[Discuss] Server won't boot kernel. initramfs problem?

[abreauj at gmail.com (John Abreau)]

RAM going bad silently is an aggravating problem, and we often don't think
to test the RAM when some mysterious error crops up. It would be great if
Nagios was able to test RAM automatically.

Is it possible to test RAM on a live system, rather than having to boot
into memtest86?


On Sat, Feb 23, 2013 at 11:39 AM, David Kramer <david at thekramers.net> wrote:

> On 02/23/2013 08:13 AM, David Kramer wrote:
> > On 02/23/2013 07:33 AM, Laura Conrad wrote:
> >> I had a problem that might be relevant.   In my case, I was installing
> >> new kernels as they came out, but grub wasn't booting (or listing) them.
> >>
> >> It turned out that the install scripts for the new kernel I installed
> >> were updating the new grub configuration file, and the version of grub I
> >> had was using the old one.  So look at whether menu.lst has the old
> >> kernels and grub.cfg doesn't.
> >>
> >> I forget exactly how I fixed this, but I'm sure it involved completely
> >> reinstalling grub2 and running some grub init script.
> > I don't think menu.lst exists anymore (I just double-checked on my
> > desktop computer) in grub2.  Do you mean some components thought you
> > were using grub and others thought you were using grub2?
> >
> > I had another crazy thought this morning.  If I boot from livecd, then
> > put the same "mount --bind and chroot" trick from that web page,  then
> > apt-get update && apt-get upgrade (or dist-upgrade), would that actually
> > update the packages on my installed kubuntu?  It's so crazy it just may
> > work. I'm almost guaranteed of there being a newer kernel available,
> > since I don't update my servers that often.
> >
> > What would be *really* nice is if I could launch muon from that chrooted
> > shell and update using it, but I'm less confident that it would respect
> > the chroot.  Idunno.
>
> GGGGGGGGGGGGRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!
>
> After trying everything I mentioned with no results, I tried memtest86
> and I had bad RAM.  Luckily I had 8GB in there so it can limp along for
> a few days on 4GB.
>
> DOH!
>
> Also fscking 3TB takes much longer than you want it to.
>
> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss at blu.org
> http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
>



-- 
John Abreau / Executive Director, Boston Linux & Unix
PGP KeyID: 32A492D8 / Email: abreauj at gmail.com
PGP FP: 7834 AEC2 EFA3 565C A4B6  9BA4 0ACB AD85 32A4 92D8