Hello,
in a system running a Rocky Linux 8.9 with kernel 4.18.0-513.24.1.el8_9, I applied a kernel update (and other packages), installing latest version 4.18.0-553.27.1.el8_10.x86_64. After rebooting system with this new kernel, system doesn’t boot because it doesn’t find disks (devices).
However, if a reboot with old kernel version 4.18.0-513.24.1.el8_9, system boots perfecly.
Why?
Thanks.
On boot the bootloader (GRUB) loads a kernel (vmlinuz) and initramfs image.
The initramfs image is a filesystem in a file that contains drivers (and commands that load them).
The drivers give the kernel ability to set up enough hardware and filesystem support
in order to mount the ‘/’ (and other crucial filesystems) from the disks.
Rest of system is loaded from the disk once ‘/’ is accessible.
The initramfs image is created when kernel is installed. Only the necessary drivers are added to it.
(The installer has special initramfs with “all” drivers so it can recognize all supported hardware.
It is possible that the installation of the kernel has failed to create proper initramfs.
A question is, what went wrong?
Do you perhaps have a third-party kernel module for the disk controller?
Hi,
I think installation of newest kernel went OK… in /boot appears all files for the kernel: config, System-map, symvers, initramfs and vmlinuz and size of these files are similar to the 4.18.0-513.24.1.el8_9 kernel.
Entries in /etc/fstab are referenced by UUID.
Content in “conf” files in /boot/loader/entries are similar:
title Rocky Linux (4.18.0-513.24.1.el8_9.x86_64) 8.9 (Green Obsidian)
version 4.18.0-513.24.1.el8_9.x86_64
linux /vmlinuz-4.18.0-513.24.1.el8_9.x86_64
initrd /initramfs-4.18.0-513.24.1.el8_9.x86_64.img $tuned_initrd
options $kernelopts $tuned_params
id rocky-20240404182400-4.18.0-513.24.1.el8_9.x86_64
grub_users $grub_users
grub_arg --unrestricted
grub_class kernel
title Rocky Linux (4.18.0-553.27.1.el8_10.x86_64) 8.10 (Green Obsidian)
version 4.18.0-553.27.1.el8_10.x86_64
linux /vmlinuz-4.18.0-553.27.1.el8_10.x86_64
initrd /initramfs-4.18.0-553.27.1.el8_10.x86_64.img $tuned_initrd
options $kernelopts $tuned_params
id rocky-20241113133544-4.18.0-553.27.1.el8_10.x86_64
grub_users $grub_users
grub_arg --unrestricted
grub_class kernel
Thanks.
@druizm the mentioned kernel and the previous one do have some “fixes” that could result in some regressions. I had some problems with some attached storage. Could you try to downgrade to kernel-4.18.0-553.16.1.el8_10 and see if your system boots?
I could boot my system choosing kernel 4.18.0-513.24.1.el8_9. Installation of newest kernel 4.18.0-553.27.1.el8_10 didn’t uninstall old one, so I could boot with no problems… but I wanted to boot with newest one.
Thanks.