kernel problem during upgrade from 24.1 on Dell PowerEdge 610

[ChrisC]

I just tried to upgrade from 24.1.10_8 to 24.7 and had a bit of a problem.
I started the upgrade via SSH and left it to reboot.
After a while it didn't come back, so I went to have a look locally, and it had rebooted and got to the boot screen.
It had an error saying "can't boot kernel".
Typing "boot" of course yielded the same error.

I pressed CTRL+ALT+DEL and got back to the main boot screen, and on the kernel option (6 i think), there was an option of another kernel.
I booted using that instead of "default", and it tried to carry on with the upgrade.
Because of a version conflict, it said the upgrade aborted.
It completed booting fine and I was back at version 24.1 again.

I tried an upgrade from the console again, and this time it was successful, although there were a lot of errors as it was shutting down, but they were scrolling too fast to see and I was too slow to try and record it.

Towards the end of the process, there was an error showing that md5sum could not be used with a "-q" option whatever that was supposed to do.

Everything is now back, and I am on version 24.7.1.
I've not checked everything yet, but the most of my config seems ok.
The whole process took just over an hour, and thought I would write this down in case it helps anyone.

Phew