Re: kernel update fiasco (depmod)

[Eric Bambach <eric@cisu.net>]

On Friday 23 December 2005 03:12 am, Andrew wrote:
> Good morning,
>
> I have just installed Slackware-10.2 with kernel 2.4.31 on a Pentium 100
> with 32Mb ram. All packets are from the 1st iso, which I downloaded and
> burned on cd. The problems start when I try to upgrade the kernel using
> the Slackware packet kernel-generic-2.6.13 and the corresponding
> kernel-modules. The 3 symlinks in /boot all point to the right files.
> lilo.conf is set up correctly. I've run lilo -v repeatedly. But the
> system will not boot correctly as the files in /lib/modules/2.6.13
> (modules.dep, etc.) are not being created. (However, I can boot the
> system from a floppy with the 2.4.31 kernel). If I try running depmod
> after booting with the 2.6.13 I just get the message Killed, and the
> following lines appear in var/log/messages:
>
> Dec 23 10:47:45 fw kernel: Mem-info:
> Dec 23 10:47:45 fw kernel: Free swap:            0kB
> Dec 23 10:47:45 fw kernel: 8192 pages of RAM
> Dec 23 10:47:45 fw kernel: 0 pages of HIGHMEM
> Dec 23 10:47:45 fw kernel: 924 reserved pages
> Dec 23 10:47:45 fw kernel: 16 pages shared
> Dec 23 10:47:45 fw kernel: 0 pages swap cached
> Dec 23 10:47:45 fw kernel: 5 pages dirty
> Dec 23 10:47:45 fw kernel: 1 pages writeback
> Dec 23 10:47:45 fw kernel: 6298 pages mapped
> Dec 23 10:47:45 fw kernel: 618 pages slab
> Dec 23 10:47:45 fw kernel: 55 pages pagetables

Your machine is running out of memory and the command is being killed by the 
OOM killer. 32MB is quite slim nowadays and if you dont have a distribution 
BUILT for low memory conditions you could experience this. I recommend 
increasing your swap file (or creating one!).

See what the output of the command 'free' is and it will list all your memory 
usage statistics including swap file size.

Google around for how to create a swap file its quite easy. You can ignore the 
PITA of creating a swap PARTITION, just use a swap FILE. The modern kernel 
more than support swap files and you dont have to re-organize your partitions 
that way.

If you already have a swap file, just create another one and leave the first; 
it will add to the swap pool.

> (The figures vary)
>
> I have tried redownloading and reinstalling the kernel, kernel-modules
> and module-init-tools tgzs. No difference. I replaced the hd (it was
> giving intermittent error messages) and reinstalled. No difference.
>
> Now what?
>
> TIA,
>
> Andrew
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs

-- 
----------------------------------------
--EB

> All is fine except that I can reliably "oops" it simply by trying to read
> from /proc/apm (e.g. cat /proc/apm).
> oops output and ksymoops-2.3.4 output is attached.
> Is there anything else I can contribute?

The latitude and longtitude of the bios writers current position, and
a ballistic missile.

                --Alan Cox LKML-December 08,2000 

----------------------------------------
-
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-newbie" in
the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.linux-learn.org/faqs