[ale] Ubuntu help

Joshua Kite jwkite at gmail.com
Mon Jan 26 11:15:25 EST 2009


On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 10:41 AM, Joshua Kite <jwkite at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Jan 26, 2009 at 3:15 PM, Joshua Kite <jwkite at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> 2009/1/26 Michael B. Trausch <mike at trausch.us>
>>
>>>  On Sun, 25 Jan 2009 21:42:55 -0500
>>> Joshua Kite <jwkite at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> > I have a machine that had Ubuntu Feisty on it.  I needed to add some
>>> > packages when I realized the shortcomings of not keeping a distro
>>> > current; the Feisty packages have been archived because it is no
>>> > longer supported. Long story short, I ultimately ended up changing
>>> > the sources.list file to point to Hardy and managed to mostly get the
>>> > box upgraded.  However, I continually had issues apt installing
>>> > linux-generic and other kernel-related packages.  I had run in to
>>> > dependency hell.
>>>
>>> The problem here is that you skipped from Feisty to Hardy.  Probably
>>> the best bet would have been to upgrade from Feisty (7.04) to Gutsy
>>> (7.10), and then to Hardy (8.04).
>>>
>>> Officially speaking, Ubuntu's upgrading infrastructure only supports
>>> upgrading from one release to the next immediate release; the only
>>> exception for that is from LTS to LTS.  For example, users of Dapper
>>> did not have to upgrade from Dapper to Edgy to Feisty to Gutsy to
>>> Hardy.  They were able to skip Edgy, Feisty, and Gutsy altogether and
>>> just upgrade directly to Hardy.  When the next LTS comes out, Hardy
>>> will be able to upgrade directly to it, as well.
>>>
>>> I don't suppose that there is probably a way to revert the packages to
>>> the state that they were in before you started with this.  Given that,
>>> I would wipe the drive and install Intrepid.  :-P
>>>
>>> You mentioned 2.2 kernels.  I don't know what you're referring to,
>>> there; Ubuntu uses the 2.6 series and has all the way back to Ubuntu
>>> 4.10, the very first release (which used Linux 2.6.8 for its kernel).
>>>
>>> Could you provide some extra data?  If you could pastebin the following
>>> files:
>>>
>>>  /boot/grub/menu.lst
>>>  /var/log/apt/term.log [Only starting from the upgrade]
>>>
>>> Also, the output of the following commands will be useful:
>>>
>>>  ls -ld /boot/*
>>>  dpkg -l
>>>
>>> I mentioned pastebin because some of these are going to be quite
>>> lengthy and shouldn't be on-list.  I'd recommend pasting them there and
>>> then providing links here.
>>>
>>>        --- Mike
>>>
>>> --
>>> My sigfile ran away and is on hiatus.
>>> http://www.trausch.us/
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Ale mailing list
>>> Ale at ale.org
>>> http://mail.ale.org/mailman/listinfo/ale
>>>
>>> Mike,
>>
>> Thanks for the help.  After a good night's sleep, I have booted via livecd
>> and chrooted into my system.  Just to cover all the bases, my system has /
>> /boot /home /usr and /var on different partitions, and I mounted all of
>> those before chrooting.
>>
>> I have used apt-get to remove all linux images and similar packages.  My
>> goal at this point is to install the linux-server package, although I would
>> be content with any working kernel at this point.
>>
>> Per your request, here are the files you asked for (and thanks, btw, for
>> introducing me to pastebin):
>>
>> /boot/grub/menu.lst  http://pastebin.com/m27055ad2
>>
>> /var/log/apt/term.log (starting after the upgrade got the machine stable
>> but before I ended up removing the kernel) http://pastebin.com/m76ada55f
>>
>>
>> ls -ls /boot/*  http://pastebin.com/m75fd2534
>> dpkg -l http://pastebin.com/m16834573
>>
>> When I attempt the following:
>> sudo apt-get install linux-server I receive the following:
>> http://pastebin.com/d5ff8059f
>>
>> The part that confuses me are the last five lines:
>>
>>        1.
>>           Errors were encountered while processing:
>>        2.
>>            linux-image-2.6.24-23-server
>>        3.
>>            linux-ubuntu-modules-2.6.24-23-server
>>        4.
>>            linux-image-server
>>        5.
>>
>>                linux-server
>>
>> How does one go about resolving dependency problems when attempting to
>> install the kernel???
>>
>> Thanks Mike and anyone else for your help.
>>
>> Josh Kite
>>
>>
>
> As an update - it looks like the upgrade caused grub to be uninstalled.
> The result was that the update-grub script didn't exist, causing the kernel
> updates configurations to fail.  I have re-installed grub and apt-get is no
> longer throwing errors.  I'm about to reboot to see what happens.
>
> This is one of those processes where I have learned a lot, but I do not
> want to repeat.
>
> I'll post the results and any additional lessons learned.  Lesson one -
> keep Ubuntu systems current.
>
> Josh Kite
>

Installing Grub did the trick.  I also had to clean up fstab for the move
from the hd* to the sd* hard drive naming convention, but at this point my
server is now up, running, and updated.  Hopefully I'll avoid mistakes like
this one in the future.  Besides learning to read logs and keep systems
updated, I've now learned the important difference between LTS and non-LTS
versions of the Ubuntu distro.  In short, while it seems that changing
sources.list and using apt-get upgrade SHOULD work, chances are it will
break your system when making major jump-shifts in distrobutions.

Josh
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