LMDE won't boot after update [SOLVED]

[biggocharley]

I checked the "breakage" posts for something similar to this but since i was unable to locate anything i decided to post this as a new topic. I am running LMDE 32 bit on a separate partition hoping to make it my "main" OS -- Currently my main OS is Isadora. I ran update and dist-upgrade from the terminal which resulted in a lot of activity (took about 1 1/2 hours to complete). On restarting the machine the boot sequence looked ok but it hung up on a black screen. I rebooted in the recovery mode with the same results except that I was able to get to the login prompt but with no gnome desktop. The boot process looks fine until it just quits. grub looks ok --I'm able to boot the other partitions , Ubuntu lucid, Isadora, Katya and windows XP. I'm able to "see" the LMDE file system using nautilus in Isadora or Lucid and on the surface all looks normal. I would hate to have to reinstall LMDE now that i have gotten it to just about where I want it after a lot of effort. Any help would be appreciated.

[dawgdoc]

A first suggestion might be to boot into Isadora, your main OS, and in terminal run, if you have not already done so:

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sudo update-grub

It could be that your updates included a new kernel and you need to configure Grub to work with it.

[biggocharley]

A first suggestion might be to boot into Isadora, your main OS, and in terminal run, if you have not already done so:

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sudo update-grub

It could be that your updates included a new kernel and you need to configure Grub to work with it.

This seemed like a real good idea so I tried it and grub seemed to update ok but didn't take care of the problem. I re-ran :

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sudo update && sudo dist-upgrade

again but no help there. I'm at a loss!!

[zerozero]

let's see:
- if you dist-upgrade, you installed as well the 39.2-pae kernel;
- were you using proprietary graphic card's drivers (nvidia?) before, with the other kernel?
- looks like you can still boot the old kernel, correct?

if so, actually i think this post may help you

My poor knowledge of English language doesn't help me much, anyways i'll try...
I meant the automatic installation of linux-image-2.6.39-2-686-pae (from 2.6.38-2-686) being made not contextual with the installation of linux-headers-2.6.39-2-686-pae, breaks for example your nvidia drivers and probably the ndiswrapper ones too (not sure actually) and all the third party kernel modules that must be recompiled either automatically (DKMS) or manually whenever the kernel version changes. After the updates you might have problems with your video card and/or your wifi adapters and all the stuff supported by third party drivers (vmware tools, virtualbox guest additions, to say some).
To have your system fully resume its working state, you have to manually install the package linux-headers-2.6-686-pae, through Synaptics or apt. This is not a big inconvenient if you know (or guess) by yourself what to do, though it's not so... minty!
Of course, this problem may not affect you if all your hardware is supported by the stock kernel modules or if you are running the amd64 kernel version.
In short, after the automatic kernel update it is highly advisable to manually install the new headers too because they are not automatically installed (as of Jun 22).
Hope this clarifies my thoughts.

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.p ... 40#p438865

[shunesburg69]

I had this problem the first time I install LMDE because I haven't update correctly
I had done a re-installation and make my update in a terminal like that:

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sudo update && sudo dist-upgrade

[biggocharley]

I had this problem the first time I install LMDE because I haven't update correctly
I had done a re-installation and make my update in a terminal like that:

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sudo update && sudo dist-upgrade

I just now completed a re-installation and did the update and dist-upgrade in the terminal. After the new install the system seemed to be fine ----no problems, apparently. But after the update and dist-upgrade i got the same problem as before -- blank screen with a slight almost invisible flicker in the background. Grub doesn't give me the option of booting the old kernel ( as it always did with Ubuntu). Now I'm stuck. I can get to a login screen and a command line but I don't know how to reinstall the old kernel- also I don't know if dkms was installed by default-- I suspect it was.
So I'm stuck in neutral!! Please help if you can--it sure will be appreciated.

[grizzler]

Did you install the headers, as zerozero suggested? You really do need to install them manually.

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sudo apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.39-2-686-pae

[biggocharley]

After my last post I decided to try to run

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sudo apt-get update

again from the command line. I booted in the recovery mode -got a root prompt by hitting CTL-D and ran the update-- got a multitude of error messages, one of which suggested to run

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 apt-get -f install

In short, I did this and it solved my dilemma. It took a long time--one of the steps was to re-identify the partition with a unique identifier. I wish that this was the only part of the process that i don't understand --It was too lengthy of a process to go into in detail --but it worked. If anyone has a logical explanation for what happened here --I would love to hear it.
Thanks for everyone's help

[biggocharley]

Did you install the headers, as zerozero suggested? You really do need to install them manually.

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sudo apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.39-2-686-pae

I had a recurrence of this problem after another update and dist-upgrade. I installed the headers manually as suggested but the system still won't boot properly --that is to say it will get to the login prompt and that's it. I suspect my proprietary nvidia legacy (96xx) driver got destroyed. I would be willing to go through another reinstall of LMDE but I feel i will be faced with the same problem when I try to update or upgrade in the future. Is there any way to selectively update without breaking the proprietary drivers? Also I don't think I need the pae kernel since I have less than 4gb of ram. Is the pae kernel installed by default during an upgrade?

[dawgdoc]

Is there any way to selectively update without breaking the proprietary drivers?

Look into "pinning" your current driver. I personnally have not pinned any apps but you can find the syntax to use in the man page for apt-get or aptitude. Look into --no-upgrade with apt-get and --hold with aptitiude. If you do not do this any dist-upgrade will pull in the new packages.

I have an nVidia Geforce Go 6150 in my laptop and have no problems using the nVidia proprietary drivers offered through the repositories. By default Mint enables Debian's Non-DFSG-Compatible Software repository, this is where the non-free (or proprietary) packages are. My upgrades of nVidia drivers have been painless and not required reinstalls of modules. I believe this is because I have the following two packages installed: dkms and nvidia-kernel-dkms Re: the later, part of it's description reads

Provided that you have the kernel header packages installed, the kernel module will be built for your running kernel and automatically rebuilt for any new kernel headers that are installed.

A caveat would be that the nVidia drivers are at the 275.xx.xx version number and they may not support your graphics chipset. This puts you back to pinning/holding your current package. As a precaution I check nVidia's website before upgrading the graphics driver to make sure my chipset is still supported, since my chipset is getting a bit long in the tooth.