Weird stuff after new kernel?

[danzer]

Okay I'm still a newbie, but the forums are helping.
Running HH on an intel machine with a ASUS 7600GS video card. Everything was running nicely. Then an upgrade happened, and this time after the upgrade, Kubuntu asked for a reboot ( I never saw that before ). OH oh, what did I do? So I do the reboot and at the grub menu I see a few more lines and it's a new .21 kernel. So I boot into that .21 kernel and some things are not quite right. I can't watch an AVI file with Kaffeine without it breaking up sometimes and with VLC player the video goes out of sync with the audio. I also lost the icons near the clock, I used to have the speaker, klipper, and the ethernet icon.
Not happy with that, I restart the computer and boot into the .19 kernel and everything is back the way it was and everything works. The cool thing about this is that some of the things I did in the new .21 kernel boot up, (moved files, and new emails) were found in the .19 kernel session. How does that do that?

So if you folks can tell me what to do to fix for .21 kernel that would be great, and if you can explain how or link me the info on how the grub menu works, that would be even super.

PS I installed the restricted driver for the video card.
Many Thanks
D

[nilsA]

Re: Weird stuff after new kernel?

Okay I'm still a newbie, but the forums are helping.
Running HH on an intel machine with a ASUS 7600GS video card. Everything was running nicely. Then an upgrade happened, and this time after the upgrade, Kubuntu asked for a reboot ( I never saw that before ). OH oh, what did I do? So I do the reboot and at the grub menu I see a few more lines and it's a new .21 kernel. So I boot into that .21 kernel and some things are not quite right. I can't watch an AVI file with Kaffeine without it breaking up sometimes and with VLC player the video goes out of sync with the audio. I also lost the icons near the clock, I used to have the speaker, klipper, and the ethernet icon.
Not happy with that, I restart the computer and boot into the .19 kernel and everything is back the way it was and everything works. The cool thing about this is that some of the things I did in the new .21 kernel boot up, (moved files, and new emails) were found in the .19 kernel session. How does that do that?

So if you folks can tell me what to do to fix for .21 kernel that would be great, and if you can explain how or link me the info on how the grub menu works, that would be even super.

PS I installed the restricted driver for the video card.
Many Thanks
D

The first thing I would have tried is booting into the last kernel that was ok.

Then in a terminal:

sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get update
sudo dpkg-reconfigure -a

[danzer]

Re: Weird stuff after new kernel?

Thanks nilsA,
I can understand the commands, but what do they do?
If I boot up into my .19 kernel, will it upgrade, update the .19 kernel to .21 kernel, so then I might get two borked .21 kernels running on my machine.

[toad]

Re: Weird stuff after new kernel?

Well, if the 21 kernel does not serve you well you might just want to go back to the 19 kernel where everything was hunky-dory.

To do so on a permanent basis you will have to edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst file as root (to do so do a "sudo nano /boot/grub/menu.lst"). Near the top you have a line starting with default. Adjust the number behind that default to the kernel you want to boot, i.e. the 19 kernel.

To do so (sorry, I'm not being very clear...) you have to scroll down the file to where the kernels start. For each kernel there are a number of stanzas. The end of my /boot/grub/menu.lst looks as follows:

## ## End Default Options ##

title Ubuntu 8.04.1, kernel 2.6.24-21-generic
root (hd0,1)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.24-21-generic root=UUID=04765a12-f764-492e-97d2-b33c4c685fe4 ro quiet splash
initrd /initrd.img-2.6.24-21-generic

title Ubuntu 8.04.1, kernel 2.6.24-21-generic (recovery mode)
root (hd0,1)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.24-21-generic root=UUID=04765a12-f764-492e-97d2-b33c4c685fe4 ro single
initrd /initrd.img-2.6.24-21-generic

title Ubuntu 8.04.1, kernel 2.6.24-19-generic
root (hd0,1)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.24-19-generic root=UUID=04765a12-f764-492e-97d2-b33c4c685fe4 ro quiet splash
initrd /initrd.img-2.6.24-19-generic

title Ubuntu 8.04.1, kernel 2.6.24-19-generic (recovery mode)
root (hd0,1)
kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.24-19-generic root=UUID=04765a12-f764-492e-97d2-b33c4c685fe4 ro single
initrd /initrd.img-2.6.24-19-generic

Yours will probably look the same. If I wanted to boot my .19 kernel, I'd adjust the default to be 2, seeing that counting starts with 0.

Hope I made myself clear, let us know otherwise!

HTH

[nilsA]

Re: Weird stuff after new kernel?

Thanks nilsA,
I can understand the commands, but what do they do?
If I boot up into my .19 kernel, will it upgrade, update the .19 kernel to .21 kernel, so then I might get two borked .21 kernels running on my machine.

No, you will not get two, I'm pretty sure.

The upgrade and update commands will fix any download problems.
The dpkg-reconfigure -a will check all your debian packages, and correct what may have went wrong.

However. if this does not fix your problem, then going back to the last good one ans wait for the next kernel to be (I hope) ok for your hardware is another good option.

[danzer]

Re: Weird stuff after new kernel?

Worked like a charm, everything is as it was. Whew. Thanks
Now off to try and play with Compiz, I'll be back again.

[kjjjjshab]

Re: Weird stuff after new kernel?

It's --configure, not --reconfigure (just so no one gets confused along the way).

[kubicle]

Re: Weird stuff after new kernel?

There are two separate commands:
1. dpkg --configure (will configure unconfigured packages)
2. dpkg-reconfigure (will reconfigure already configured packages)

with the -a option, both commands will configure all packages that meet the criteria (so 'dpkg-reconfigure -a' may take a while), the usual scenarios where you want to use them:
a. dpkg --configure -a
When upgrade has been interrupted by errors or crash, to complete the installation of packages
b. dpkg-reconfigure <package_name>
When you want to change the package behavior, it will ask debconf questions (again) so you can change your answers and modify the configuration.

[kjjjjshab]

Re: Weird stuff after new kernel?

There are two separate commands...

Thank you for that information/correction... I did not know that.

I even tried it before posting to be sure, but missed the fact that there was no space, as there is in the --configure command. And missed the "-", instead of "--"... time for new glasses I guess.

[noelvh]

Re: Weird stuff after new kernel?

I am currently running my IBM T43 on .19 as .21 will not work for me.
What happens it this, I boot fine and when I get to the desktop I see it for just a sec the the hole display goes white. I can use compiz to switch desktops but that runs very slow then back to white. I have tried to update my vid drivers but no good.

Do you guy think if I do the reconfigure it will help, and should I run that under .19 or .21?

Noel Vh

[toad]

Re: Weird stuff after new kernel?

There is absolutely no point is going gung-ho for the new kernel if the old one supports your system just fine. I'd do exactly what you have done

There is also no harm doing a reconfigure - but make sure you back up your working /etc/X11/xorg.conf!

[nilsA]

Re: Weird stuff after new kernel?

There is absolutely no point is going gung-ho for the new kernel if the old one supports your system just fine. I'd do exactly what you have done

There is also no harm doing a reconfigure - but make sure you back up your working /etc/X11/xorg.conf!

You might want to try

sudo dipkg -- configure -a

I had a bad install yesterday, and this command did fix it.

[toad]

Re: Weird stuff after new kernel?

little typo in there (happens all the time to me!)

sudo dpkg -- configure -a