Re: net (& module, I guess) problems after dist-upgrade

Ray Olszewski
2004-06-14T18:50:42Z

At 01:06 PM 6/14/2004 -0500, James Miller wrote:
>On Mon, 14 Jun 2004, James Miller wrote:
>
> > Thanks for the input, Ray. Unfortunately, I don't have any very clear
> > recollection of specifics of that error message, other than it telling me
> > there was some sort of problem setting up modules since modules were in
> > use by the current kernel, and giving a very stern warning about the need
> > to reboot to finish this process once the dist-upgrade was finished.
>
>Ok. By running dpkg-reconfigure -all (my usual brute-force approach), I
>was able to recreate the message. Here it is:
>
> You are attempting to install a kernel version that is the same as
> the version you are currently running (version 2.6.6-1-686). The modules
> list is quite likely to have been changed, and the modules dependency
> file /lib/modules/2.6.6-1-686/modules.dep needs to be re-built. It can
> not be built correctly right now, since the module list for the
> running kernel are likely to be different from the kernel installed.
> I am creating a new modules.dep file, but that may not be
> correct. It shall be regenerated correctly at next reboot.
>
> I repeat: you have to reboot in order for the modules file to be
> created correctly. Until you reboot, it may be impossible to load
> some modules. Reboot as soon as this install is finished (Do not
> reboot right now, since you may not be able to boot back up until
> installation is over, but boot immediately after). I can not stress
> that too much. You need to reboot soon.
>
>Please Hit return to continue.

This is a wordy way of telling you that you should run depmod. The modutils
init script is supposed to do this for you, but it may interact with initrd
in funny ways. So to be safe, do this (following the dpkg-reconfigure):

1. Reboot the system.
2. Log in as root and run "depmod -a".
3. Reboot the system.

This may not fix your modules problem. But it will fix the problem that
this message is warning you about.

>Not touching initrd symlinks since we are being reinstalled (2.6.6-1)
>Not updating image symbolic links since we are being updated (2.6.6-1)

Since I don't use initrd here, I can't tell you what (if anything) to do
about this. But it does reinforce my concern that your problem has
something to do with the initrd step in kernel loading.

If you post again, please provide next time to lilo.conf stanzas for the
current kernel and for 2.4.24.

BTW, I read through the man page for initrd, and from what is there, I
would expect linuxrc to use /etc/modules as its information source about
what modules to load. I could easily be wrong here, though ... the man page
*really* is unclear about where linuxrc (part of initrd) gets module
information from.

>A new kernel image has been installed, and usually that means
>that some action has to be taken to make sure that the new
>kernel image is used next time the machine boots. Usually,
>this entails running a ``bootloader'' like SILO, loadlin, LILO,
>ELILO, QUIK, VMELILO, ZIPL, or booting from a floppy. (Some
>boot loader, like grub, for example, do not need to be run on
>each new image install, so please ignore this if you are using
>such a boot loader).
>
>A new kernel image has been installed at /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.6-1-686
> (Size: 1103kB)
>
>Does that help figuring out where the problem could be? Btw, I have yet
>to reboot the system after running dpkg-reconfigure --all to see if I've
>resolved anything by that process.
>
>James