Upgrade to Debian testing hosed my system

Thu Jan 24 10:05:37 MST 2013

Oh, yeah.  I was going to explain my '(*)' - so here is a short version.

When you boot a live cd, for things to work well you really want to have
it look like you have a writable disk available.  The nifty trick that
(some?) live CDs use is to use what amounts to a hierarchical file
storage system (probably have the wrong name here).

That is, at the bottom is a compressed filesystem on the CD, which you
expand and see somehow.

When you try to write to that expanded filesystem, the data is copied to
what amounts to a ramdisk and the system now sends all requests for that
(part of the) file to the ramdisk rather than the original spot.  So
every block on the disk you write ends up taking 512 bytes (or so) of
ram.  Sort of ;-)  But, if you download 100Meg, then you need to have
that much RAM to spare.  If you set up swap it might help a little. Or
connect an actual disk (via usb or whatever) and do your download and
extraction and so forth there as much as possible, then you will avoid
most of the ram usage (since you aren't writing to the boot drive, as it
were)

Rusty

From: plug-discuss-bounces at lists.phxlinux.org
[mailto:plug-discuss-bounces at lists.phxlinux.org] On Behalf Of Carruth,
Rusty
Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2013 9:58 AM
To: Main PLUG discussion list
Subject: RE: Upgrade to Debian testing hosed my system

Possible?  Maybe.  Easy/useful/the_fastest_way_to_get_going?  Maybe or
maybe not J

If you have enough RAM to hold everything (remember, a live CD uses ram
to hold changes 'written' to your virtual disk you think you are running
on(*)), then you can probably do it.

However, I'd start with trying other video cards.  Do you have any other
cards laying around you could try?  (If not, I've got boatloads
(figuratively speaking!) - I could loan you a few - what's the bus you
need? PCI?  AGP? Something else?)

I was going to say something else but it has escaped me.  Oh well.

Rusty

From: plug-discuss-bounces at lists.phxlinux.org
[mailto:plug-discuss-bounces at lists.phxlinux.org] On Behalf Of Mark
Phillips
Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2013 9:54 AM
To: Main PLUG discussion list
Subject: Re: Upgrade to Debian testing hosed my system

I tried all sorts of F keys, and no response on the monitor. I am
wondering if there is something wrong with the driver. I had this
problem on a different machine, and I had to download, compile, and
install a new radeon driver. I can take the machine apart and see what
the video card is and see if that is a problem. Is there a way to fix a
driver problem with a live cd?

Mark

On Thu, Jan 24, 2013 at 8:34 AM, Carruth, Rusty
<Rusty.Carruth at smartstoragesys.com> wrote:

If you hit control-alt-F1 (or F2 or ... all the way to F6) do you see
anything?

What happens on the monitor while you boot?

I've seen cases (personally) where an install decides the monitor can do
more than it can (and I think I had an upgrade do that once also),
leaving you with a dead monitor.

However, given that you cannot ssh into it I'll bet that won't be the
case - but hopefully you can see something on the monitor as it boots...

Rusty

From: plug-discuss-bounces at lists.phxlinux.org
[mailto:plug-discuss-bounces at lists.phxlinux.org] On Behalf Of Mark
Phillips
Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2013 8:21 AM
To: Main PLUG discussion list
Subject: Re: Upgrade to Debian testing hosed my system

Mike,

Unfortunately, there is still no signal after a hard reboot. If there
were, then I would do what you suggest. 

Any ideas on how I can determine what is wrong by using something like a
knoppix cd?

Mark

On Thu, Jan 24, 2013 at 6:52 AM, Mike Ballon <mike.ballon at gmail.com>
wrote:

If there is no signal to the monitor with the box "up" I would reboot
it.

>From there you'll need to figure out if the boot loader is intact or
not. If it is you can boot into single user mode and try to figure out
what's going on with the box. If you do not get the boot loader now
we're talking about a repair to either the loader or the system as a
whole using a disc or memory stick.

http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/grub-boot-into-single-user-mode/

On Thu, Jan 24, 2013 at 8:28 AM, Mark Phillips
<mark at phillipsmarketing.biz> wrote:

	I used aptitude to upgrade a headless server from Debian stable
to Debian testing. The upgrade did not generate any error messages, but
when I rebooted I could not ssh into the box (connection refused) nor do
I get any output on a monitor I attached to the box (no signal). Apache
does not appear to be running either on the box (could not connect to
the box). I can successfully ping the box.

	Any suggestions on how to fix this this server would be greatly
appreciated!

	Thanks,

	Mark 

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