Just power-cycled trilussa, as it was totally unresponsive at the console (though it was still on). It came up, and brought me to a login prompt. There was one error very early in bootup: it said "Mounting local filesystems: failed!" in red, but then everything else seemed to go okay. I haven't logged in on the console yet. (I let it boot into the same default kernel, btw.) I can't ping nor ssh into trilussa, though. I'll go try to log in at console. Hmmm. It detects the USB keyboard being plugged in and out -- messages about USB device activity flash on the screen. But, it totally doesn't seem to hear the keyboard. No reaction at all to any keystrokes. kfogel: Hi. hi did you see above? yes So I'm trying to decide: reboot with USB stick now? When you installed the new kernel, it should have been bootable under the same name as the old one, right? Yes. IOW, I probably just booted your new kernel? It was just a change in the debian release, not in the kernel version at all! Oh, the kernel didn't change? Not the version - just the Debian packaging of it What I mean is, the kernel got reinstalled, sorry. And is probably not byte-for-byte the same as the old one, version number notwithstanding. I assume the USB keyboard worked in the past? I'm just trying to figure out what is true here and what is not :-). And it has no other keyboard interface? Yeah, we used the USB keyboard before. Well, there's a serial connection, I could try that. ooops Is the bootloader aware of the USB keyboard? need 10 minutes, sorry for the interruption (back as SOON as can, sorry for delay) maybe less than 10 no problem, I'm at home now, my time is flexible Wow, sanpietro can be perverse at times :-) 'polson' is not a member of the 'polson' group, nor is 'msussman' a member of the 'msussman' group. back okay, so what do you recommend? Try booting from USB stick? One detail: the USB keyboard has a forwarding USB port where a mouse could go in. That mouse is not plugged in; I can't remember if it was before, when we were using the kbd successfully. Hmmm. I'm going to try connecting the serial console first, how does that sound? Maybe I can log in that way. It would be nice to log in while the current kernel is active. If you have something you can try on the serial port, that might work aaaargh -- the serial console's cable is wide-serial (which is right for sp). Hunting for an adapter to turn it into narrow (9-pin?) serial now. However, do we know that there is a getty on the serial line? No, we've never tried that with trilussa before, so we don't know. If not, booting the keychain might get you a shell from which the hard disc can be mounted "Mounting local filesystems: failed!" sounds a bit scary I don't suppose there was any info on why it failed? No, no more info -- that was the only failure-looking thing I saw, and it scrolled off the screen eventually. So, no luck on the 9-pin adaptor. I think it's boot-from-usb-stick now. Where was that failure? During the kernel boot? Or after the boot had passed to initscripts? initscripts, I presume. If it was in initscripts, it was *very* early. Btw, got to boot prompt from USB stick. Now it's saying "Press F1 for help, or ENTER to boot:" should I type 'rescue' or anything, or just hit ENTER? That being a linux bootloader prompt ? It's the Debian installer prompt. The USB stick is a rescue disk, basically. F1, I guess, see what options it has okay some delay as my IRC terminal is not in the same room as trilussa. Running back and forth here :-). oh dude. there are a LOT of help screens available now -- I'm in the help tree. I think it will be better for us to outline what our plan is, and I'll figure out how to make that happen. What would we like to do? did yall blow it up yet? Try to get a shell, I think, see if there is anything we can diagnose on the system. kreig`: hey, yeah, sort of. If all else fails, attempt a reinstall bizzare maxb: let me summarize for kreig`, one sec I've got a Debian CD booting in a spare machine so I can see vaguely what you are seeing now