Lenny can't boot anymore - bootsplash hangs on forever

[zac]

Hello everyone!
Please, I need your help!
Something completely unexpected happen this morning!
My Debian Lenny simply can't boot anymore! When I turn on the machine, it tries to boot but then it hangs on forever with a blank screen or with the (recentley installed) bootsplash screen. It might be the splash screen, but I used it for about a week without any problems... I have no idea how to fix this, since I can't access the system... I'm writing this from another computer, but I need my Debian back as soon as possible.

What can I do to try to solve this?
Could you give me a hand?

Thank you very much!!

[zac]

Well, I'm using a live cd to access the data on my disk, but that's all!
I can't figure out how to fix this on my own... could anyone please help me try to solve this thing?

I was wondering if I could uninstall the usplash from my system using the live cd... Is that at all possible? Is it worth trying?

Please help!!

Thank you very much!

[nadir]

boot the live
mount the root-partition of debian, say its /dev/sda1 and say mount on /media/disk
mount /dev/sda1 /media/disk
mount some stuff:
mount -o bind /dev /media/disk/dev
mount -t proc /proc /media/disk/proc
mount -o bind /sys /media/disk/sys
chroot /media/disk
apt-get remove --purge usplash #ignore some error-messages bout not being able to write logs (or similar)
exit # to exit chroot
umount /media/disk/{sys,proc,dev} #might be you get an error, ignore and reboot
umount /media/disk
reboot

if that didn't help do the same again till you found the culprit (perhaps reinstall grub).
might be it will help, thats what i would do. i would be happy to be corrected (or if one has got a better idea)

ps: which kernel?

[zac]

Thanks a million, nadir!
Finally some help!
I'll try to do as you say and report back the results!
Thanks!

If it works, I'll forget about that stupid splash!

For the kernel, I ran this command in the live cd... but I guess this isn't my kernel, but the live cd's... right?
debian:/home/user# uname -a
Linux debian 2.6.26-2-486 #1 Sun Jul 26 20:43:17 UTC 2009 i686 GNU/Linux

I'll try to find out and report it to you as soon as I can. (sorry... I'm no expert in Linux).

Sorry I don't know what 'the culprit' is... But I'll try to find out.

Another thing: Yesterday I did something I had never done, but I suppose it wouldn't interfere with the booting... I'm running two different versions of wine at the same time. I renamed the directory /.wine to /.wine2 for the wine I had compiled. Then I installed the stable version of wine to run another software... so the /.wine was created again. I ran these both versions of wine without any problem, the softwares were running fine. Today, the computer didn't boot, though. That's the only different thing I did yesterday, and it looks suspicious to me... Do you think this might be related to the problem?? If yes, what should I do? Thank you SO much for your help!
Zac.

[zac]

This might be my kernel:

update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.26-1-686

Things seem to be working... let's see.

[nadir]

about wine i don't know, i think it ain't the problem.
i asked bout the kernel cause the 32-kernel makes a bit of trouble (and is in lenny-backports, so it might be you would use it).
you might think about installing linux-image-2.6.26-2-686 (but just as a side-note).

i hope someone might jump in. good luck.

[zac]

Yes, that is my kernel!

Nadir, it worked like a charm!! You gave me all the instructions I needed, and I just cannot thank you enough!!

You're gonna laugh at me!! I removed that useless splash, and rebooted. Then, the booting in text mode started. Guess what happened. Debian started checking the disk. Man! Quite probably, there was no problem at all. Only, booting was taking so long... it lasted forever, because debian was checking the disk for errors... But that was the last thing I would think of with that stupid splash in front of me. After some minutes (far too many for a normal boot!) I reset the machine, and the same thing probably happened over and over again, and I didn't dig it! So I thought, there must be a problem! In the end, it was me who was even more stupid than that stupid splash, of course!! Oh man, that's ridiculous! I'm ashamed of myself!
(but also, the splash SHOULD have a message saying that debian is checking the disk!)

Anyway...
I liked the things you taught me!
I'd never done something like that. It was fun.
Those things might be useful in the future.
Thank you SO much, Nadir!!
That was nice!
See you around!
Zac.

[nadir]

don't think about it. such things happen all the time to me. its good you got it sorted.
(when doing such stuff and liking it you may also use xnest, for the fun of it:
http://www.debe17.com/web_pages/deans_c ... 8.php.html
scroll down...)greetings.

[zac]

Thank you for your support!
Actually, I'm proud of myself in a way... I didn't use to be able to solve theses things. That's what makes Linux and theses forums so interesting. You end up learning a lot of stuff you couldn't see yourself doing some time ago. It feels like a lotta freedom, you know! Tonight, I'm going to erase my Windows partition! That's it!
Thank you for that link. It seems like a lot of stuff to learn, man. I don't know if I have the guts...

Maybe one day...