SOLVED! Server Fubar'ed - Ideas welcomed

[Michael Hipp]

Mike Reinehr wrote:
> On Thursday 09 June 2005 10:36 am, Michael Hipp wrote:
> 
>>The kernel update linux-image-2.6.10-5-386 is in a partially installed
>>(severely inconsistent) state. It won't remove and it won't install
>>without crashing the box. Evidently it crashed originally when
>>installing that update. Coincidence?
>>
>>dpkg says to reinstall it. But there's no option for "reinstall", only
>>"install". And that crashes.

> What kernel is it currently running the new one mentioned above, or an older 
> one?
> 
> If running an older kernel then this definitely should work:
> 
> dpkg --purge linux-image-2.6.10-5-386 --force-remove-reinstreq
> 
> followed by:
> 
> dpkg --install linux-image-2.6.10-5-386
> 
> (I'm taking this from man:dpkg and don't promise that the syntax is exactly 
> correct, but you get the idea.)
> 
> A safe way to proceed might be to boot from Knoppix, run fsck on hda2, mount 
> hda2, chroot into it and then run dpkg.

Yippie! Appears I'm up and running again. Your advice got me within 
spitting distance of it.

Here's what it took:
- dpkg --force-remove-reinstreq --purge linux-image-2.6.10-5-386
     (note the option must precede the package name)
- dpkg --install linux-image-2.6.10-5-386
      (crashes again, start over)
- Try: apt-get install nmap
      (small package for test install, crashes, start over)
      (problem isn't the kernel upgrade, more basic than that)
- boot Knoppix  (Thank you, Klaus!)
- fsck.xfs /dev/hda2   (doesn't do squat, back to man pages)
- xfs_check /dev/hda2 (prints lots of stuff)
- xfs_repair /dev/hda2
      (appears to succeed, do xfs_check again, clean)
- boot the system still using old 2.6.8 kernel
- apt-get install nmap (succeeds!)
- apt-get remove nmap (succeeds!)
- apt-get install linux-image-2.6.10-5-386
      (succeeds!)
- reboot into the 2.5.10-5 kernel (runs, clean)

So the problem evidently was: Bad fan causes cpu overheat, crashes while 
installing kernel update, causes xfs filesystem corruption)

Strange thing is, it was showing /dev/hda2 as clean on boot. But it 
surely wasn't.

Well, learned alot.

(This is one of the reasons I LOVE LINUX. This was a pretty bad problem 
(for me, anyway). On Windows it would have been unfixable other than by 
wipe clean and reload or just buy a new computer. But on Linux things 
can be fixed on the rare occasions they break.)

Thanks for everyone's help,
Michael