I am testing the newest aptosid using a USB jump-drive before committing to my HD. As always I used smxi scripts to finalize the update process.

Good news: All seemed to work without incident.

I next tried installing a Liquorix kernel. That process seemed to throw errors, including Error 100, which I think relates to the charming GRUB2. Tried using smxi to correct it, but I could not.

I booted to see what might happen. Interestingly both the Grub menu and the boot process were exactly as they would have been.

But the errors bothered me so I removed the Liquorix kernel and the smxi config file so that I could get back to the slh kernels. No harm done.

techadmin: If it would be helpful for me to try the kernel installation again and report back with better notes I'll do that.

As always thanks for those splendid scripts!
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smxi error 100 means there was an error on the liquorix install I assume.

Make sure to read those, and do not continue with apt use until apt type errors are resolved.

Frequent causes are dropped connections because of wifi connection manager, and so on.
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Thank you that helps. I had just enabled wireless and it is possible that the connection, which is usually very reliable, did cause a problem.

So I'l try it again using my Ethernet link and we will see how that works.
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I think in smxi I'll add a quick connection tester pre use of apt to avoid such issues.
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That might help. I rely on wireless 95% of the time and I never thought of it as a potential source of a problem. With the growth in the number of us using laptops I suspect I am not alone.

I will be testing the Liquorix install today with a hard-wire Ethernet connection to see what difference that makes.

I'll report back when I have done it.
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Hmmm, not so good.

This time I installed my Ethernet cable and then booted into aptosid, which runs from a 16 Gig USB jump-drive on my laptop. All seemed right. I then started smxi as I normally do.

Once again Error 100 showed up. (BTW I cnnot find a listing of smxi errors, or is this an apt error?)

I then invoked option 1, "no pdiffs" and this seemed to clear the error. (I shall have to learn what a "pdiff" is.)

I then let smxi do the usual dist-upgrade, which amounted to the addition of one package.

After that I went to Kernel Install and chose "Advanced Options", #11.

That offered Liquorix 2.6.37 ...amd64. I selected #1, yes, install.

I noted once again a message rolling by, "Warning: could not determine root device from /etc/fstab" I do not know the significance of that.

The installer next indicated that a Liquorix directory already existed. I assumed that was a leftover from the earlier instlaton attempt. I chose to remove it and let the installer establish a new directory, which I assumed it would do. Wrong choice?

From this point everything seemed to go smoothly.

After a brief look at Graphics options with which I did nothing, I chose to back out, shut down and restart.

On restart the Grub menu dd not show the Liquorix kernel. Odd.

I started with the slh kernel and checked /boot.

Short story, you cannot boot a kernel that is not there! I have an initrd for the liquorix 2.6.37 kernel but nothing more. So the kernel did not install.

Rather than fiddle and make a further mess I'll stop here.

Note: My smxi log file is quite large at this point. I will copy out this morning's section and send that in a private message to techAdmin. If that is not appropriate, my apologies.

And thanks for the help!
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good error report, excellent in fact. Other readers, note how much information he provided, and how he put everything he could think of, very nice, I wish all users did this.



This is the source of the error.

Please post the output of these terminal commands: cat /etc/fstab

and let's take a look at that one, and also post the output of: df -hT

and: inxi -pluo

since smxi cannot actually read the output of apt when it runs, it can only tell you that apt had an error, and since apt for some inexplicable reason only returns one of two totally useless error codes re debugging, smxi simply cannot tell the user what to do or what happened.

I have never understood why apt did not have robust and clear error codes, like: 102: connection failed; 120: package unpacking failed.

It's very easy to do that, why Debian has not done this is absolutely a total mystery to me, and makes no sense, normally geeks LIKE information and DISLIKE lack of clarity, so why apt fails to provide such loggable error return values is just a mystery that I may or may not comprehend one day.

The key is obviously in your use or setup of the usb device of course, your fstab has a mistake or you set it up wrong or the instructions were wrong, or something like that.
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OK, here it is as requested.

For cat /etc/fstab:

UUID=0a928dc7-f17a-4a43-a681-909d7e644ec1 /media/disk ext4 defaults,noatime,errors=remount-ro,barrier=0 0 2
UUID=c9527801-938a-4e68-b561-e37ee2192c00 none swap sw 0 0
UUID=ead8101b-24c3-4428-ac71-3c626207a755 /media/disk2part1 ext4 auto,users,rw,exec,noatime 0 0
UUID=23e20bde-ae05-4fe2-9f29-b217a0b51e61 /media/disk2part10 ext4 auto,users,rw,exec,noatime 0 0
UUID=d936986a-9136-4a12-b2fe-d571af8be4d6 none swap sw 0 0
UUID=aa456124-3b05-43ca-8cbf-a49698adcad7 /media/disk2part2 ext4 auto,users,rw,exec,noatime 0 0
UUID=47ab6425-2938-4ef0-a93a-a6b156546c54 /media/disk2part5 ext4 auto,users,rw,exec,noatime 0 0
UUID=d806577f-2012-4631-99b5-501167ba7cf5 /media/disk2part6 ext3 auto,users,rw,exec,noatime 0 0
UUID=59d93a99-54da-4a6a-9360-b97f370288c1 none swap sw 0 0
UUID=4145682a-88ae-46c6-8f54-ec5361b41ebf /media/disk2part8 ext4 auto,users,rw,exec,noatime 0 0
UUID=fcf6297a-c07f-4b2f-a6ff-e148661b9e18 /media/disk2part9 ext4 auto,users,rw,exec,noatime 0 0

For df-hT:

Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
tmpfs tmpfs 1.5G 12K 1.5G 1% /lib/init/rw
udev tmpfs 1.5G 248K 1.5G 1% /dev
tmpfs tmpfs 1.5G 4.0K 1.5G 1% /dev/shm
rootfs rootfs 13G 2.6G 9.6G 21% /
/dev/sdb1 ext4 13G 2.6G 9.6G 21% /media/disk
/dev/sda1 ext4 15G 4.0G 11G 29% /media/disk2part1
/dev/sda10 ext4 16G 213M 15G 2% /media/disk2part10
/dev/sda2 ext4 11G 5.2G 4.5G 54% /media/disk2part2
/dev/sda5 ext4 13G 2.5G 9.1G 22% /media/disk2part5
/dev/sda6 ext3 147G 63G 77G 45% /media/disk2part6

I use usb jump-drives rather frequently. I typically will install there if I want to experiment without putting my HD installations at risk. Which is not to say I did not make hash of this installation! I might very well have, but I cannot see it. So thank you for working with this.[/quote]
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We have some progress. The problem seems have stemmed from a corrupted device.map file in /bot/grub. x-un-i pointed to it as the potential source of the problem and he was right.

The fix required a complete reinstallation of grub2. With that done I was able to do an aptosid kernel upgrade in the usual aptosid fashion.

Grub2 was upgraded when I reinstalled it.

With everything apparently now working as it should we will fire up smxi and attempt the liquorix kernel installation.

My thanks to both techAdmin and x-un-i.
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hi

could you post the output of both grub map files if you still have them pls?

b) looking at your fstab....I thought that might have shorter strings for usb devices.....or would I be correct to assume no USB strings are there?
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