Intrepid to Jaunty upgrade inird creation failure and how to recover

[Josh Fuller]

On 5-May-09, at 7:44 AM, ubuntu-users-request at lists.ubuntu.com wrote:
> error looks like this:
>
> 	Setting up linux-image-2.6.28-11-server (2.6.28-11.42) ...
> 	Running depmod.
> 	yaird error: bad device link in /sys/block/cciss!c0d0 (fatal)
> 	*Failed to create initrd image.*
>
> Luckily, it's not too hard to get around this error!
>
>
> 	vi /etc/kernel-img.conf
>
> and change
>
> 	ramdisk = /usr/sbin/mkinitrd.yaird
> to
>
> 	#ramdisk = /usr/sbin/mkinitrd.yaird
>
> and then save the file.
>
> you should be able to
>
> 	apt-get install -f
>
>
> and recover a failed upgrade.
>
> It might be a good idea to do an
>
> 	update-grub
> and
>
> 	update-initramfs -u
>
>
> before rebooting just to be on the safe side if you're not 100% sure
> the initrd got built correctly.
>
> This doesn't fix the bad device link error but will keep you up and
> running to get that all sorted out.
>
> Anyone have any ideas on how to fix bad device links in /sys that
> actually causes this problem?

It turns out that this bug has to do with the Kernel driver for compaq  
smart controllers according to a patch discussion that I found in  
nabble for yaird 0.0.11-11...

	diff -urN -x {arch} -x .arch-ids -x configure -x aclocal.m4 -x  
depcomp -x missing -x Makefile -x Makefile.in
	-x install-sh -x INSTALL p73/perl/Plan.pm p74/perl/Plan.pm
	--- p73/perl/Plan.pm    2005-10-24 23:51:03.000000000 +0200
	+++ p74/perl/Plan.pm    2005-10-24 23:50:57.000000000 +0200
	@@ -426,6 +426,22 @@
	     return 1;
	    }

	+   #
	+   # compaq smart controllers in 2.6.13 also lack the hardware link.
	+   # plan B: assume that a cciss is a cciss.
	+   # complication: there's a discrepancy between /sys and /dev:
	+   # /sys/block/cciss!c0d0 and /dev/cciss/c0d0, but this turns out
	+   # to have no further consequences.
	+   #
	+   # note that there also exist /dev/ida/c0d0 devices with cpqarray
	+   # underlying devices, but no reports about those so far.
	+   #
	+   if ( =~ /^cciss!c\d+d\d+$/) {
	+    ModProbe::addModules (, [ "cciss" ]);
	+    ->add("mkbdev", ->yspecial, sysname => );
	+    return 1;
	+   }
	+
	    return 0;
	 }

I tried to check out Yaird from source to see if it fixed the bug in  
case the Debian GNU/Linux repos were not up to the same patch level  
but they are at 0.0.13.

The problem doesn't change using the new code.

Anyone have any ideas?