[plug] help! i installed mandrake and now RedHat is messed up!

Peter Wright pete at cygnus.uwa.edu.au
Tue Mar 6 16:30:57 WST 2001 

On Tue, Mar 06, 2001 at 03:21:07PM +0800, Ari Finander wrote:
> Hey all,

Hi Ari,

> I received my replacement mandrake 7.2 cdroms in the mail today from
[ snip ]
> Then I tried to boot to RedHat.  all sorts of 'failed' messages came up.
> It took me three tries to get X to laod up for me to log in.

I can't really offer any help here - your problem description is just a
_bit_ too vague. :)

If it's the error messages (although they may be just informative warnings
and thus harmless) on bootup that are worrying you, attach a copy of your
dmesg output to another mail and I'll be happy to have a look at them.

If the above doesn't make sense to you, what I mean is:

1. Boot into Redhat (so you should see the "failed" messages coming up as
   before)

2. Log in as whoever.

3. type "dmesg > dmesg-output.txt" at the prompt.

4. One way or another, email that text file to the list. Or just have a
   good look at it yourself - if you have time to look and think about it,
   you may be able to work out what the problem(s) are.

Have a look at the man page for dmesg, too. :)

> Then when I get in it won't let me log onto the internet with kppp saying
> something like there is no support for ppp or some such (I know I should
> have written it down, but while the kernel may not have had a panic, I
> certainly did!).

Your /var/log/messages below explains this in what I must say is a
surprisingly informative error message:

----- snippet of ari's /var/log/messages, starting at line 451 ---------
Mar  6 13:43:57 boxie gdm[748]: gdm_slave_session_start: Learning on :0
Mar  6 13:45:01 boxie modprobe: modprobe: Can't open dependencies file /lib/modules/2.2.17-21mdk/modules.dep (No such file or directory)
Mar  6 13:45:01 boxie last message repeated 2 times
Mar  6 13:45:01 boxie pppd[859]: ioctl(TIOCSETD(PPP)): Invalid argument(22)
Mar  6 13:45:01 boxie modprobe: modprobe: Can't open dependencies file /lib/modules/2.2.17-21mdk/modules.dep (No such file or directory)
Mar  6 13:45:01 boxie pppd[859]: This system lacks kernel support for PPP.  This could be because the PPP kernel module could not be loaded, or because PPP was not included in the kernel configuration.  If PPP was included as a module, try `/sbin/modprobe -v ppp'.  If that fails, check t
Mar  6 13:45:01 boxie modprobe: modprobe: Can't open dependencies file /lib/modules/2.2.17-21mdk/modules.dep (No such file or directory)
Mar  6 13:47:21 boxie modprobe: modprobe: Can't open dependencies file /lib/modules/2.2.17-21mdk/modules.dep (No such file or directory)
Mar  6 13:47:21 boxie last message repeated 2 times
Mar  6 13:47:21 boxie pppd[867]: ioctl(TIOCSETD(PPP)): Invalid argument(22)
Mar  6 13:47:21 boxie pppd[867]: This system lacks kernel support for PPP.  This could be because the PPP kernel module could not be loaded, or because PPP was not included in the kernel configuration.  If PPP was included as a module, try `/sbin/modprobe -v ppp'.  If that fails, check t
Mar  6 13:47:22 boxie modprobe: modprobe: Can't open dependencies file /lib/modules/2.2.17-21mdk/modules.dep (No such file or directory)
Mar  6 13:47:47 boxie anacron[618]: Job `cron.daily' started
----- snippet of ari's /var/log/messages, ending at line 463 ---------

It looks like the PPP module cannot be loaded for some unknown reason.

BTW, this appears to imply that you are using Mandrake (note where it
refers to the modules dependency file "/lib/modules/2.2.17-21mdk/modules.dep"
- the 'mdk' extension in the directory name is a Mandrakeism).... I thought
from what you were saying above that you were using Redhat. Which is it?

Just as a wild guess.... are you sure that you haven't accidentally
installed Mandrake over the top of one of the Redhat partitions?

