[K12OSN] OT - Yum problem

[William Fragakis]

 IMNaiveOpinion, it could well be that ssh, Network Manager or iptables
restarted on the update and you lost the connection. 

If you can physically access the box, grub should still have at least
the previous kernel as an option. 

If for some bizarre reason grub won't let you do that, you could also
boot the box from a removable device (Install/rescue CD, Knoppix, etc)
and edit grub (e.g. /boot/grub/grub.conf) if need be where it's easier
to see the parameters ie the older kernel version(s). Grub, of course,
can be temporarily edited at boot but you'd need to know which older
kernel to point it to 

(for example
root (hd0,1)
	kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.30.8-64.fc11.i686.PAE ro
root=UUID=1ef14036-12b5-42a0-971e-7e6cfb050f46 rhgb quiet
rootfstype=ext4
initrd /initrd-2.6.30.8-64.fc11.i686.PAE.img

which is one of my older entries in grub.conf) 

Good luck,
William

On Wed, 2009-10-28 at 12:00 -0400, k12osn-request at redhat.com wrote:
> Message: 3
> Date: Tue, 27 Oct 2009 14:42:33 -0400
> From: Jeff Siddall <news at siddall.name>
> Subject: Re: [K12OSN] OT - Yum problem
> To: "Support list for open source software in schools."
>         <k12osn at redhat.com>
> Message-ID: <4AE73F19.1090101 at siddall.name>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
> 
> Joseph Bishay wrote:
> > Hello,
> > 
> > I hope everyone is well.
> > 
> > I was just running "Yum update" on my k12Linux LTSP server and there
> > were a number of updates -- however the process just hung during the
> > installation of the new Kernel.  I was connected via SSH so after a
> > while the ssh session just terminated from no activity.  I'm rather
> > stressed out now as I am hoping the server isn't toast from a failed
> > Kernel install.  What do you recommend I do?
> 
> When yum "updates" a kernel it typically doesn't uninstall the most
> recent kernel(s) -- which means your running kernel will likely be
> untouched.  Even if yum did remove your running kernel from the disk
> it
> shouldn't do so until after the new one is installed.  Further, the
> running kernel should not stop running even if it's files are removed
> from the disk.
> 
> All this to say it is unlikely your machine is dead from the kernel
> update.
> 
> Jeff