Hi Jurij et all, Firstly, thanks for the help, it's appreciated.
This is making more sense now ... finally ... sort of :) I have not as yet ever tried to upgrade a kernel and perhaps it would have been more straight forward if the releases had not just changed. I do not have a /boot partition. I have created a / partition on sda1 which is where my /boot directory is. Perhaps it would have been simpler if I had. I have vmlinux in / (root) which is symlinked to vmlinuz-2.2.20-sun4cdm in the /boot directory: - lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 27 Apr 2 16:52 vmlinuz -> boot/vmlinuz-2.2.20-sun4cdm My silo.conf reads: - partition=1 root=/dev/sda1 timeout=100 image=1/vmlinuz label=linux read-only So, it seems (as I can boot with no problems from the current kernel and silo.conf) that once I have gone through the downloading of packages and editing the /etc/apt/sources.list again, the silo.conf should be edited to read: - root=/dev/sda1 partition=1 timeout=100 read-only image=1/vmlinuz label=linux initrd=/initrd.img image=1/vmlinuz.old label=linuxOLD initrd=/initrd.img.old I should then remove the existing symlink and create a new one called vmlinuz.old pointing to my 2.2.20 kernel and create a new symlink called vmlinuz pointing to the new 2.4.27 kernel Any issues on rebooting the new kernel would allow me to boot using the following: - linux image=1/boot/vmlinux-2.4.27-2-sparc32 initrd=1/boot/initrd.img-2.4.27-2-sparc32 root=/dev/sda1 And failing that to be able to use the old kernel by doing: - linux image=1/boot/vmlinux-2.2.20-sun4cdm initrd=1/boot/initrd.img-2.2.20-sun4cdm root=/dev/sda1 Do these need to be proceeded with the command 'boot'? I am not very familiar with where initrd installs into but looking at what you have written it seems like it also installs into the /boot directory. Does that all sound ok? I have used apt-get to download and install some of the packages, to gain some headway. The following may be of interest: - apt-get install modutils <snip> Architecture-specific modutils configuration not found, using defaults depmod: *** Unresolved symbols in /lib/modules/2.2.20/hfs.o apt-get install initrd-tools <snip> Setting up ash (0.3.8-37) ... scsi0: MEDIUM ERROR on channel 0, id 3, lun 0, CDB: 0x03 00 00 00 10 00 Info fld=0x1e7ec2, Current sd08:07: sns = f0 3 ASC=11 ASCQ=43 Raw sense data:0xf0 0x00 0x03 0x00 0x1e 0x7e 0xc2 0x0c 0x0d 0x32 0x04 0x2a 0x11 0x15 0x80 scsidisk I/O error: dev 08:07, sector 590354 Setting up cramfsprogs (1.1-6.woody1) ... Setting up stat (3.3-2) ... Setting up initrd-tools (0.1.79-0.woody1) ... Seems the errors setting up ash is related to /dev/sda7 which is my /usr partition. I have no idea if any of the errors above will affect the kernel upgrade or not. I have also used wget to download the kernel package but have not used dpkg to install it as yet: - wget http://ftp.debian.org/debian/pool/main/k/kernel-image-2.4.27-sparc/kerne l-image-2.4.27-2-sparc32_2.4.27-2_sparc.deb I have not edited the silo.conf or symlinks just yet, I thought it wiser to see if there any tips from this message. I remember that when the kernel package is installed that there is a question about symlinking but cannot quite remember it, something about doing it from scratch. Cheers for your time all, Steve -----Original Message----- From: Jurij Smakov [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: 01 July 2005 01:39 To: Steve Lewis Cc: 'Debian Sparc' Subject: RE: Debian on Sparc 4 - woody to sarge On Thu, 30 Jun 2005, Steve Lewis wrote: > I have since tried to upgrade my kernel to the > kernel-image-2.4.27-2-sparc32_2.4.27-2_sparc.deb package but had a > kernel panic, unable to mount root fs error on the reboot. I think > this could be a silo.conf error. I did add the initrd line to > silo.conf but I didn't include a root=/dev/sda1 line. I had a look > around for a decent (full and complete) example of a silo.conf file > but couldn't find one on the net. The manual page accessible with 'man silo.conf' command contains extensive documentation. Here's my working silo.conf: root=/dev/hda2 partition=1 default=Linux read-only timeout=100 image=/vmlinuz label=Linux initrd=/initrd.img image=/vmlinuz.old label=LinuxOLD initrd=/initrd.img.old Note that in my configuration /boot is a separate partition (/dev/hda1), which is also default (set by partition=1), so paths to the files are given relative to that partition. So setting image=/vmlinuz when the default partition is 1 will actually try to load file vmlinuz from the root of partition 1, which translates to /boot/vmlinuz. Also, if your silo.conf is broken, you still should be able to boot by typing something like this at the boot prompt: linux image=1/boot/vmlinux-2.4.27-2-sparc32 initrd=1/boot/initrd.img-2.4.27-2-sparc32 root=/dev/sda1 If you are still having trouble, post your silo.conf and we should be able to figure it out. Best regards, Jurij Smakov [EMAIL PROTECTED] Key: http://www.wooyd.org/pgpkey/ KeyID: C99E03CC -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]