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 http://pastebin.ca/34804 kreig`: see above maxb: okay, bbiab are you using lilo or grub? grub should be the defualt bootloader I believe Whatever is on debian install cds. Looks lilo-ish OK, it looks like to get a shell, you boot, then choose the option from the menu. However, on my testbox here, it won't let me mount the harddisc :-( kreig`: grub was default loader when I booted from hard disk From usb stick now, it's just the deb installer. maxb: So just now, I chose 'expert' boot, and then went to the shell prompt option, but trying 'mount -t ext3 /dev/sda1 /target' fails, and same with sda2. I did make the /target dir already. Do you remember our hard drive's device name? Where is our root partition? maxb: history check: when fitz and ben did the initial install, they installed 'stable', right? If we have to do a full reinstall, I'm trying to think if it's best to just go straight to testing from the start. (I'm going to reboot now and boot default 'linux' mode from usb stick, instead of 'expert', see if that causes the right drive to be automounted somewhere.) I can't get any mounting to work I don't even have any standard device nodes heh I think we have a IDE disc, not SCSI. yah SATA, so ide dmesg'll tell ya what ids to use Yes, 'stable'. You don't get to choose that. Its not an option shit DUDE. kfogel: are you plugging the keyboard into the REAR of the machine? I tried both manually mknodding, and running "Load Installer components from CD" (which populated devfs with more stuff) - both failed to actually let me mount my drive. or the front like we did when I brought the machine over? --- ChanServ gives channel operator status to sussman * fitz is profoundly confused as to what the problem might be. maxb: is that on your test box? yah, I am confounded as well problem? * sussman puts down his kippers & eggs lots for whatever reason, the rear USB jack doesn't work with the keyboad. but the front one does. yeah, we noticed that at the office it's bizarre maybe the kernel just doesn't detect the rear jacks there should be *no* problem booting this box--it worked easy as pie sussman: remember how the 2 ethernet jacks were labelled 1, 2 you guys have seen the transcript so far? and one of them said something like "net admin" or something http://pastebin.ca/34804 I fear that when we have the net plugged into that one, the rear usb jacks are disabled.