Re: System problems

Please send us your `emerge --info`, /etc/fstab, grub/lilo/smthng
config and kernel config for the 2.6.29.

By the way, why not gentoo-sources-2.6.36-r5? I hope you have a good
reason to run a system as ancient as that. Your system is swarming with
widely known security holes. I suppose it's theoretically possible to
have a desktop protected by some special means from all the real threats
an actively used desktop is facing, but I wonder if you use any such
means. Also, by upgrading to a little less ancient versions than 2.6.29
you won't have the same situation like now boomerang back at you in the
near future.

-rz


Lindsay Haisley (Sat, 19 Mar 2011 23:46:06 -0500):
> I'm caught between a rock and a hard place.
> 
> I've been running this desktop box using kernel 2.6.23-gentoo-r3 and
> have come to the point at which there are too many dependencies and
> reverse dependencies, so I _have_ to upgrade to kernel 2.6.29-gentoo-r5
> and have been unable to bring the system up in the new kernel.  Here's
> what's happening.
> 
> The newer kernel requires a newer version of udev, which I emerged.  The
> system came up with a root device of some sort mounted, I think in
> single-user mode, but couldn't mount other devices.
> 
> So I changed the main drive designations to UUID's in /etc/fstab,
> re-emerged the newer udev, and tried again.  This time I got a message
> that the kernel needed a root parameter at boot time.  It seems that all
> my /dev/hda? drives have been renamed /dev/sda? so I set gave
> "root=/dev/sda4" as a kernel parameter and got a little further.  After
> "Checking root filesystem" in the boot sequence, I got a message that
> the UUID for the root filesystem wasn't understood in /etc/fstab.
> 
> So I set the root filesystem in /etc/fstab to /dev/sda4, and got the
> same error - that "/dev/sda4" was not understood either, although the
> kernel seemed to understand this just fine as a boot parameter, and once
> again, I'm dumped into a very limited single-user mode.
> 
> So I'm stuck!  I had to boot from a rescue disk, back-version to
> udev-141 and revert to kernel 2.6.23-gentoo-r3 to get my desktop back.
> 
> What do I need to put into /etc/fstab to satisfy the kernel?  I need to
> move forward with this, but I need my desktop system to run my business.
> Any _real_ suggestions will be welcome.  Please be aware that I'm no
> Linux novice, so don't give me novice advice.  I've been building,
> running, and getting paid to admin Linux systems since 1995.
>