Unable to boot my system totally - please help!

[Andy Green]

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On Sunday 05 December 2004 13:34, Paul F. Johnson wrote:
> Hi,
>
> > > It's either that or when I asked someone else to install the kernel,
> > > they used rpm -Uv and ignored the postun (etc) errors... Now that will
> > > have screwed things up!
> >
> > I installed the kernel you posted about and I did not get any errors
> > on install, plus I am running it right now just fine.  What I DID
> > get was for some reason /boot was not mounted at that time, the
> > kernel files were instead copied into the mountpoint itself (ie, the
> > /boot in the root filesystem that should be an empty mountpoint
> > "covered over" by the actual mounted /boot filesystem).  I had to
> > mount the boot filesystem elsewhere and copy over the files from
> > /boot into it, adjust /boot/grub/grub./conf and then reboot and it
> > worked fine.  I think this was to do with recent initscripts
> > troubles at the time I installed the new kernel.
>
> That sounds like what I'm having. Exactly how did you get things back again
> (a step by step would be nice).

I think it is a different situation from yours.  My problem was caused by the 
filesystem for /boot not being mounted somehow (not by my actions) at the 
time that the kernel was installed.  So it installed the kernel files that 
should have gone on the /boot filestystem directly on the /boot mountpoint 
directory itself instead of the filesystem that should have been mounted 
there.  When I rebooted, I DID get my normal and proper /boot filesystem 
coming up, just not with those new kernel files in it.  I realized what had 
happened and unmounted /boot by hand, mounted it on a temporary mountpoint 
and copied the files over.  This behaviour is different to what you have been 
saying.

> One thing I've noticed - I've run the rescue, chroot to /mnt/sysimage and
> run yum -y --exclude=swig update. I'm getting a lot of post error 255s. Not
> on every package though.

Hum not sure I would be doing anything until I understood what had happened 
with /boot.  If you mount the partition that contains your /boot filesystem 
by hand, what is in there?  Your old, previously installed kernel files or 
just the new ones, or nothing, or what?

> Looks like something is seriously snarled :-(

Could be... doing a yum with the thing in its current state does not sound 
like the right way forward until you can trust your system...

- -Andy

- -- 
http://www.addintelligence.co.uk -- we design custom hardware and software for 
your products 
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