lin linux-2.6 and lilo wierdness

[Duncan Gibson]

I normally rebuild and reboot into the latest kernel pretty soon after it
is available in moonbase. Today, I saw that the 2.6.33.4 kernel was there,
and decided to rebuild. This was part of a larger update, so I went away
to do something else, and when I came back and saw that the everything had
finished, I rebooted.

Strange, the lilo menu didn't offer 2.6.33.4, nor 2.6.33.3. The top entry
and hence the default was 2.6.33.2. OK, rebooted to that instead.

Ran lin linux-2.6 again. It built and got to the boot loader question:

  linux-2.6: Edit lilo configuration manually ? [n]
  Warning: LBA32 addressing assumed
  Added 2.6.33.4-i686 *
  Fatal: open /boot/2.6.33.4-i686.old: No such file or directory

When I rebooted, I still didn't have the 2.6.33.3 or 4 kernel options, and
so had to go with 2.6.33.2 again.

To cut a long story short, to get this to build, I had to edit lilo.conf
to remove the 2.6.33.4 and 2.6.33.4-old options, removed the 2.6.33.4 files
and directories from /boot and /lib/modules, and ran 'lin linux-2.6' again.

This time the lilo configuration went without problem, and I could reboot
to the new kernel.

If I rebuild the kernel again using 'lin linux-2.6' I again get the
Fatal error from the lilo configuration, but as I already have 2.6.33.4
in the boot menu, it's not quite as important. But then the question is
whether I am running the old 2.6.33.4 configuration or the new one.

I probably triggered this in the first place in the update from 2.6.33.2
to 2.6.33.3 because I have an NVIDIA card, so I have to lrm and re-lin the
NVIDIA module after rebooting to the new kernel. I guess that I must have
rebuilt the kernel twice after finding that NVIDIA wasn't loaded, but I
just don't remember.

I don't know whether this is a bug or a feature, but it's not obvious.
It might just bite someone else who rebuilds their kernels more than once.

Cheers
Duncan