Failure to upgrade from fedora 15 to version 16 using preupgrade

[YuryT]

Hi all,

First let me apologize for posting another thread about failing when upgrading from fedora 15 to fedora 16 but I didn't see any similar issue in the previous threads.

I've had fedora 15 up and running for a while with no problems when I decided to migrate to fedora 16. I've looked for a tutorial on the net and followed the steps afterwards:

su (then I became root)
yum update rpm
yum -y update
yum clean all

At that point, no new kernel was installed and no update was carried out (I've concluded that my system was already up to date) so I decided not to reboot and to proceeded as follows:

yum install preupgrade
preupgrade

As expected, a wizard appeared proposing to upgrade to fedora 16. I've just clicked next and waited for the whole day for everything to get downloaded and installed. The wizard then asked for a reboot and I've proceeded. The system turned off, started again and at the point when fedora was supposed to boot nothing happened. I just see a screen with "Verifying DMI pool data" written and fedora doesn't even load. I've tried restarting and I just get the same thing. I've tried waiting for an hour but nothing happens, fedora won't boot. And now I don't know at all what to do. It seems there's nothing I can type or do so please if you have an idea about what I could do, I would be extremely grateful to you for some help.

Thanks for help,
Yury

PS: I have windows installed on another partition if it might help.

[jpollard]

Try a second boot.

The first time I rebooted into F16 after a preupgrade pass failed the same way. But a forced reboot after that did work (slow as hell, took almost 5 hours to finish the update), but boots after that seemed to go ok.

[YuryT]

Hey jpollard,

Thanks for your reply. What do you mean exactly by a second boot? I previously had a blue screen saying that fedora will boot in 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 seconds but this screen doesn't show up anymore and it seems that nothing is happening. My computer just hangs when fedora is supposed to boot and stays there. I tried rebooting a few times but still the same issue. Do you mean I have to wait for a few hours with this screen?

Cheers!

[jpollard]

In your case it sounds like a video problem.

In mine, it just hung after shutdown. First boot after that also hung - but a forced reboot worked and it went into the "firstboot" display and proceeded to apply all the updates to the system - normal display and all.

[YuryT]

Thanks for the info but I'm quite new to linux so I'm not sure what to do about that. Could you give me a hint please?

[Mariusz W]

I've had fedora 15 up and running for a while with no problems when I decided to migrate to fedora 16. I've looked for a tutorial on the net and followed the steps afterwards:

su (then I became root)
yum update rpm
yum -y update
yum clean all


(...) I'm quite new to linux so I'm not sure what to do about that. Could you give me a hint please?

Be careful with following random 'advice' that one can find on the internet when dealing with operations than can have serious impact on the operating system. Your first thought should be to look in such cases for an authoritative source of information: the most obvious internet search like Fedora preupgrade produces the reference to the Fedora wiki page

http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/How_to_use_PreUpgrade

where upgrading is very clearly described. It is the the top hit that the search engine brought when I performed that search a few moments ago.

[YuryT]

Dear Mariusz,

I partly agree with you. I've seen the tutorial on the Fedora wiki page before upgrading but I decided not to go for it as it is too complicated. As well I've got used to follow 'random' advice on the net to get fedora suit my needs (as you know, everything is not on the fedora wiki itself). And finally I really consider that there should be a straightforward method for upgrading your system and that a program which is exactly supposed to do this will at least do the necessary checks in order to ensure that it will work as expected before doing any system critical change...

Anyway, this won't help in solving my issue. Do you recommend me to reinstall my system?

I will give you some more details on the way I've previously set up everything:
- I have 4 drives: 2 old IDE HDDs, 1 new SATA HDD and 1 new SATA SSD
- I've used the following partitioning for installing fedora 15:
/boot : 1024 mb, ext 4, on the new HDD
/ : 20480 mb, btfrs, on the SSD
/usr : all remaining space on the SSD
/home : all remaining space on the new HDD

So do you think there's a way to repair my system or will I need to wipe everything and go for the lengthy install and customization process again?

Yury

[Mariusz W]

At that point, no new kernel was installed and no update was carried out (I've concluded that my system was already up to date) so I decided not to reboot and to proceeded as follows:

yum install preupgrade
preupgrade

As expected, a wizard appeared proposing to upgrade to fedora 16. I've just clicked next and waited for the whole day for everything to get downloaded and installed.

