can't boot after kernel upgrade to 2.6.27-11

[Derek Broughton]

Pierre Frenkiel wrote:

> hi,
> these 3 last days, Ubuntu people realeased 3 kernel versions:
>    2.6.27-11.25 2.6.27-11.26 2.6.27-11.27
> each time, the dpkg.log seemed perfectly normal
>      upgrade linux-image-2.6.27-11-generic 2.6.27-11.26 2.6.27-11.27
>      status installed linux-image-2.6.27-11-generic 2.6.27-11.27
> but "dpkg-l ..." gave:
>   pi  linux-image-2.6.27-11-generic 2.6.27-11.27  Linux kernel . . .
> 
> question 1: what means exactly "pi"?
>    According the headers, it's for  "desired = Purge" "status = Inst", but
>    that explains almost nothing...

It says it's pending a purge - so the next time you run dpkg it should 
actually remove it.  Not what you'd want, so I'm not sure why, unless 
there's actually yet another version coming in...
> 
> Then, I couldn't reboot, as the modules were not actually installed
> and I had to run "dpkg --reinstall install" for
>    linux-restricted-modules-2.6.27-11-generic
>    linux-image-2.6.27-11-generic
>    linux-headers-2.6.27-11-generic
>    linux-headers-2.6.27-11
> to fix it.
> question 2: did anybody have the same problem? 

No.  I've been doing the upgrades about weekly, and don't see a problem.  
There's something wrong there.  When kernel upgrades have new release 
numbers (eg 2.6.27.11 -> 2.6.27.12) you get a completely separate kernel, 
and the old one remains bootable.  When it's replacing an existing kernel, 
there's always the possibility of corrupting the existing data.

> question 3: has anybody an explanation?

I'd want to see much more of the install log.