On 11/10/05, Sandy Drobic <suse-linux-e@japantest.homelinux.com> wrote:
Sbs Bofh wrote:
I've just been asked to have a look at a SuSE 9.3 machine which hasn't been rebooted in 188 days.
It seems to have lost the ability to mount filesystems (sorry for the poor description), although the machine is running and appears otherwise healthy.
~ # tail /var/log/messages Nov 10 07:56:56 box1 modprobe: FATAL: Could not load /lib/modules/2.6.11.4-20a-smp/modules.dep: No such file or directory
Kernel update without reboot. The standard config excludes kernel updates via YOU. If you configured automatic updates and you have included the kernel updates you have set yourself up for automatic trouble. (^-^)
If I go to yast2 and check for updates it seems some were applied ten days ago - I would imagine that includes kernel updates, but the machine obviously wasn't rebooted after patching.
Is there a detailed log file of what's been applied via yast online update?
I do not delete the updates after they are applied and they are stored in /var/lib/YaST2/you/mnt/i386/update/9.2/patches.
There are lots and lots of files in this directory - including three called kernel-<something> -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 28382 2005-06-12 20:54 kernel-52256 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 31163 2005-08-08 19:30 kernel-52370 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 32169 2005-09-21 13:39 kernel-52414 Also check /var/lib/YaST2/you/youlog for the applied changes. It looks like a new kernel has been installed at least twice in the last six months and the machine was definitely not rebooted afterwards.
Could it be that a kernel update has been done and the machine simply needs a reboot, or is this a sign of something far more serious?
I think it was a kernel update. Though I would have the rescue cd at hand just in case. (^-^)
I'm in slightly tricky situation - I'm working on the server from 400 miles away via ssh. If it reboot it and it doesn't come back up then in a heap of trouble. relative to a dead server, not being able to mount is a relatively minor problem :-) it looks like the automatic updates were NOT configured, so the previous admin must have applied the kernel updates through interactive update. does Yast always tell you to reboot if an update requires it? I'm a bit ignorant on patching linux, more used to the windows world where even a update for notepad.exe requires a reboot :-) in general is it only kernel updates on SuSE that need a reboot? James