Do you mean by this that you rebooted after preupgrade finished downloading packages and after the reboot the anaconda installer came up and performed the install? On some machines, by the way, the actual install part of preupgrade may take many hours: for example, on a Toshiba NB205 netbook the install part of preupgrade took:

24 hours -- when upgrading from F13 to F14
10 hours -- when upgrading from F14 to F15
5 hours -- when upgrading from F15 to F16

The wizard then asked for a reboot and I've proceeded. The system turned off, started again and at the point when fedora was supposed to boot nothing happened.

Does GRUB load?

Repeat your attempts at booting the machine. There is a chance the problem will not reappear in the subsequent boots.

[RHamel]

This sounds like a GRUB issue to me. Especially, if you have windows on another partition.

[YuryT]

Thanks for helping!

Do you mean by this that you rebooted after preupgrade finished downloading packages and after the reboot the anaconda installer came up and performed the install?

Well actually the problem is that preupgrade finished downloading packages, then I rebooted and then nothing happened. The computer just gets stuck before grub loads. So the anaconda installer never came up and no install was performed...

This sounds like a GRUB issue to me. Especially, if you have windows on another partition.

Indeed it sounds like a GRUB issue. So what to do about it?

I remember as well I had an issue with the keyboard. I have an old PS/2 keyboard and an USB one. When I first tried to install fedora, GRUB did not recognize the USB keyboard when the DVD booted so I had to plug in my PS/2 keyboard again (although the Anaconda installer did recognize the USB keyboard). Do you think my problem might be linked to this keyboard behavior?

[RHamel]

No, it usually means that GRUB is pointing at the wrong partition. I have not done this in a long time. You have to boot into Linux rescue mode with the CD, or DVD, and manually mount the Linux partition, and manually change the GRUB configuration.

Instructions on rescue mode. (http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/16/html/Installation_Guide/ap-rescuemode.html)


Editing Grub. (http://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/16/html/Installation_Guide/sn-medialess-editing-grub-conf.html)


Have you ever edited a file with Vi?

[YuryT]

Hi RHamel,

Thanks for help. I guess you are right about GRUB but it may be a Fedora 16 issue as well. I've indeed burned a Fedora 16 DVD and I can't boot from it (although I've burned it on the same machine, same device with the same program and using the same type of DVD as Fedora 15 which works perfectly).

Anyway, I've booted from my Fedora 15 DVD, went in rescue mode and typed in the following commands:

chroot /mnt/sysimage/
/sbin/grub-install /dev/sda

I got the following result:

Installation finished. No error reported.
This is the contents of the device map /boot/grub/device.map.
Check if this is correct or not. If any of the lines is incorrect,
fix it and re-run the script ‘grub-install’.

# this device map was generated by anaconda
(hd2) /dev/sda
(hd0) /dev/sdd

Now the problem is that I don’t know what sda, sdd, hd2 and hd0 stand for so I can’t really tell if there’s a problem and I don’t know as well how to fix it if there’s one as I have never ‘ever edited a file with Vi?’.

Some advice?

[RHamel]

What does this show?


fdisk -l

[YuryT]

Ok, that makes a long thing to type... So I get the following result:

Disk /dev/sdb: 123.5 GB, 123522416640 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 15017 cylinders, total 241254720 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk Identifier: 0xe23f2b26

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 63 241248104 120624021 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

Disk /dev/sdd: 3000.6 GB, 3000592982016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 364801 cylinders, total 5860533168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk Identifier: 0x602b2a60

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdd1 * 2048 2099199 1048576 83 Linux
/dev/sdd2 2099200 4294967295 2146434048 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdc: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders, total 234441648 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk Identifier: 0x0002d244

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 2048 41945087 20971520 83 Linux
/dev/sdc2 41945088 50333695 4194304 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdc3 50333696 234440703 92053504 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdc: 250.1 GB, 250059350016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 30401 cylinders, total 488397168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk Identifier: 0x7a3cae89

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 63 62926604 31463271 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT
/dev/sda2 62926605 488392064 212732730 f W95 Ext’d (LBA)
/dev/sda5 62926668 488392064 212732698+ 7 HPFS/NTFS/exFAT

[RHamel]

Can you still boot into windows at this point?

I think that /dev/sda should be hd0 and /dev/sdd should be hd3

[jpollard]

Usually, but it depends on the order the drives are identified.

On my system, the original scsi order was 1,2. but after adding another disk it became 1,3,2 - it depends on the drive spin up and ready time.

The only way to identify the disk is by UUID or partition information.

[YuryT]

Hey,

It's quite difficult to get here without a computer. Well, I've just tried to boot from the HDD with windows and it doesn't work :(. Maybe there's a way to boot from an ubuntu live cd and repair what needs to get repaired?

Yury

[RHamel]

You could also rename /boot/grub/device.map, and then rerun grub-install, and see if that sorts it out.