upgrading kernel in VMware Virtual machine of dapper kills the VM

[Steve]

matt nicholson wrote:
> Not sure which mailing list to post this to so going to both users and 
> devel.
> 
> I have dapper running in a VM on VMware 5.5, breezy as a host. All of 
> the recent Dapper upgrades have gone quite nice thus far, with one 
> exception. When performing the upgrade of linux-image-386(2.6.12.16 to 
> 2.6.15.4) and linux-restricted-modules-386(2.6.12.16 to 2.6.15.4), the 
> VM dies. By this i mean that, upon reboot, Grub comes up, the system 
> starts to boot (the new "handdrawn" usplash comes up), and it gets as 
> far a "Mounting the root file system" After a few seconds here, I get 
> dropped to a console saying:
>  Alert! /dev/sda1/ does not exist. Dropping you to a shell!
> 
> however, i do not get dropped to a shell and the VM just sits there, dead.
> 
> Luckily I make snap shots for just this purpose and can get back to 
> right before the upgrade in seconds. I have confirmed that its only 
> these 2 packages that cause this.
> 
> Not being a kernel "expert", or even a "the way ubuntu boots" expert, I 
> am sort of stuck. Its obvious to me either the VM SCSI device is not 
> being detected, or, if it is, its not being used at all. With not shell 
> do goto i cannot diagnose the problem further.
> 
> Since dapper is a developemt work, and I'm running this in a VM, this is 
> no big deal for me. I can just ignore that update for a while. I was 
> jsut wondering if anyone else had the same problem/a fix/an answer.
> 
> Thanks and keep up the great work.
> 
> Matt Nicholson

Hi Matt,

On initial boot of your dapper vm, does the grub menu show the previous 
installed kernel? You should be able to select that and boot.

Sounds like it might be something to do with the booting procedure not 
recognizing the filesystem *type* that is on the virtual sda partition. 
Maybe editing the grub menu to specifically state the filesystem type 
might do the trick (provided you can actually boot into the system using 
the old kernel).

Then again I could be wrong... :-)

Thanks for the warning though... I too run VMware 5.5 and was thinking 
of installing dapper as a VM. Now I know what to look out for.

-Steve.
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