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sarge/woody upgrade - boot problemHi Folks, I'm hoping the collective wisdom of this list can point me at the The problem - I tried to upgrade an elderly system from woody to The behavior - hangs during boot, almost immediately after noting the What I don't know - how many different systems are available to manage Venting now - guess why I switched from red hat to debian? Yep, it was Final post script - this really looks like a hardware problem, and I -- (Arlie Stephens ) -- Bookmark/Search this post with: 
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sarge/woody upgrade - boot problem
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On 03/01/07 09:48, Arlie Stephens wrote:
> Hi Folks,
>
> I'm hoping the collective wisdom of this list can point me at the
> right TFM. I'm also somewhat inclined to vent.
>
> The problem - I tried to upgrade an elderly system from woody to
> sarge. Now it doesn't boot. I suspect the upgrade ate the master boot
> record - but I don't even know the right terminology to figure out
> what to search for, to try to confirm my suspicions.
>
> The behavior - hangs during boot, almost immediately after noting the
> absence of a bootable CD. It prints 2 characters before the hang: LI.
> My suspicion - LI stands for LILO, and the "upgrade" disagreed with
> whatever I *had* been using (LILO)? wanted me on something else (GRUB?)
> and proceeded to make a mixed muddle that won't boot.
>
[snip]
> *off* it.
>
> Final post script - this really looks like a hardware problem, and I
> know systems sometimes develop issues that don't show until they are
> rebooted (or power cycled). That's one reason I rebooted the system
> once while it was still on woody. Since I encountered no problems
> then, it's pretty clear the upgrade *is* the culprit, in spite
> of appearances.
I googled for "linux boot only LI" and got some results.
Do you have a live CD anywhere? Or a bootable DOS floppy disk?
http://www.faqs.org/docs/lnag/lnag_lilo.html#LILO_stops
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sarge/woody upgrade - boot problem
On Mar 01 2007, Ron Johnson wrote:
> On 03/01/07 09:48, Arlie Stephens wrote:
> > The problem - I tried to upgrade an elderly system from woody to
> > sarge. Now it doesn't boot. I suspect the upgrade ate the master boot
> > record - but I don't even know the right terminology to figure out
> > what to search for, to try to confirm my suspicions.
> >
> > The behavior - hangs during boot, almost immediately after noting the
> > absence of a bootable CD. It prints 2 characters before the hang: LI.
> > My suspicion - LI stands for LILO, and the "upgrade" disagreed with
> > whatever I *had* been using (LILO)? wanted me on something else (GRUB?)
> > and proceeded to make a mixed muddle that won't boot.
> I googled for "linux boot only LI" and got some results.
Ah - you must have half recognized the symptoms. The link you gave
does indeed look like it's describing my problem. That also confirms
that LILO was indeed what I had on this system - probably because it
was the default for woody. (I've an idea that grub is the preferred
boot loader for more recent debian systems, since that's what I found
on all the systems here that were first installed as sarge or etch.)
> Do you have a live CD anywhere? Or a bootable DOS floppy disk?
I'll make one tonight, and try re-installing LILO.
Then I'll doubtless be on to the next problem, but it's a stage in the
right direction. Thank you very much.
> http://www.faqs.org/docs/lnag/lnag_lilo.html#LILO_stops
--
Arlie
(Arlie Stephens )
--
sarge/woody upgrade - boot problem
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On 03/01/07 18:22, Arlie Stephens wrote:
> On Mar 01 2007, Ron Johnson wrote:
>> On 03/01/07 09:48, Arlie Stephens wrote:
>
[snip]
> I'll make one tonight, and try re-installing LILO.
> Then I'll doubtless be on to the next problem, but it's a stage in the
> right direction. Thank you very much.
You know, it would be much faster if you just do a direct install of
Etch, wiping out (before, of course, saving all mods from /etc...)
everything except /home.
>
>> http://www.faqs.org/docs/lnag/lnag_lilo.html#LILO_stops
>
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sarge/woody upgrade - boot problem
On Mar 01 2007, Ron Johnson wrote:
> On 03/01/07 18:22, Arlie Stephens wrote:
> > On Mar 01 2007, Ron Johnson wrote:
> >> On 03/01/07 09:48, Arlie Stephens wrote:
> >
> [snip]
> > I'll make one tonight, and try re-installing LILO.
> > Then I'll doubtless be on to the next problem, but it's a stage in the
> > right direction. Thank you very much.
>
> You know, it would be much faster if you just do a direct install of
> Etch, wiping out (before, of course, saving all mods from /etc...)
> everything except /home.
*sigh* You are the second person to suggest in effect never actually
upgrading a debian system, or at least never going from woody to
sarge.
I'd be much happier is this had happened *after* etch became
officially stable. There's been a lot of churn in the last month or
so, and I'm concerned that somehow having started before it went
stable will get me into similar problems, some time in the future,
updating (or upgrading) etch. Plus, I already have one system on etch,
and it's needing a lot of updating - even while I'm still working on
sorting out the gotchas and normal systems administration chores to
get it into active use. (Serves me right for going with 'testing', but
the improved X support is almost worth the added hassle ;-))
--
Arlie
(Arlie Stephens )
--
sarge/woody upgrade - boot problem
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On 03/01/07 19:10, Arlie Stephens wrote:
> On Mar 01 2007, Ron Johnson wrote:
>> On 03/01/07 18:22, Arlie Stephens wrote:
>>> On Mar 01 2007, Ron Johnson wrote:
>>>> On 03/01/07 09:48, Arlie Stephens wrote:
>> [snip]
>>> I'll make one tonight, and try re-installing LILO.
>>> Then I'll doubtless be on to the next problem, but it's a stage in the
>>> right direction. Thank you very much.
