Latest Kernel causes reboot hell

[Ian Malone]

2009/12/7 Sam Varshavchik <mrsam at courier-mta.com>:

>>
>> "The best way to avoid the problem might be to get grub to display the
>> list of installed (assuming that the original F12 kernel worked for you)
>> and select that kernel to boot from. Change the default line
>> in /etc/grub.conf to automate that....."

Precisely, though there's no 'might' about it. Updated kernel fails to
boot = boot to previous kernel instead. This is one of the easier
update problems to work around, except that:

>
> It just occured to me that there may be a large number of people who are
> completely unaware of the fact that they can easily boot a previous kernel.
>
> Some time ago, someone decided to set up grub by default to hide its boot
> menu, so that it boots without delay. As such, some people may not even know
> about this option.
>
> This is a perfect example of why hiding some complexity from the end user is
> not always a good idea.
>

Yes, it does look more polished the way it is now, but what used to be
really obvious (especially to someone who has always run dual boot
set-ups), that you can boot an earlier kernel, is now an obscure piece
of knowledge.  Suggestions:
1. The grub boot screen should have an explicit message to this effect.
2. (More difficult to implement), autodetect failures to boot and
explicitly offer the user the alternatives. (A la Windows, not
everything they do is bad.)

-- 
imalone