[SOLVED] preupgrade drops to debug shell

[RavanH]

Hi,

Tying to use preupgrade to move from F15 to F16 beta, immediately after reboot I get dropped to debug shell. These are the last messages I see:

...
mount: Unknown filesystem type 'DM_snapshot_cow'
mount: Unknown filesystem type 'DM_snapshot_cow'
mount: Unknown filesystem type 'DM_snapshot_cow'

[ ... ] dracut Warning: Can't mount root filesystem
dracut Warning: Can't mount root filesystem

Dropping to debug shell

sh: cannot set terminal process group (-1): Inappropriate ioctl for device
sh: no job control in this shell
dracut:/#_

Last lines of dmesg tell me:

...
SQUASHFS error: unable to read inode lookup table
dracut Warning: Can't mount root filesystem

Rebooting back into F15 works. In grub.conf I find:

...
title Upgraden naar Fedora 16 Branched Pre-release (Verne)
	kernel /boot/upgrade/vmlinuz preupgrade repo=hd::/var/cache/yum/preupgrade ks=hd:UUID=a2ac08b6-9b69-4ec1-a6d6-8f4453c82dd2:/boot/upgrade/ks.cfg
	initrd /boot/upgrade/initrd.img
...

The UUID checks out correctly for /dev/sda3 where the root is found.

I opened a terminal and tried

# preupgrade --clean
Loaded plugins: blacklist, langpacks, whiteout
No plugin match for: rpm-warm-cache
No plugin match for: remove-with-leaves
No plugin match for: auto-update-debuginfo
Er is geen vorige upgrade om schoon te maken
#

That last line translates to "There is no previous upgrade to clean" even though several Gigs of preupgrade files (in 4 subdirs) are there under /var/cache/yum/

I'm confused (see?)

How to either get the upgrade working after all or to get properly and safely rid of this failed attempt?

Thanks for any insight

---------- Post added at 12:51 PM ---------- Previous post was at 10:40 AM ----------

Update:

I tried altering the entry in grub.conf to:
Code:

title Upgraden naar Fedora 16 Branched Pre-release (Verne)
	hd(0,2)
	kernel /boot/upgrade/vmlinuz preupgrade repo=hd:UUID=a2ac08b6-9b69-4ec1-a6d6-8f4453c82dd2:/var/cache/yum/preupgrade ks=hd:UUID=a2ac08b6-9b69-4ec1-a6d6-8f4453c82dd2:/boot/upgrade/ks.cfg
	initrd /boot/upgrade/initrd.img

But neither adding the hd(0,2) nor the extra UUID after repo=hd: did the trick

[RavanH]

I think I found the problem. I had started the upgrade as Admin User from command line like this:

$ preupgrade

Which first asked me for my password and then proceeded with the upgrade without any warning. Install images and packages where downloaded and stored in the correct place but somehow, after reboot, the upgrade process went looking for packages in the wrong place, under the user home dir instead of under /var/cache/yum/.

I removed (as root) all preupgrade related files and folders and started the upgrade again, this time as root:

$ su -
# preupgrade

And this time, the reboot indeed launched Anaconda upgrade successfully...

I'm writing this as a happy user under F16beta with Gnome 3.2