Thanks to everyone who provided help with this failure of the 4.9.0-5-686-pae kernel. I have tried both "nopti" and "pti=off" kernel parameters to see if it is the fix for "Meltdown" which is causing the problem, but neither parameter changes anything. Since the system doesn't even get to the kernel fsck stage, I don't have any logs to be able to either report a bug or analyse the problem. I also realise now that auto-update is turned on by default in Stretch, so that is how the new kernel became installed. I have temporarily turned auto-update off because I don't want any automatic update to clobber my only working kernel - the 4.9.0-4-686-pae. The updating system only seems to keep 2 generations of kernel?
Any further ideas would be very welcome. Cheers, Rob Hurle ----------------------------- Rob Hurle e-mail: rob1...@gmail.com Mobile: +61 417 293 603 (Australia) Telephone: (02) 6236 3895 28 Mirrormere Rd, Burra, NSW 2620, Australia On 8 January 2018 at 13:11, tv.deb...@googlemail.com < tv.deb...@googlemail.com> wrote: > On 07/01/2018 21:27, Marc Auslander wrote: > >> The new kernel implements the "fix" for meltdown. You could try booting >> with the fix turned off - I believe the kernel parameter is pti=off >> Rob Hurle <rob1...@gmail.com> writes: >> >> Hi All, >>> >>> I'm running Stretch and yesterday I did my normal: >>> >>> sudo apt-get update >>> sudo apt-get upgrade >>> >>> It seemed to install vmlinuz-4.9.0-5-686-pae (and associated config >>> and image files, etc) in place of 4.9.0-4-686-pae versions. Now the >>> system won't boot at all. I have reverted to 4.9.0-4-686-pae and all >>> is well. My questions are: >>> >>> 1. Does anyone else see this? >>> >>> 2. How can I revert without losing my working 4.9.0-4-686-pae system? >>> Can I just change the soft links for initrd.img and vmlinuz at / to >>> point to the 4.9.0-4-686-pae versions instead of the 4.9.0-5-686-pae >>> ones? Will this break something else for a future upgrade? >>> >>> Any help much appreciated. Thank you. >>> >>> Cheers, Rob Hurle >>> >>> ----------------------------- >>> Rob Hurle >>> e-mail: rob1...@gmail.com >>> Mobile: +61 417 293 603 (Australia) >>> Telephone: (02) 6236 3895 >>> 28 Mirrormere Rd, Burra, NSW 2620, Australia >>> >> >> > Hi, if the hang is due to memory isolation option, then "nopti" added as a > kernel boot parameter will cancel it. If you are on an Intel machine this > will leave you exposed to the new class of "Meltdown" attacks. > This kind of boot problem seems to happen to a very small number of > systems, patches are already queued in the kernel to (hopefully) correct > this, but you will have to wait for them to be merged. > > Hope it helps. > >
