[Mageia-discuss] Strange behavior after kernel update

[Claire Robinson]

On 25/09/11 02:39, TJ wrote:
> I'm using the 32-bit version of Mageia with a Sempron 3100+ processor,
> Asus K8V-MX/S motherboard, 2GB DDR RAM, and an nVidia Geforce 6200 AGP
> video card. I'm using the latest non-free video card driver amd I also
> have the vendor's generic for-any-Linux version 4.1.2 of VirtualBox
> installed.
>
> After updating the kernel earlier today, I attempted a reboot. The GUI
> boot screen came up, and the progress dots showed progress, but it was
> VERY slow. Not entirely unexpected because the new nVidia and VirtualBox
> modules had to be installed, but this was far longer than I had ever
> seen before. Normally I would have used the escape key to go to
> "verbose" mode to see what was going on, but it didn't function, and the
> message that I could do so didn't appear.
>
> The progress dots eventually showed progress all the way to the end, and
> then it was "stuck" there. After about three minutes I used the reset
> button to reboot, using the old kernel. That worked normally. I then
> shut down and tried the new kernel again, with the same result as before.
>
> Another reset, but this time I booted into safe mode. This time the text
> showed the nVidia and VirtualBox modules being installed, then went to a
> command line. I issued a "halt" command and started again, once again
> using the GUI bootscreen. This time, the "Press escape for verbose mode"
> message showed up, and the boot proceeded completely normally. I haven't
> tried everything yet, but so far it's working perfectly.
>
> I haven't the slightest idea of why this happened, but I thought
> somebody should know.
>
> TJ
>

You may find mkinitrd was building a new image, which can take a long 
time, especially when coupled with module rebuilds.

Are there any clues in the dmesg or syslog?

Claire