update-initramfs fails with 'File exists' errors during upgrade from lenny to squeeze

Question

I am in the process of upgrading a machine from Debian Lenny to Squeeze (I know it was about time ;-) and ran into a weird error that boils down to the update-initramfs command complaining about some files already existing.

Here is the complete output I get:

Debian-50-lenny-64-LAMP:/tmp/mkinitramfs_Zq6I1R/usr/share# update-initramfs -u
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.26-2-amd64
ln: creating symbolic link `/tmp/mkinitramfs_i1KKQH//usr/share/java/^^': File exists
mkdir: cannot create directory `/tmp/mkinitramfs_i1KKQH//usr/share/java/^^': File exists
ln: creating symbolic link `/tmp/mkinitramfs_i1KKQH//usr/share/java/^^': File exists
mkdir: cannot create directory `/tmp/mkinitramfs_i1KKQH//usr/share/java/^^': File exists
ln: creating symbolic link `/tmp/mkinitramfs_i1KKQH//usr/share/java/^^': File exists
mkdir: cannot create directory `/tmp/mkinitramfs_i1KKQH//usr/share/java/^^': File exists
ln: creating symbolic link `/tmp/mkinitramfs_i1KKQH//usr/share/java/^^': File exists
mkdir: cannot create directory `/tmp/mkinitramfs_i1KKQH//usr/share/java/^^': File exists
E: /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/mdadm failed with return 1.
update-initramfs: failed for /boot/initrd.img-2.6.26-2-amd64

So I started investigating the above directory and made some interesting findings - the directory does indeed exist but can not be deleted by running rm -rf:

Debian-50-lenny-64-LAMP:/tmp/mkinitramfs_i1KKQH/usr/share# rm -rf /tmp/mkinitramfs_i1KKQH//usr/share/java/
rm: cannot remove `/tmp/mkinitramfs_i1KKQH//usr/share/java': Directory not empty
Debian-50-lenny-64-LAMP:/tmp/mkinitramfs_i1KKQH/usr/share# 

And further when changing into the given directory and running ls I get:

Debian-50-lenny-64-LAMP:/tmp/mkinitramfs_i1KKQH/usr/share/java# ls
ls: reading directory .: No such file or directory

I am not really sure where to go from here - needless to say I am logged in as root.

Everytime the command gets executed a new temp folder in the form of mkinitramfs_<randomstring>is created - so it seems unlikely that it is a disc corruption problem in my eyes as I am not running into this problem anywhere else on my system.

Thanks.

Answer 1

You should run update-initramfs -u -k all every time you change kernel, so you may do it while upgrading to squeeze. But since this is not working correctly, you may just upgrade to squeeze keeping the same kernel you currently run. Just put it on hold via apititude or dpkg --set-selections and upgrade. Holding the kernel will also prevent upgrading of other packages, like the initramfs tool.

Once you will be running the upgraded system, you will have the new update-initramfs tool, and you may try again to upgrade your kernel.