equo upgrade. peek at /boot NO kernel at all?[Solved]

[joe3]

Hi, I use a dual boot loader scheme of sorts...
I multi-boot several linux distros, installing each distro's boot loader to it's root partition...
My MBR is reserved for a manualy maintained grub legacy boot partition. which includes not only manualy edited menu selections to boot from copied kernel and initrd rd files on my boot partition, but also chainloader entries to use each distro's package manager maintained bootloader using the original kernel and initrd files from that partition's /boot.

This lets me boot a new kernel before I found the time to update my own grub partition, and provides a backup in case something should happen to a kernel or initrd file.

I tend to only look at the differences between Sabayon's /boot files and the ones on my boot partition after an equo update etc... so I suppose the /boot files could have been missing before the "equo update && equo upgrade" I just did, but...

the sabayon kernel on my own boot partition was still kernel-genkernel-x86_64-2.6.39-sabayon and the initrd was initramfs-genkernel-x86_64-2.6.39-sabayon... But /boot had neither kernel, nor initrd files... So I thought It might be a good idea to install one prior to rebooting. I'm not the best at searching for things perhaps, But I couldn't find anything calling itself an x86_64 kernel...
So I settled on a linux-sabayon-3.5-r7 which did yield kernel-genkernel-x86_64-3.5.0-sabayon and it's initrd...

Any idea why my boot spontainiously became empty???

And while I'm asking. I noticed that equo said something about the "Notice board" and the 3.6 kernel. But I can't remember (nor google correctly) how to read the Notice board items??? pereferably from the command line. I tend to do my updating from a console...

--
Joe3

[sabayonino]

/boot partition is umounted

Code: Select all

# mount /boot

or add auto option to /boot line in fstab

example
UUID=05aa7ab3-2dd1-4888-b3c1-91ee4d6f7d44 /boot ext4 defaults,noatime,nodiratime,auto 1 1

[joe3]

/boot partition is umounted

Code: Select all

# mount /boot

or add auto option to /boot line in fstab

example
UUID=05aa7ab3-2dd1-4888-b3c1-91ee4d6f7d44 /boot ext4 defaults,noatime,nodiratime,auto 1 1

Except that the only separate boot partition in existence on my computer is not actually part of sabayon, or (any currently installed distro for that matter). It's whole purpose is to never ever get updated or otherwise touched by any of my installed linux's package management systems. It has never been in my fstab.

The formerly existing files were part of the /boot directory of sabayon's root {" /"} partition... (where sabayon's separate chainloadable grub, was {and still is} installed to the first superblock)

Whatever happened was like some root process had done an

Code: Select all

cd /boot && rm *

or something. Or like equo had removed the old kernel files, and then neglected to install new ones... I also note that the files in /boot/grub were all still there...

--
Joe3

[sabayonino]

/boot partition is umounted

Code: Select all

# mount /boot

or add auto option to /boot line in fstab

example
UUID=05aa7ab3-2dd1-4888-b3c1-91ee4d6f7d44 /boot ext4 defaults,noatime,nodiratime,auto 1 1

Except that the only separate boot partition in existence on my computer is not actually part of sabayon, or (any currently installed distro for that matter). It's whole purpose is to never ever get updated or otherwise touched by any of my installed linux's package management systems. It has never been in my fstab.

The formerly existing files were part of the /boot directory of sabayon's root {" /"} partition... (where sabayon's separate chainloadable grub, was {and still is} installed to the first superblock)

Whatever happened was like some root process had done an

Code: Select all

cd /boot && rm *

or something. Or like equo had removed the old kernel files, and then neglected to install new ones... I also note that the files in /boot/grub were all still there...

--
Joe3

"rm *" will remove all files not direcrories.
to remove directories run : rm -rf * (very dangerous !!)

[joe3]

"rm *" will remove all files not direcrories.
to remove directories run : rm -rf * (very dangerous !!)

Which is exactly why I used it to describe what my /boot directory looked like after the equo upgrade... That is to say that until I used equo to install the linux-sabayon-3.5-r7 package, my /boot dir looked like:

Code: Select all

 ~
UnderTree=-> ls -a /boot
.  ..  grub  .keep
 ~
UnderTree=->

though now that I did install the 3.5 kernel it looks like:

Code: Select all

 ~
UnderTree=-> ls -a /boot
.     initramfs-genkernel-x86_64-3.5.0-sabayon  System.map-genkernel-x86_64-3.5.0-sabayon
..    .keep
grub  kernel-genkernel-x86_64-3.5.0-sabayon
 ~
UnderTree=->

However, I've just discovered that the problem is much worse than I thought... I just noticed that the files in /boot/grub were not getting updated...
I don't know what besides the grub.cfg is supposed to get recreated by grub-mkconfig
but the gtub.cfg itself certainly wasn't getting updated...
So since the screen output of grub-mkconfig sure looked like it was creating a new grub.cfg, from a root shell I tried:

Code: Select all

cd
grub-mkconfig | tee grub.cfg

I'm not an grub2 expert, but the resulting /root/grub.cfg looked ok to me, and the one in /boot/grub still pointed at the non-existing old 2.6 kernel... so I copied the one in /root to /boot/grub, and tried chainloading
sabayon's grub2 bootloader. I got some errors I couldn't copy before it booted read-only {from the initramfs file?}.

Anybody know how to fix sabayon's boot loader, and get, grub-mkconfig to resume updating a working grub.cfg etc???

A copy of that new grub.cfg file can be found at: http://pastebin.com/w8S87yJC

And for chucks & giggles a copy of the grub legacy menu.lst from my manually maintained boot partition is at: http://pastebin.com/YuaPit0c

--
Joe3

[sabayonino]

the right command is

grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

[joe3]

the right command is

grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Thanks, I'll try it...

By the way, is it normal that the rest of the assorted files grub2 keeps in /boot/grub should be much **older??? I as because I still don't know why that possibly misformed grub.cfg should, when read by the chainloaded grub2 process actualy find the kernel/iniramfs files to boot with, yet not be able to properly mount the partition it found them on as / {except as ro) when using copies of the same kernel/iniramfs files my standalone grub legacy can boot it completely.

** Note: ls -al output can be found here: http://pastebin.com/Dv2DrDBf

Does it look like I've got all the files grub2 needs??

--
joe3

[joe3]

the right command is

grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Thanks, I'll try it...

By the way, is it normal that the rest of the assorted files grub2 keeps in /boot/grub should be much **older???

---------snip---------

Does it look like I've got all the files grub2 needs??

OK it looks like I do... At least that worked this time

Thanks. I might have discovered it myself if the old grub.cfg hadn't said it was generated by grub-mkconfig... instead of grub2-mkconfig like the new one says... I still don't know why my old kernel and related files suddenly disappeared from /boot, nor why the automatic attempt to generate a new grub.cfg failed upon the installation of the 3.5 kernel package. But at least I know how to fix it at the command line now...

--
joe3