Dracut Shell, updated kernel without RAID card

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nate@nordicpc.com
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Joined: 2023/06/07 00:40:02

Dracut Shell, updated kernel without RAID card

Post by nate@nordicpc.com » 2023/06/07 00:48:37

Please feel free to redirect if you have a similar solution. I did find one post about a kernel update breaking RAID cards, but this one might be unique, and I honestly didn't see a solution over in that thread anyway.

Here's the deal. We had a RAID card die in a working CentOS 7 box around Christmas. It's Avago MegaRAID, SuperMicro branded. Worked like a charm, no special software. It was running a simple RAID1 mirror, so rather than stop everything, we just hooked up that SSD to a SATA port on the main board and booted back up. It took a while to get a replacement, but we have one now and this server will only boot kernels installed while that card was in the system. There were some updates to the kernel in the meantime and I guess yum decided to remove the MegaRAID driver from dracut since it wasn't present at the time of installation.

I can boot kernels installed before the card died. I can boot rescue. I cannot boot the newest ones.

I'm thinking about just booting an old one and trying to reinstall the kernel patch but haven't gotten there yet and had to take a break for dinner. I can say, with absolute confidence, that "cp <working initfs image> <not working initfs image>" definitely did not work, lol.

Thanks for your input in advance!

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TrevorH
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Re: Dracut Shell, updated kernel without RAID card

Post by TrevorH » 2023/06/07 12:59:34

You just need to have the card installed and then either rebuild the initramfs for the latest kernel or yum reinstall it (though to do that I think you have to be running one of the other kernels as I don't think it lets you reinstall the running one). So either

dracut -f --kver=$(uname -r)
(rebuild the initramfs for the running kernel)

or

boot an older one then
yum reinstall kernel-3.10.0-1160.90.1.el7.x86_64

In both cases a reboot is required for it to take effect.
The future appears to be RHEL or Debian. I think I'm going Debian.
Info for USB installs on http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
CentOS 5 and 6 are deadest, do not use them.
Use the FAQ Luke

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