Kernel upgrade problem.

**Stephen** · 01-23-2004, 09:11 AM

Originally Posted by massai

This whole upgrade process is a bitch (forgive the expression). If I wanted Debian, I should have gotten Debian in the first place and be done with it. (However, the learning experience from this silly knoppix-to-debian exercise is the only good asset and it compensates for the effort.... or at least I hope so...)

Definitely gets you knowing the system at the very least and Debian is worth the effort most things just work like they should. A couple of programs you should look at installing just in case they don't are apt-listchanges and apt-listbugs which show you a screen for each during your upgrading that lists the changes and bugs with the packges, the list bugs one can be misleading sometimes so it is always a good idea to go to http://bugs.debian.org and check the reports some people seem to add a comment to bugs that are months old and get them back into the system most times though it is just change logs that you get to see. You may want to go to http://lists.debian.org and subscribe to the debian-security-announce mailing list as well so you get notified anytime a new package comes out due to a problem you might if you not mind about 200-250 emails a day want to try debian-user although you might want to use a newsreader to check it out there's lots of good information on that list.

**massai** · 01-23-2004, 09:46 PM

Thanks Steff, I bookmarked your links.

It is probably a good idea (as you suggested) to linger around the debian forums as well.

**massai** · 01-24-2004, 10:02 AM

More bad lack.
(It seems that every single troubleshooting scenario that can happen will happen , but I will try to keep the spirits up and look at the positive side. )

Anyway, just found out that mounting and filisystems are messed up.

There used to be a swap partition under the previous kernel. Now it is nowhere to be found.
Also, floppies cannot be mounted, CD roms cannot be mounted. Everything gives an error of some sort.

After inspecting the dmesg entries, it looks like all the drives and partisions have been recognized by the kernel during boot but things have changed and the old fstab needs to be revamped.

What is the best way to do this ?

This is a grab of the relevant portion of dmesg entries:

Code:

hdb: QUANTUM FIREBALL SE4.3A, ATA DISK drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
hdc: Pioneer DVD-ROM ATAPIModel DVD-106S 012, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hdd: PLEXTOR CD-R PX-W1610A, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
hdb: max request size: 128KiB
hdb: 8418816 sectors (4310 MB) w/80KiB Cache, CHS=14848/9/63
 hdb: hdb1 hdb2 < hdb5 >
ide-cd: passing drive hdc to ide-scsi emulation.
ide-cd: passing drive hdd to ide-scsi emulation.
ide-scsi is deprecated for cd burning! Use ide-cd and give dev=/dev/hdX as device
scsi0 : SCSI host adapter emulation for IDE ATAPI devices
  Vendor: PIONEER   Model: DVD-ROM DVD-106   Rev: 1.22
  Type:   CD-ROM                             ANSI SCSI revision: 02
scsi1 : SCSI host adapter emulation for IDE ATAPI devices
  Vendor: PLEXTOR   Model: CD-R   PX-W1610A  Rev: 1.03
  Type:   CD-ROM                             ANSI SCSI revision: 02
sr0: scsi3-mmc drive: 15x/40x cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.12
Attached scsi CD-ROM sr0 at scsi0, channel 0, id 0, lun 0
sr1: scsi3-mmc drive: 40x/40x writer cd/rw xa/form2 cdda tray
Attached scsi CD-ROM sr1 at scsi1, channel 0, id 0, lun 0

This is the current fstab file:

Code:

# /etc/fstab: filesystem table.
#
# filesystem  mountpoint  type  options  dump  pass
/dev/hdb1  /  ext3  defaults,errors=remount-ro  0  1
/dev/hdb2  none  swap  sw  0  0
/dev/fd0  /mnt/floppy ext2,ext3,vfat  defaults,user,noauto,showexec,umask=022  0  0
/dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom  iso9660  defaults,ro,user,noexec,noauto  0  0
/dev/cdrom1 /mnt/cdrom1  iso9660  defaults,ro,user,noexec,noauto  0  0
/dev/dvd /mnt/dvd  iso9660  defaults,ro,user,noexec,noauto  0  0
/dev/cdaudio /mnt/cdaudio iso9660  defaults,ro,user,noexec,noauto  0  0

none  /sys  sysfs  defaults  0  0
proc  /proc  proc  defaults  0  0
usbdevfs /proc/bus/usb usbdevfs defaults 0 0

So far the new world order looks like:
hdb1 (Main partition)
hdb2 (swap partition)
sr0 (DVD/CD)
sr1 (CD-rw)

..... I will dig deeper to see if I can figure this out...

