I just wanted to comment that today I updated (as recommended!) my opensuse 10.3 from the linux kernel “2.6.22.17-0.1” to the new one, “2.6.22.18-0.2”. After installing the new kernel I rebooted the machine, and it became immediately clear that something was terribly wrong. I had no network, no drives, no sound, no nothing.
The problem was, the modules for the kernel were being searched for in the wrong place - the address it was looking for was a directory named after the old kernel, not the new one. You can see if that’s the problem by typing (as root) either depmod or modinfo - if the directory is missing, you will get a message.
The solution (in my case at least, so be careful out there) was to make a soft link in the place where the kernel looks for the modules:
$machine> cd /lib/modules
$machine> ls
2.6.22.18-0.2-default
$machine> ln -s 2.6.22.18-0.2-default/ 2.6.22.17-0.1-default
Then, reboot the machine and everything should work fine.
I hope this helps people out there who had the same problem.
I have the same problem, but I think it’s mainly a GRUB weirdness. Your solution didn’t have any affect on my machine. But you’re right: If you allowed the last kernel update of openSuSE 10.3 nothing boots anymore (except for maybe Windows which I don’t have).
The directory for the modules is determined by the kernel version, so it may be possible you were still running the old kernel after reboot. You should have done a
uname -a
to check the kernel version before doing something so drastic. Also you should look at where the symlink /boot/vmlinuz points to, perhaps it’s still pointing to the old kernel.
This happens mostly in my experience when /boot/grub/menu.lst is sitting on a different drive to /, so menu.lst (at least, the correct one) is not modified by the kernel upgrade process. A typical scenario for triple boot setups.
During openSUSE kernel upgrades your grub menu should change automatically to indicate the new kernel version when you next boot after the upgrade. If you are not sure about this, check the menu.lst you know your machine is using to ensure the grub kernel entry is pointing to the correct kernel BEFORE you reboot.