> Then I thought perhaps I should back up my downloads and transfer the
> /var/log/ directory to my windows partition in order to burn the files to
> cdrom in case things were worse than I thought.  They were worse.  I
> couldn't even get to my windows partition while logged in as root to
> RedHat7.0 because when I attempted to it would give me an invalid start
> and finish numbers error or something to that effect :-(

Sorry about this, but while I think I can work out what you mean, it really
does help if you're as clear as possible when describing problem/errors.
The best way to explain these sort of problem (at least in my opinion) is
to duplicate exactly what happened at the command line and put it in a text
file. See below for a couple of suggestions on how to do this.

Anyway, when you say:

> I couldn't even get to my windows partition while logged in as root to
> RedHat7.0 because when I attempted to it would give me an invalid start
> and finish numbers error or something to that effect :-(

...do you mean you were trying to mount the windows partition? I assume you
were - however, the error you describe would make me think there's
something corrupt either in your windows partition or in the hard disk
partitioning.

I'm beginning to suspect you may have made a mistake in partitioning the
disk (and so royally f*cked things up) when you installed Mandrake.
I hope I'm wrong :).

> I was able to edit fstab and copy the files to my new mandrake partition.
> I then rebooted to mandrake7.2 and copied the files to the windows
> parition (which I'm in now and backing up all my files to cdrom).  What
> could have caused this?  What can I do to fix this?

So let me get this straight.... Mandrake appears to be okay then?

Can you still boot into Windows okay?

> Do you all need more info from the logs (ie- should I attach more logs to
> an email and send them, I'm attaching /var/log/messages to this email)?

It's a good idea before attaching files in general to just check how large
the file is that you're sending... about 34k of text in this case :). Which
is actually not too bad and I appreciate that you didn't know how to find
the problem.

Regarding getting a transcript of what you're doing at the command line,
there are a couple of ways you can do this - for a short sequence of
commands (less than fifty lines) just do a copy and paste from an xterm or
gnometerm.

However, if you've got a longer sequence of commands and responses, use the
command 'script'. "man script" will explain it in great and vivid detail,
but the attached file script-demo.txt should also help you to understand
what it does.

> TIA,
> Ari
> (a very panicked spodosaurus *pout*)

Perhaps the APCmag pocketbook needs to have "Don't Panic" in large friendly
letters on the cover? :-)


Pete.

PS. Hi Harry, nice to see you've joined the list - finally. :-)
-- 
http://cygnus.uwa.edu.au/~pete/

--
BLACK KNIGHT: I'm invincible!
ARTHUR:       You're a looney.
                 "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" PYTHON (MONTY) PICTURES LTD
-------------- next part --------------

[ED: Brief explanation -- the 'script' command starts another shell. You can
tell the original shell from the 'script' shell by the differences in the
prompt - most notably, the original shell is on ttypts/2, while the 'script'
shell is ttypts/1. ]



pete at cartman [06/Mar 16:22:03] ttypts/2 !23 ~/Mail $ script
Script started, file is typescript
pete at cartman [06/Mar 16:22:19] ttypts/1 !1 ~/Mail $ echo hello there
hello there
pete at cartman [06/Mar 16:22:25] ttypts/1 !2 ~/Mail $ exit
Script done, file is typescript
pete at cartman [06/Mar 16:22:27] ttypts/2 !24 ~/Mail $ cat script
cat: script: No such file or directory
pete at cartman [06/Mar 16:22:37] ttypts/2 !25 ~/Mail $ cat typescript
Script started on Tue Mar  6 16:22:19 2001
pete at cartman [06/Mar 16:22:19] ttypts/1 !1 ~/Mail $ echo hello there
hello there
pete at cartman [06/Mar 16:22:25] ttypts/1 !2 ~/Mail $ exit

Script done on Tue Mar  6 16:22:27 2001
pete at cartman [06/Mar 16:22:41] ttypts/2 !26 ~/Mail $

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