[frgeek-michiana] Re: Server update gone bad

  • From: Tom Brown <tbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: frgeek-michiana@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 29 Dec 2011 17:46:07 -0500

Sorry to reply so late. I've been very busy over the holiday and out of town for a few days.


I ran 'apt-get update' using the default 'stable' sources, but that listed a lot of unverified packages which turned out to be Squeeze packages so I never started the upgrade. After some research I realized I needed to stay at Lenny by changing the sources from 'stable' to 'Lenny' as stable now means 'squeeze'. That seemed to work as the number of unverified packages were very few.

I don't know UUID. I'll research it at the workshop tonight.

afaik, there is no data backup. I'll try booting with a rescue disk and poke around. As a last resort, I will pull the drives and try to read them on another system. I don't know yet whether the drives are SCSI, SATA, PATA or some combination. I believe the drives were in some sort of RAID config.

Tom --

Richard Zimmerman wrote:
Reminds me since we are on the subject...

Colo server IS LOCKED to "Lenny" and I have every intention of leaving
it there....

If a new server admin takes over, his or her call then...lists

BTW, also speaking from experience after I toasted my home server on a
blind 'dist-upgrade' option.... (from the Lenny to Squeeze upgrade)

***********************************
NEVER EVER USE IT AGAIN
***********************************

That BTDT thing I mentioned in the previous email also happened on my
home server but I got lucky and recovered it....

Now days I **ONLY** use the 'safe-upgrade' option...

Lessons learned the hard way about 8 months ago...

Goose

/ Where is the old RedHat 5.2 when you want it? It was simple and 'just worked'
// Debian Lenny is the same way. Functional and 'just works'
/// Why keep screwing with it...???


On Sat, Dec 24, 2011 at 7:14 PM, Richard Zimmerman <ke4rit@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
If I'm reading it correctly. You pretty well screwed the server....

The new Debian forces everything to that NOT SO wonderful UUID Crap
for everything. If you then rolled back to Lenny, congrats, you own a
toasted server....

BTDT, you pretty screwed... That happened to me.... Happen to have a
backup of the server?

Goose

/ Happened on a server at work. FORTUNATELY, I had grab some dead
hardware out of the back room and had used it so it wasn't a
production server I toasted...

// Left all work servers @ Lenny and have been researching finding a
distro that DOES NOT use UUID. That crap is for the birds....

/// Maybe force it UUID in Debian for the win!

//// If I can't find a distro that doesn't use UUID, guess I'll be
retiring as a server admin....




On Sat, Dec 24, 2011 at 12:41 PM, Tom Brown <tbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Mike started a hard drive wipe too late to complete by closing time last
Thursday. I started a warehouse server update which also didn't complete
before we departed so Mike and I left the systems running with the intention
I would stop by the warehouse today and turn off the computers.

Mike's DBAN wipe completed so I turned off the PC. The server update
completed so I rebooted to test the update.

When the server first tried to boot it died trying to load drivers for hdc
or the next item after that; I couldn't tell which. I turned the server off,
booted and got the following errors.

----------

Running /scripts/inti-bottom ... mount: mounting /dev on /root/dev failed:
No such file or directory
done
mount: mounting /sys on /root/sys failed: No such file or directory
mount: mounting /proc on /root/proc failed: No such file or directory
Target filesystem doesn't have /sbin/init.
No init found. Try passing init=bootarg.

BusyBox v1.10.2 (Debian 1:1.10.2-2) built-in shell (ash).
Enter 'help' for a list of commands.

/bin/sh can't access tty; job control turned off
(initramfs) __

----------

A Google search didn't find anything in the first two pages of results which
exactly applies to the problem and update back story.

The source  lists for apt-get were set to "stable" repositories. Since
Debian advanced to v6.x 'Squeeze', stable was resulting in v6 packages which
wouldn't verify. So I changed 'stable' to 'Lenny' (Debian v5.x) in the
sources list, and the update/upgrade sequence went much better (until I
rebooted).

I'm not sure if there was a kernel update or not.

The server is running RAID and possibly LVM. I seldom use either so I'm not
well versed on either. Also, Debian uses Grub (possibly several versions of
Grub). Grub runs on my Ubuntu 10.04 LTS netbook install, but I never touch
it.

Any ideas?

Tom --
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--

--
Richard "Goose" Zimmerman, ke4rit
Mishawaka, IN



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