We tried to upgrade a Red Hat system to the newest 2.6.x kernel but something went wrong. It booted using the old kernel, but the network broke. The new kernel compiles but will not install. An error message says mkinitrd fails because all the loopback devices are in use. Can we recover the system and get the new kernel installed?
To recover the system, boot with the Red Hat installation disk and re-install Red Hat, very careful to correctly identify disk partitions with the original labels, and choose not to format the drives. This should bring you back to where you started.
After rebooting the re-installed Red Hat system, build and install the new kernel. Make sure you have the newest module-init-tools (get it here ).
Configure them for installation with the command
configure-prefix=/
If you installed them previously, do not re-run the “make moveold” command. Now configure the new kernel. Configure the Ext3 file system into the new kernel rather than building it as a module. Build the new kernel and run “make install.” Your kernel should boot without complaining about missing modules. More information here.
