Mailinglist Archive: opensuse-security (332 mails)

[Sandu Mihai <mihai.sandu@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On a second tought:

Boot rescue
Mount system under a directory
chroot  directory bash
/sbin/mkinitrd
exit
reboot

Eg. for a system that has:
/dev/sda1 - boot
/dev/sda2 - root
/dev/sda3 - var
/dev/sda4 - swap

Boot rescue
mkdir sysimage
mount /dev/sda2 sysimage
mount /dev/sda1 sysimage/boot
mount /dev/sda3 sysimage/var
chroot sysimage bash
/sbin/mkinitrd
exit
umount sysimage/var
umount sysimage/boot
umount sysimage
sync
sync
sync
ctrl-alt-del

It seems that the kernel update probably did not run mkinitrd to refresh 
the initrd (are you using SCSI or  Ext3/Reiserfs probably).

Sandu Mihai
GTS Telecom Network Engineer
RHCE #807202946505274

Sandu Mihai wrote:

> First of all,
>
> it is bad practice (tm) to directly update an important production 
> server. Even with a trusted method of updates.
> One of the good practices include :
> - mirroring internally an external available source
> - testing updates on a set of servers / a server that mirror the 
> behavior of the real target of updates
> - never let an external program directly update the kernel, rather do 
> it by hand using rpm -i and not rpm -F, and then add the new kernel in 
> Grub/Lilo if rpm -i dose not do it automatically (Redhat seemed to do 
> that)
> You can undo that by :
> Booting in rescue mode, mounting the partitions of the system under a 
> created directory in the RAM disk, copy the k_athlon...rpm from the 
> first install CD in that directory, chroot <directory> bash, rpm -i 
> k_athlon....rpm, vi /etc/lilo.conf or vi 
> /boot/grub/menu.lst,/sbin/lilo (only if using lilo), exit
> Then, umount the partitions mounted under the directory, reboot.
> These are basic rescue methods one should be aware of , in case ugly 
> things happen to kernel, or to some interesting files of the system 
> (/etc/fstab is my favorite)
> Sorry for the not quite detailed description of the rescue steps, if 
> these steps are really requested by the list I will then send a 
> near-to-reality-step-by-step scenario.
>
> Best regards,
>
> Sandu Mihai
> GTS Telecom Network Engineer
> RHCE #807202946505274
>
> Savvas Ladopoulos wrote:
>
> > Just read "Bad quality of updates from SuSE ftp server" and now I
> > understand what went wrong to my suse 9.0 update via YOU. Thank you all.
> >
> > However, I need some quidance on what to do next. I am left with "kernel
> > panic: VFS can not mount root fs on 08:02".
> > I managed with rescue to mount boot but I am not sure if I can undo the
> > 2.4.21-243-athlon image to the previous version of 2.4.21-99-athlon?
> >
> > please any advise is much appreciated.
> >
> > -Savvas
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >