Mixing packages from Hoary and Breezy results in unbootable initrd

[Ben Plaut]

After updating the i386 2.6.10 kernel to the security update posted today, the
system will not boot. When selecting the standard i386 from the GRUB menu, the
system will announce:

kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root fs on unknown-block(0,0)

as GRUB is trying to find the kernel

There does not seem to be, other than Chroot'ing form LiveCD, a way to boot
into, and therefore downgrade the buggy package. The problem occurs both with
and without booting from a hibernation image.

The problem does not occur for everyone, and does not appear to have a
connection to the hardware the system is running on. I do not know if it is
related to the packages installed on the system.

[Fabio Massimo Di Nitto (fabbione)]

Hi Jeff,

initrd-tools bday in hoary. A similar problem has been reported for amd64
(http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=186041)
the issues has been worked around by Mithandir (see both ubuntu and ubuntu logs
between 11:00 and 13:00)

this problem might need to have some very very urgent love since it's breaking
kernel security updates.

[MistaED (boberfly)]

Created an attachment (id=2510)
initrdlog for 2.6.10-5-amd64-k8 which has the bug

initrdlog file for 2.6.10-5-amd64-k8 which has the bug from my computer

[Jeff Bailey (jbailey)]

Can you paste me the output of:

dpkg -l libc6\*

please.

Tks,
Jeff Bailey

[Emmanuel Pacaud (emmanuel-pacaud)]

FWIW, I fixed the problem with the following steps:

- boot with live-cd
- mount / partition at /media
- chroot /media
- mount /proc
- wget breezy package of initrd-tools
- dpkg -i initrd-tools
- dpkg-reconfigure installed linux-image packages
- then reboot.

[Jeff Bailey (jbailey)]

Right. It seems so far with the people I've spoken to that somehow they got a
newer copy of glibc on their Hoary systems. Reports from at least amd64 and
i386 so far. Noone can seem to tell me where it came from, and my hoary-i386
system doesn't have anything trying to hand it a newer glibc.

If anyone having this problem can help me with this, I'd appreciate it.

Tks,
Jeff Bailey

[Corey Burger (corey.burger)]

From what I could see neither Marilliat nor the Backports are handing out
something so fundamental. My guess is that people are using Debian Sid sources.

[Jeff Bailey (jbailey)]

(In reply to comment #6)
> From what I could see neither Marilliat nor the Backports are handing out
> something so fundamental. My guess is that people are using Debian Sid sources.

It would have to have been Debian experimental - sid doesn't yet contain 2.3.5

[Ben Plaut (bplaut)]

Created an attachment (id=2523)
my sources.list

my sources.list, by request of joh

[Fabio Massimo Di Nitto (fabbione)]

*** Bug 17496 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

[Emmanuel Pacaud (emmanuel-pacaud)]

Jeff, all my packages are from ubuntu, hoary for the main part, and a few ones
from breezy, mainly dependancies of evince, since I wanted to try the latest
version.

If I remember correctly, evince from breezy pulled a new libc6.

[Jeff Bailey (jbailey)]

Created an attachment (id=2592)
Backport of ldd fix for initrd-tools

This patch fixes the initrd-tools in hoary (and probably warty) to cope with
the changes to ldd in breezy.

[Matt Zimmerman (mdz)]

I'm not entirely comfortable updating such a critical component via
hoary-updates, and mixing packages from different releases in this way is
usually not advisable anyway. Users who choose to use some packages from a
development release are accepting most of the risk of using the development
release, and would probably be better off upgrading wholesale.

Could we add a Conflicts: initrd-tools (<< ver) to binutils in Breezy instead?

[Barry deFreese (bddebian)]

This is an old bug and would we actually support mixing packages from repos anyway? Thanks.

[Jeff Bailey (jbailey)]

Mixing packages from repos is not a supportable configuration, but in principal we support partial upgrades where possible.

The problem here is that dpkg doesn't have the ability to describe the needed relationship. Specifically, we need https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+spec/package-dependency-field-breaks to be implemented.

It'll be too-little-too-late for this bug, but the bug is certainly real and should show up in queries if people want to understand why their system broke on a partial upgrade.

I will close this ticket when Hoary has been end-of-life'd in October.

Tks,
Jeff Bailey

[Jeff Bailey (jbailey)]

Not fixing this in current releases.

[Jeff Bailey (jbailey)]

Not going to fix this in older releases.

[William Grant (wgrant)]

Hoary has gone unsupported, so I'm rejecting this task.