The perils of running a cutting-edge OS
Got bit by Debian "unstable" bug #558286 over the weekend, making my main PC fairly unbootable and non-functioning for most of it. Of course, as it also controlls my modem and acts as my router on the home network, my laptop couldn't connect to the internet for me to try and figure out what the problem was.
I had a few rescue disks lying around, but all they told me was that my hard drives and other hardware were fine. Unfortunately, they didn't have the "ppp" and other kernel modules needed to talk to my modem, so while I could mount my hard drive and get to the config files needed to tell the PC how connect to the net, it wasn't actually capable of doing so.
Fortunately, this morning, I remembered that my laptop had a recent kubuntu image on it, so I burned that to a CD and booted from it. It had the right modules needed! After booting, mounting my hard disks, setting up symlinks to the modem firmware and the config files, I was able to start my interwebs!
Some googling turned up bugs 497791 and 558286 matching the symtoms I was seeing, but following the instructions for a temporary solution in there didn't fix my problem. (Eventually, after a diversion in needing to download kubuntu x86-64 in order to get a chroot working, as the iso I had was for x86-32, while my main system is 64-bit only, via transferring it to my laptop with some hacked together static IP addresses and netcat (given that dhcpd and apache weren't up and running as normal) in order to burn it and reboot into it)
However, after some general playing around with the grub command line, staring intently at the grub configuration files, comparing them to the layout of my hard disk, and plenty of cups of tea, I tried changing the "/boot/{vmlinuz,initrd.img}-2.6.31-1-amd64" lines to "/{vmlinuz,initrd.img}-2.6.31-1-amd64" and, hey presto, things started booting again.
Of course, now that I figured out what the actual problem was, and the solution, finding the existing bug that could have helped me was easy.
And once I'd found it, I realised I'd not spotted it before as it had already been marked as "fixed, pending upload", which means it ends up way down the list of bugs, far below the top of the "outstanding bugs" section where I had been looking.
*sigh*
Most problems I can deal with. But the bootloader and early boot (pre-init(8) process is still deep wizardry and black magic to me. Unfortunately, it's that area which, if things do go wrong, that you have the least external resources available to draw on to help you fix it.
Maybe I should switch to Debian "testing" instead.
Nah, then I wouldn't get a challenge like this thrown at me every couple of years or so, and where would be the fun in that? ;-)
I had a few rescue disks lying around, but all they told me was that my hard drives and other hardware were fine. Unfortunately, they didn't have the "ppp" and other kernel modules needed to talk to my modem, so while I could mount my hard drive and get to the config files needed to tell the PC how connect to the net, it wasn't actually capable of doing so.
Fortunately, this morning, I remembered that my laptop had a recent kubuntu image on it, so I burned that to a CD and booted from it. It had the right modules needed! After booting, mounting my hard disks, setting up symlinks to the modem firmware and the config files, I was able to start my interwebs!
Some googling turned up bugs 497791 and 558286 matching the symtoms I was seeing, but following the instructions for a temporary solution in there didn't fix my problem. (Eventually, after a diversion in needing to download kubuntu x86-64 in order to get a chroot working, as the iso I had was for x86-32, while my main system is 64-bit only, via transferring it to my laptop with some hacked together static IP addresses and netcat (given that dhcpd and apache weren't up and running as normal) in order to burn it and reboot into it)
However, after some general playing around with the grub command line, staring intently at the grub configuration files, comparing them to the layout of my hard disk, and plenty of cups of tea, I tried changing the "/boot/{vmlinuz,initrd.img}-2.6.31-1-amd64" lines to "/{vmlinuz,initrd.img}-2.6.31-1-amd64" and, hey presto, things started booting again.
Of course, now that I figured out what the actual problem was, and the solution, finding the existing bug that could have helped me was easy.
And once I'd found it, I realised I'd not spotted it before as it had already been marked as "fixed, pending upload", which means it ends up way down the list of bugs, far below the top of the "outstanding bugs" section where I had been looking.
*sigh*
Most problems I can deal with. But the bootloader and early boot (pre-init(8) process is still deep wizardry and black magic to me. Unfortunately, it's that area which, if things do go wrong, that you have the least external resources available to draw on to help you fix it.
Maybe I should switch to Debian "testing" instead.
Nah, then I wouldn't get a challenge like this thrown at me every couple of years or so, and where would be the fun in that? ;-)