[Tfug] Debian unable to mount root fs after an update/upgrade

[Glen Pfeiffer]

First, the good news. With everyones help I have fixed the
problem. But I didn't learn much from it yet, so if you don't
mind can you try answering a couple follow-up questions? First,
let me show you the results of your queries.

>
> What does your /etc/fstab look like?

# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
proc            /proc           proc    defaults        0       0
/dev/hda1       /               ext3    defaults,errors=remount-ro 0       1
/dev/hda6       /home           ext3    defaults        0       2
/dev/hda5       none            swap    sw              0       0
/dev/hdc        /media/cdrom0   udf,iso9660 user,noauto     0       0


> what about a dpkg -l lilo and a dpkg -L lilo

root at ubuntu:/# dpkg -l lilo
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Installed/Config-files/Unpacked/Failed-config/Half-installed
|/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err:
uppercase=bad)
||/ Name           Version        Description
+++-==============-==============-============================================
rc  lilo           22.6.1-7.1     LInux LOader - The Classic OS loader can

root at ubuntu:/# dpkg -L lilo
Package `lilo' does not contain any files (!)


As a result of that, I decided to install lilo. So I did 'apt-get
install lilo', or maybe I used aptitude, I can't really remember.
Once that finished I ran lilo, and rebooted. The system booted
fine. I have since ran aptitude upgrade again, and noticed that
many packages were not upgraded last time...odd.

I just remembered some extra information about how I executed the
original upgrade, that might be important. I noticed that when I
used aptitude from the CL with the '--with-recommends' flag, it
still reported that the recommended packages would not be
installed. So I tried out the gui version, and set the option to
'Install recommended packages automatically.' Then I ran an
upgrade.

Now on to my questions:

1) Why did running lilo fix the problem?
2) Do you have enough information to make a guess as to what went
   wrong? Do you think there was anything I could have done
   differently to prevent this problem?

Thanks!

--
Glen