading boot sector from /dev/sdc
Merging with /boot/boot.b
Mapping message file /boot/message
Boot image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.22-1.2163.nptl
Mapping RAM disk /boot/initrd-2.4.22-1.2163.nptl.img
Added 2.4.22-1.2163.1
Boot image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.22-1.2163.nptlsmp
Mapping RAM disk /boot/initrd-2.4.22-1.2163.nptlsmp.img
Added 2.4.22-1.2163.n *
Boot image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl.pari
Mapping RAM disk /boot/initrd-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl.pari.img
Added 2.4.22-1.2115.2
Boot image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl.parismp
Mapping RAM disk /boot/initrd-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl.parismp.img
Added 2.4.22-1.2115.1
Boot image: /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl
Mapping RAM disk /boot/initrd-2.4.22-1.2115.nptl.img
Added 2.4.22-1.2115.n
/boot/boot.0820 exists - no backup copy made.
Writing boot sector.
[root at discus boot]#

At the beginning of this run I rm'd  both map.0801 and map.0821, and the lilo 
run created them for me.  But having a legal /boot/message was critical to 
getting it to work.  In my case, a cat of message is 'Booting'.
-- 
Lamar Owen
Director of Information Technology
Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute
1 PARI Drive
Rosman, NC  28772
(828)862-5554
www.pari.edu