On Wed, Oct 25, 2006 at 11:18:40AM -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > On Wed, Oct 25, 2006 at 08:03:58AM -0700, Andrew Sackville-West wrote: > > On Wed, Oct 25, 2006 at 08:52:08AM -0400, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > > > > > > > But only after you have finished > > > > investigating what is causing the badness in the current install. > > > > > > If I knew how to do this (besides a few variations on rebooting and > > > fsck) I wouldn't be considering a reinstall. > > > > > > > I assume that all your efforts so far are producing no results.... Do > > you have any older kernels on the etch system that you can try? Maybe > > there's a kernel bug that you're hitting (some random combination of > > kernel version and hardware). If you can boot an older kernel that > > might help. If you don't have one, and want to try, you could chroot > > into the system and install an older kernel maybe (from debian > > snapshots?). I only suggest this because I had a booting problem after > > a kernel upgrade on an older machine (300 mhz celeron). I just went > > back to an old kernel and stayed there. > > > > Anyway. I'm concerned that you've got some problem that will come back > > after the reinstall. Or maybe, by reinstalling, you'll leapfrog the > > problem, I suppose. Regardless, if you can't figure out what the > > problem is you may have trouble avoiding it in the future. > > > > Just a hunch, did you change kernel architecture? to the wrong one > > accidently perhaps? > > I reran lilo on the sarge system. > Rebooted to etch. > It got a lot firther than last time, but after a while reached the black > screen of death. > > Rebooted to etch in maintenance mode. > Got to maintenance mode. Didn't know what else to do, do did > dpkg-reconfigure xserger-xorg (or was it xorg-server?) > > Accepted all the defaults (probably taken from my old cofig file) > > checked the dates on /etc/X11/xorg* > > [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ ls -l /etc/X11/xorg.conf* > -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3177 2006-09-15 06:32 /etc/X11/xorg.conf > -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3079 2006-07-02 12:42 /etc/X11/xorg.conf~ > -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 3473 2006-06-07 18:38 > /etc/X11/xorg.conf.200606071838 > [EMAIL PROTECTED]:~$ > > All old dates, so presumably nothing was actually changed. > > rebooted into etch, trying to see what was on the screen immediately > before the black screen of death. > Saw it was starting gdm. > Then the screen went black, and then almost immediately X and gdm > started coming up. > > Now mailing this from ssh within a terminal window within icewm within > gdm. > > Whatever was wrong? Or is this a fluke? I'll try rebooting again and > see if success is consistent.
well, that's all good news. sounds like lilo got borked there and that was your problem. THe X problem was surely unrelated, but may have come from the same upgrade. I have to say, it must be nice to have two installs on the same machine as it makes diagnosing really easy... I may look into it: just a minimal install of sarge on a small partition just so that I have something bootable and usable if I bork my sid system. As far as the X problem, who knows. its a finicky thing sometimes, right? A
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