udev problems after upgrade 2006->2007

[Guest cheshirex]

After upgrading to 2007 using the CD images, my system is reporting a lot of udev messages during boot - here's the first few lines in /var/log/messages (having updated /etc/udev/udev.conf to log level "info")

 

Oct 25 14:40:02 hostname udevd[901]: add_to_rules: invalid KERNEL operation

Oct 25 14:40:02 hostname udevd[901]: add_to_rules: invalid rule '/etc/udev/rules.d/50-mdk.rules:20'

Oct 25 14:40:02 hostname udevd[901]: add_to_rules: invalid KERNEL operation

Oct 25 14:40:02 hostname udevd[901]: add_to_rules: invalid rule '/etc/udev/rules.d/50-mdk.rules:21'

...

 

Once boot completes, I can't log in as my normal user until I log in as root and alter the permissions on /dev/null - i.e.:

 

chmod 666 /dev/null

 

Once that is done, the GNOME login works but any attempts to start GNOME terminal result in an error:

 

"There was an error creating the child process for this terminal"

 

I suspect that this all revolves around the udev messages seen briefly during boot. Are there boot kernel options should be added somewhere? Are these udev rules simply busted?

 

This is on a IBM thinkpad T42p with 1Gb RAM which was running quite happily with Mandriva 2006.

 

Thanks,

Daniel Bernstein

[ianw1974]

Only thing I can think of is have a look in the /etc/udev/rules.d directory to see if any of the rules are called something like "rulename.rpmnew". If there are any rpmnew files, chances are the old rules are from 2006. You'd need to rename the rpmnew files so that they are the actual config file, rather than the ones currently active.

 

I'm guessing at this, since I did upgrade a 2006 in vmware successfully and logged in perfectly fine with KDE, but never tried Gnome.

 

Clean installs are usually better than upgrades, cos of all the problems that can be encountered when you upgrade. If you have separate partitions, for /home for example, then you can clean install to / and whatever other partitions you don't have data in. The key is only format the ones you want, and leave the rest so that you keep your data. I did this recently myself.

 

Of course, you'd tend to lose a lot of settings, and what I do after this, is ensure my user is for example, ian_old, and then when I set up the new system, I just move the data across, so that I've got clean Gnome/KDE settings for the new system install. Otherwise, it'll read the config from your current user directory and may cause problems.

[Guest cheshirex]

Only thing I can think of is have a look in the /etc/udev/rules.d directory to see if any of the rules are called something like "rulename.rpmnew". If there are any rpmnew files, chances are the old rules are from 2006. You'd need to rename the rpmnew files so that they are the actual config file, rather than the ones currently active.

 

That did the trick! 50-mdk.rules had an rpmnew version -- putting that in place instead of the original file fixed the problem, and now everything seems to be working again.

 

Thanks for your help!

[ianw1974]

Phew, good guess then :P

 

Sometimes when upgrades take place rpmnew files are created, this is what I tend to do:

 

su (enter root password when prompted)
updatedb
slocate rpmnew

 

this then displays all the rpmnew files, and you can pick/choose which ones to replace, or all of them. Alternatively:

 

urpmi etc-update

 

and then run etc-update from the prompt, and you can do it all automatically ;)

[theYinYeti]

Phew, good guess then :P

[...]

Alternatively:

urpmi etc-update

and then run etc-update from the prompt, and you can do it all automatically ;)

Wow ianw1974, I'm very impressed at the rate at which you learn this all !

This is a very usefull tip you give us.

You'll be a guru soon, or aren't you one already ;)

 

Yves.

[ianw1974]

I'd say I'm average, but thanks for the guru status

 

Glad to help and give the tips. :)