kernel upgrade issues - initramf not updating
I have been trying to update kernel which is about 10 versions behind the current. I downloaded all the kernel patches onto a cdrom as my RHEL 6.7 server is a stand-alone and not connected to the internet. I used yum update kernel-.rpm and reboot and get kernel panic - not syncing: VFS: Unable to mount root partition error when it tries to boot to the new kernel. Ok, so I booted to the pervious version, typed yum reinstall kernel-.rpm and reboot. Same error. I get back into in in the pervious kernel version and type: yum remove kernel-.rpm and get: kernel-.rpm is not installed. Type rpm -q kernel and I can see it listed, but I can't uninstall it. So, I checked the initramf file in /boot and the only when there is the initramf-.img. So in the /boot/grub/grub.conf file the new kernel has no initrd /initramf-.img. After researching I discover that I can manually build the correct initramf file in /boot to solve this problem by running: dracut -f -v. Now when I run dracut I get an error: failed to install /lib/libsoftokn3.so. What is this? Also, since I am performing the kernel updates manually do I need to install just the kernel-.rpm patch or kernel-headers-.rpm, kernel-devel-.rpm, etc.?
Thanks
Responses
The only dependency for kernel package is kernel-firmware with at-least minimal installation. If you've installed kernel-devel and kernel-headers packages and wish to keep these packages in sync with latest kernel then you may need to update these as well.
As you checked, after successful kernel upgrade need to verify if respective initrd/initramfs files gets created under /boot directory and respective boot stanza in /boot/grub/grub.conf (grub.cfg) files. If there are any third-party modules then need to re-create initramfs with modules which are required at the time of booting.
Check out the article/steps that Akemi has suggested which I feel ideal at this moment.
When I checked for this library on my virtual machine I could see that it belong to "nss-softokn" package:
[root@ftp-server ~]# yum provides libsoftokn3.so
nss-softokn-3.14.3-23.3.el6_8.i686 : Network Security Services Softoken Module
Repo : server
Matched from:
Other : libsoftokn3.so
If the above steps doesn't help then you would need to manually cleanup the installed new kernel and re-install it (also make sure to create necessary files under /boot for the new kernel).
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