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Be careful of the kernel update if you installed the VIA drivers

Just as I predicted, a kernel update has been pushed out and if you installed the VIA drivers to get Compiz working then you will boot up to a black screen after letting the update process run and install kernel 2.26.21-generic. You can still boot up from the old kernel by pressing escape just after the bios and selecting the 2.26.19-generic kernel from the GRUB menu. I have asked VIA to compile a new one for us and come up with a more useable long term solution.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 16th, 2008 at 9:54 pm and is filed under Compiz. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

9 Responses to “Be careful of the kernel update if you installed the VIA drivers”

  1. Nearly Legal says:
    October 16, 2008 at 11:28 pm

    Alan, many thanks for that. Is there any way to set the 2.26.19 kernel as the automatic selection for boot in Grub in the meantime?

    By the way, when in the cntrl-alt-F1 terminal mode, the / key didn’t work, so I had to use repeated .. to get to the top level and then cd etc and cd X11 separately. Is this a US versus local keyboard setting issue?

    As others have said, you are doing excellent work as informal support and ambassador for the ubuntu webbook, at least for those of us new to Linux. I’m learning fast, but your help has been invaluable.

  2. Alan Bell says:
    October 16, 2008 at 11:38 pm

    yes, you can edit the boot menu by using this command
    sudo gedit /boot/grub/menu.lst
    on about line 13 (unlucky for some) you will see default 0. Scroll way down until you find the list of kernel versions, 0 is the top one, 1 is next (2.26.21 recovery mode) and 2 is the one after that. If 2 is the one you want (probably is, but isn’t on the webbook in front of me because I installed 2.6.20) then go back up to line 13 and change it to default 2 I have no idea whether this will point to 0, 2 or 4 next time a kernel update happens and the list moves down, but either way you know how to change it now.

  3. Gavin says:
    October 18, 2008 at 2:16 pm

    Isn’t it also possible to show the GRUB menu at the boot-up process so you can choose which version to use? I’m not sure how to do this 100%, but on my laptop which is dual booted with Vista my GRUB gives me the choice of 2 kernels and Vista. Is this a viable workaround to allow the new kernel to be loaded but not used?

  4. Alan Bell says:
    October 18, 2008 at 2:22 pm

    @Gavin, good point, just a simple edit in the same file /boot/grub/menu.lst just add a line specifying the number of seconds to wait

    ## timeout sec
# Set a timeout, in SEC seconds, before automatically booting the default entry
# (normally the first entry defined).
timeout         10
  5. The Open Sourcerer says:
    October 19, 2008 at 12:08 pm

    @Gavin, there are quite a few possibilities with the grub menu.lst file. Take a look here for a starting point. http://www.gnu.org/software/grub/manual/grub.html#Configuration

    But be aware that next time the Ubuntu update mechanism does something like upgrade the kernel or grub, it will complain about menu.lst having been altered outside of the package manager’s control. It will offer you a choice to overwrite it or not, but it’s always a good idea to keep a backup lying around somewhere just in case…

    Cheers

    Alan

  6. Lukstar says:
    December 11, 2008 at 4:24 pm

    I notice that they updated the kernal again to .22, so I have edited my boot menu again to compensate. However are we missing out on functionality by not taking advantage of the kernal updates? And are VIA likely to compile some new drivers for us?

    Cheers

  7. Will Watts says:
    December 14, 2008 at 11:15 am

    Seconded on both these questions.

    Also, admittedly as a Linux ignoramus, I am rather surprised that the drivers are so kernel version-specific. I thought that, in general on all OSes and machines, the environment for drivers tends to be very stable, to avoid precisely the palaver we have here. Is there not some mechanism by which drivers do not need to be compiled against version-specific libraries?

    Regards

    Will

  8. Alan Bell says:
    December 14, 2008 at 10:27 pm

    The thing is Linux works best with Open Source drivers. The kernel doesn’t attempt to keep binary compatibility between releases so binary-only drivers just keep breaking. Other operating systems jump through hoops to keep a static binary interface for some hardware drivers, The Linux way of doing things is not to bother with binary compatibility for kernel modules because it is more efficient to just compile them altogether or build them into the kernel. It is a bit technical but here is Harald Welte (who works for VIA of all people) explaining it all http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS8224330236.html The VIA people did start talking to me again briefly but then stopped answering emails again.

  9. Mike Bates says:
    February 27, 2009 at 4:45 pm

    Hi there,
    I updates the kernel (it said update to 2.26.19-generic kernel) as I had some issues downloading a few packages. However I now have the black screen with just a mouse curser. I can log in with user name and password but still get just a black screen with mouse arrow. I know it is running as the wireless is connected.
    When I boot and press esc. key my only selections are 2.6.24-19-generic and 2.6.24-19-generic (recovery mode).
    Is there any way to get back to when it was all OK? Can I somehow “roll back” to the previous kernel?
    Otherwise I feel it will need a re-installation of the software.
    Many thanks
    Mike

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