more yum problems

[Rick Stevens]

Chuck Campbell wrote:
> yum found that my kernel is out of date, and I wanted to let it do the
> update for me.  I did:
> 
> [root at helium root]# yum update kernel*
> Gathering header information file(s) from server(s)
> Server: ATrpms stable for rhl 9
> Server: Red Hat Linux 9 - i386 - Base
> Server: Dag APT Repository
> Server: Freshrpms packages for Red Hat Linux 9
> Server: Red Hat Linux 9 - Updates
> Finding updated packages
> Downloading needed headers
> Resolving dependencies
> Dependencies resolved
> I will do the following:
> [install: kernel 2.4.20-31.9.i686]
> Is this ok [y/N]: y
> Downloading Packages
> Running test transaction:
> Test transaction complete, Success!
> 
> tons of snipped messages saying /var is out of space
> 
> I killed the yum process, cleaned up /var moved my /var/cache to a disk
> with lots of space and symlinked /var/cache to that.
> 
> I reran this:
> 
> [root at helium root]# yum update kernel*
> Gathering header information file(s) from server(s)
> Server: ATrpms stable for rhl 9
> Server: Red Hat Linux 9 - i386 - Base
> Server: Dag APT Repository
> Server: Freshrpms packages for Red Hat Linux 9
> Server: Red Hat Linux 9 - Updates
> Finding updated packages
> Downloading needed headers
> Resolving dependencies
> Dependencies resolved
> I will do the following:
> [install: kernel 2.4.20-31.9.i686]
> Is this ok [y/N]: y
> Downloading Packages
> Running test transaction:
> Test transaction complete, Success!
> kernel 100 % done 1/1 
> Kernel Updated/Installed, checking for bootloader
> No bootloader found, Cannot configure kernel, continuing.
> Installed:  kernel 2.4.20-31.9.i686
> Transaction(s) Complete
> 
> 
> Given this message, I'm afraid to reboot to the new kernel, even though the
> /boot looks ok (all appropos files and links are there.
> 
> How do I tell if my bootloader is really gone, and if so, put it back
> before I reboot this new kernel?

If you use lilo, verify that /etc/lilo.conf looks OK.  If it looks
good to go, try running /sbin/lilo.  It should complain if there's
something it doesn't like.  If you use grub, verify that
/boot/grub/grub.conf looks good.  If you want to check it, the only
way I know of is to try to run grub-install, e.g. "grub-install
/dev/hda".

Also make sure you have a /boot/initrd-kernelversion.img file if your
root partition is on a SCSI disk, ext3 filesystem or an NFS volume (or
any combination of the three), as the necessary modules must be in the
initrd RAMdisk image.
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- Rick Stevens, Senior Systems Engineer     rstevens at vitalstream.com -
- VitalStream, Inc.                       http://www.vitalstream.com -
-                                                                    -
-             To iterate is human, to recurse, divine.               -
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