**massai** · 01-24-2004, 08:04 PM

Update-01:
The floppy issue has been resolved. It is now possible to mount floppies.
(part of the problem was the disk I was testing seemed to have a bad superblock.... although I am not sure how that happened; that floppy was formated and written on during the kernel upgrade process by an automatic script........ I am inocent !..... I swear )

Update-02:
I can read vfat floppies, but when a floppy is formated with fdformat then it can not be mounted.
..........
Ok, got it.
Had to use "mkfs /dev/fd0" on the newly formated floppy.

Update-03:
Found relevant discussion http://www.knoppix.net/forum/viewtop...262&highlight=
That is also the case on my system; the user knoppix had been deleted, but the /etc/group file contained a lot of knoppix instances.

**Stephen** · 01-24-2004, 09:56 PM

I usually use the actual device that is being used for the CD/DVD Rom(s). So for the first device sr0 you would use the device it links too which is scd0 and sr1 -> scd1 in the /etc/fstab. Then you would check the sequence of the links for all the devices listed in the fstab to make sure they point to the correct one. eg. my DVD burner for instance:

Code:

[04:45 PM Sat Jan 24: stephen @ ~]
>$ ll /dev/cdrom
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root           11 2004-01-24 16:05 /dev/cdrom -> /dev/cdrom0
[04:45 PM Sat Jan 24: stephen @ ~]
>$ ll /dev/cdrom0
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root            9 2004-01-24 16:05 /dev/cdrom0 -> /dev/scd0
[04:45 PM Sat Jan 24: stephen @ ~]
>$ ll /dev/dvd
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root            9 2004-01-18 20:01 /dev/dvd -> /dev/scd0
[04:46 PM Sat Jan 24: stephen @ ~]
>$ ll /dev/sr0
lrwxrwxrwx    1 root     root            4 2004-01-18 20:01 /dev/sr0 -> scd0

Entries in fstab

/dev/scd0       /cdrom          iso9660 ro,user,noauto          0       0
/dev/scd0       /dvd          iso9660 ro,user,noauto          0       0

For a seperate burner I usually make a directory /cdrw and use that as the mount point in addition to the /dvd I had to make in this instance the /cdrom already existed. And while I'm thinking about it did you make the /sys directory for the line that is being mounted for the sysfs in the file? So for your file I would use (if you wanted all the extra entries in it only one line per device is necessary):

Code:

/dev/scd0 /cdrom  iso9660  defaults,ro,user,noexec,noauto  0  0 
/dev/scd0 /dvd  iso9660  defaults,ro,user,noexec,noauto  0  0
/dev/scd1 /cdrw  iso9660  defaults,ro,user,noexec,noauto  0  0 
/dev/scd0 /dev/dvd  iso9660  defaults,ro,user,noexec,noauto  0  0 
/dev/scd0 /dev/cdaudio iso9660  defaults,ro,user,noexec,noauto  0  0

The last line for the /dev/cdaudio assumes that the first drive has the audio cable running from it to the sound card and you would make sure the links are pointing to the /dev/scd0 from both the /dev/dvd & /dev/cdaudio. Then you would correct the icons for the devices on the desktop by either editing or deleting and creating new ones this option I find is the best. How did you delete the user I believe deluser is the one that erases the configuration files for the user with a switch you can use ( --remove-all-files IIRC)?

**massai** · 01-25-2004, 02:39 AM

And while I'm thinking about it did you make the /sys directory for the line that is being mounted for the sysfs in the file?

Horror !
No I never did that...... ok.... done now. Thanks for catching that.

