I just upgraded a HP DL385 G2 from a 2.6.x kernel to the latest Debian 3.2.0-4 kernel, and now when it boots I just get this dumped to the serial port:

123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmno pqrstuvwxyz{|}

(eg the ascii character set)

The server is locked away in a data centre so I'm using serial console and can easily reboot into the previous kernel and it all works fine but I'd really like to get the upgrade done inside the maintenance window. Any suggestions? I've used the same Debian kernel on lots of other servers without a problem. I assume there is some kernel command line option I need to pass to get it going... I'm not sure if dumping the ascii character set is a symptom of a problem or a specific cry for help...

Problem solved. The ascii crap was unrelated and still happens. The problem was that the initramfs hadn't generated properly, for reasons unknown. It was about 2mb when the other initramfs's were closer to 8mb. After regenerating the initramfs, tracking down the proper firmware for the network card, and converting the bridge config to openvswitch, it's all working properly again. James