failed kernel update followed by boot failure
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
lilo (Ubuntu) |
Invalid
|
Undecided
|
Unassigned |
Bug Description
I installed feisty from the 4/14/07 alternate CD (to support software RAID) and was able to boot thanks to the fix to bug #103177.
The system worked fine for a day or so - then the update manager provided kernel 2.6.20-15, which was not able to install (not sure why). Apparently the failed install ruined my boot setup / LILO and now I am unable to boot. When I try to boot, I see the following message:
"EBDA is big; Kernel setup stack overlaps LILO second stage"
System is configured as follows:
4 SATA drives:
1x74GB containing windows XP;
3x250GB configured as 2 RAIDs:
md0: RAID1: 10GB:
/
md1: RAID5: 480GB: LVM:
/home
/swp
/tmp
My guess is that the updater didn't understand how to make the changes to LILO on the RAID1 volume. The "recovery" install apparently does not know how to do this either because I am not presented with my md0 partition when I try to fix it - instead, I get only home, swp, and tmp (from md1) and the component partitions for the RAIDs and the XP drive.
Because I use LILO rather than GRUB (I think this was necessary to boot from RAID), I do not have any boot-menu options. I do not know of any other way to boot and I would like to avoid wiping my md0 volume because it (hopefully still) has important information in /etc/openvpn, /etc/apache2, and /var.
I expect to install the release version of Feisty tomorrow evening - I've decided that having a running system is far more important than preserving the configuration data stored on /etc/openvpn, /etc/apache2, and /var (addressing the repair/restore install issue). However, I still fear that the update manager will break my system again the next time it tries to install a new kernel.