[Discuss] Server won't boot kernel. initramfs problem?

[david at thekramers.net (David Kramer)]

On 02/23/2013 08:13 AM, David Kramer wrote:
> On 02/23/2013 07:33 AM, Laura Conrad wrote:
>> I had a problem that might be relevant.   In my case, I was installing
>> new kernels as they came out, but grub wasn't booting (or listing) them.
>>
>> It turned out that the install scripts for the new kernel I installed
>> were updating the new grub configuration file, and the version of grub I
>> had was using the old one.  So look at whether menu.lst has the old
>> kernels and grub.cfg doesn't.
>>
>> I forget exactly how I fixed this, but I'm sure it involved completely
>> reinstalling grub2 and running some grub init script.
> I don't think menu.lst exists anymore (I just double-checked on my
> desktop computer) in grub2.  Do you mean some components thought you
> were using grub and others thought you were using grub2?
>
> I had another crazy thought this morning.  If I boot from livecd, then
> put the same "mount --bind and chroot" trick from that web page,  then
> apt-get update && apt-get upgrade (or dist-upgrade), would that actually
> update the packages on my installed kubuntu?  It's so crazy it just may
> work. I'm almost guaranteed of there being a newer kernel available,
> since I don't update my servers that often.
>
> What would be *really* nice is if I could launch muon from that chrooted
> shell and update using it, but I'm less confident that it would respect
> the chroot.  Idunno.

GGGGGGGGGGGGRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

After trying everything I mentioned with no results, I tried memtest86
and I had bad RAM.  Luckily I had 8GB in there so it can limp along for
a few days on 4GB.  

DOH!

Also fscking 3TB takes much longer than you want it to.