UPDATE-04: The CD-rw and DVD devices are now WORKING properly
I believe the fragments of the knoppix group name were causing internal confusion.
I am certain that the knoppix user was deleted (a few weeks ago) by using some command/script; I did not just merely trash the directory (but apparently whatever I did was not clean enough and left some garbage behind)

Yup, I will take your suggestion and use scd0 and scd1 in the /etc/fstab (although I had revised and it was working, I would rather trust you on this)

Code:

# /etc/fstab: filesystem table.
#
# filesystem  mountpoint  type  options  dump  pass
/dev/hdb1  /  ext3  defaults,errors=remount-ro  0  1
/dev/hdb5  none  swap  sw  0  0
/dev/fd0  /mnt/floppy  auto  user,noauto  0  0
/dev/scd0 /mnt/cdrom  iso9660  user,ro,noexec,noauto  0  0
/dev/scd1 /mnt/cdrom1  iso9660  defaults,ro,user,noexec,noauto  0  0
#/dev/dvd /mnt/dvd  iso9660  defaults,ro,user,noexec,noauto  0  0

none  /sys  sysfs  defaults  0  0
proc  /proc  proc  defaults  0  0
usbdevfs /proc/bus/usb usbdevfs defaults 0 0

I chose to keep it simple. There are only two icons on the desktop representing the physical drives. So whatever I pop a disk (may it be data or audio) in the particular drive the filesystem should be mounted to the same point (so that I do not have to make adjustments or make and delete icons every the time)
The same goes for the Floppy (I chose to use "auto" in the fstab) so with a single icon I can mount all kinds of file systems and be done with it)

UPDTATE-05: Next troubleshooting point is the swap file.
Right now the swap file exists in an alternate universe of some sort.

When I do "fdsisk -l" here is what I get:

Code:

Disk /dev/hdb: 4310 MB, 4310433792 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 524 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/hdb1   *           1         491     3943926   83  Linux
/dev/hdb2             492         524      265072+   5  Extended
/dev/hdb5             492         524      265041   82  Linux swap

But when I do "free", this is what I get:

Code:

root@ThisKnoppixBox:/home/Thomas# free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:        710428     488840     221588          0      52208     246048
-/+ buffers/cache:     190584     519844
Swap:            0          0          0

...I will dig deeper....
..to be continued...

**Stephen** · 01-25-2004, 03:21 AM

Well it's set to the right type so have you mkswap /dev/hdb5 to format it as swap space then try mount -a to see if it gets mounted. And since you only have the two partitions on the drive you may want to delete the extended partition and just make a primary partition for the /swap then it would become the /dev/hdb2 for the space and then run the mkswap on it.

**massai** · 01-25-2004, 03:22 AM

After examining the dmesg output I found the following error:

"Unable to find swap-space signature"

In the past couple of hours I tried several combinations of mkswap, swapon, swapoff, but with no success.
I will try once more

P.S. Stephen, thanks for pointing the direction for the umpteenth time (I begin to feel so much obliged after you have invested so much time with this newbie)

**massai** · 01-25-2004, 03:47 AM

Swap partition is now detected !

I guess (being a newbie) it seems I collect all the right ingredients and have the right commands (most of the time) but I always mess-up the implementation.

In this case all cammands swapon, swapoff, mount -a, mkswap, etc.. etc were tried at some point.

This time I tried it in this order and it worked:

Code:

mkswap /dev/hdb5
swapon /dev/hdb5

Code:

root@ThisKnoppixBox:/home/Thomas# mkswap /dev/hdb5
Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 271396 kB
root@ThisKnoppixBox:/home/Thomas# swapon /dev/hdb5
root@ThisKnoppixBox:/home/Thomas# free
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:        710428     248088     462340          0      14428     119980
-/+ buffers/cache:     113680     596748
Swap:       265032          0     265032

Now I have to understand what you said about deleting the extended partition....
to be continued...

**Stephen** · 01-25-2004, 04:14 AM

If you got the swap working like you have you should just leave it alone that is really just a cosmetic thing on the way I like my partitions set up I probably should not have suggested it to you to start with. Good to heard you got it going BTW.