>> You know, it would be much faster if you just do a direct install of
>> Etch, wiping out (before, of course, saving all mods from /etc...)
>> everything except /home.
>
> *sigh* You are the second person to suggest in effect never actually
> upgrading a debian system,
We'd *never* say that.
> or at least never going from woody to
> sarge.
Sure we *would* have, and we *did*. 21 months ago, when Stable
Sarge was new.
Now, you've got to upgrade from Woody to Sarge and then soon upgrade
from Sarge to Etch. That 2-step process is much slower and
error-prone than the one-step wipe-and-install Etch.
> I'd be much happier is this had happened *after* etch became
> officially stable. There's been a lot of churn in the last month or
> so, and I'm concerned that somehow having started before it went
> stable will get me into similar problems, some time in the future,
> updating (or upgrading) etch. Plus, I already have one system on etch,
> and it's needing a lot of updating - even while I'm still working on
> sorting out the gotchas and normal systems administration chores to
> get it into active use. (Serves me right for going with 'testing', but
> the improved X support is almost worth the added hassle ;-))
Keeping up with Etch/testing on a bi-weekly basis (famous last
words) shouldn't be too onerous.
>
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Upgrades vs Reinstalls (was sarge/woody upgrade - boot problem)
On Mar 01 2007, Ron Johnson wrote:
> >
> > *sigh* You are the second person to suggest in effect never actually
> > upgrading a debian system,
>
> We'd *never* say that.
Well, what the other fellow said was that in his shop, they prefer
to reinstall from scratch, at least when going from woody to sarge,
though they have successfully upgraded a few non-critical systems.
(I got the impression that upgrades were too exciting to do on
anything where there was any time criticality.)
That's also what I've done, 3 times out of 4 - create the new box -
often with improved hardware, install the current version, get
everything working, then copy data and (usually) change name and IP
address to match the one being replaced. That's the plan with my
current etch system - replacement of a sarge system that needs a
hardware upgrade anyway.
> > or at least never going from woody to
> > sarge.
>
> Sure we *would* have, and we *did*. 21 months ago, when Stable
> Sarge was new.
>
> Now, you've got to upgrade from Woody to Sarge and then soon upgrade
> from Sarge to Etch. That 2-step process is much slower and
> error-prone than the one-step wipe-and-install Etch.
True enough. On the other hand, it's also more educational, and this
box is not very critical, so I may just use it as a training
exercise.
> Keeping up with Etch/testing on a bi-weekly basis (famous last
> words) shouldn't be too onerous.
Well, I'm not exactly the world's most experienced systems
administrator - in fact, the term "incompetent amateur" is perhaps
more like it ;-) So it might be a bit more onerous for me than for
others.
--
Arlie
(Arlie Stephens )
--
Upgrades vs Reinstalls (was sarge/woody upgrade - boot problem)
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On 03/02/07 01:17, Arlie Stephens wrote:
> On Mar 01 2007, Ron Johnson wrote:
[snip]
>> Now, you've got to upgrade from Woody to Sarge and then soon
>> upgrade from Sarge to Etch. That 2-step process is much slower
>> and error-prone than the one-step wipe-and-install Etch.
>
> True enough. On the other hand, it's also more educational, and
> this box is not very critical, so I may just use it as a training
> exercise.
There's always that!
>> Keeping up with Etch/testing on a bi-weekly basis (famous last
>> words) shouldn't be too onerous.
>
> Well, I'm not exactly the world's most experienced systems
> administrator - in fact, the term "incompetent amateur" is
> perhaps more like it ;-) So it might be a bit more onerous for
> me than for others.
You gotta start somewhere!!!
>
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Upgrades vs Reinstalls (was sarge/woody upgrade - boot problem)
On Thu, 2007-03-01 at 23:17 -0800, Arlie Stephens wrote:
> Well, I'm not exactly the world's most experienced systems
> administrator - in fact, the term "incompetent amateur" is perhaps
> more like it ;-) So it might be a bit more onerous for me than for
> others.
I've been running Etch for some months now and don't find it
particularly hard to keep up with, especially now of course when it's in
code freeze. But even before, no more than once-or-twice-weekly updates
were really necessary. OTOH, I did find Sid too much too keep up with
when I tried it for a while -- the sheer volume of updates was kinda
overwhelming.
These of course are entirely subjective evaluations ... what seems
reasonable to one person will seem burdensome to another. I just
thought I'd throw in a little encouragement for you to "think about
it." :-) You won't really know until you try.
--
Michael M. ++ Portland, OR ++ USA
"No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions
of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to
dream." --S. Jackson
--
Solved: sarge/woody upgrade - boot problem
On Mar 01 2007, Ron Johnson wrote:
> On 03/01/07 09:48, Arlie Stephens wrote:
> > The problem - I tried to upgrade an elderly system from woody to
> > sarge. Now it doesn't boot. I suspect the upgrade ate the master boot
> > record - but I don't even know the right terminology to figure out
> > what to search for, to try to confirm my suspicions.
> >
> > The behavior - hangs during boot, almost immediately after noting the
> > absence of a bootable CD. It prints 2 characters before the hang: LI.
> > My suspicion - LI stands for LILO, and the "upgrade" disagreed with
> > whatever I *had* been using (LILO)? wanted me on something else (GRUB?)
> > and proceeded to make a mixed muddle that won't boot.
> I googled for "linux boot only LI" and got some results.
>
> Do you have a live CD anywhere? Or a bootable DOS floppy disk?
>
> http://www.faqs.org/docs/lnag/lnag_lilo.html#LILO_stops
Running 'lilo' did the trick, with a little help from a debian install
CD in 'rescue' mode.
Thank you.
--
Arlie
(Arlie Stephens )
--