[Closed] RHEL 9 - single kernel option at boot

[lightman47]

Ha - spoke too soon! Apparently, now booting correct kernel - but other system mounts have changed! I've got something to keep me busy for the next day or so - pretty much done with this for today.


#####

Done with this!! \home has "disappeared" (/dev/mapper/rhel/wjoe_ {whatever home is} -
tomorrow I begin a clean re-install. I was trying to avoid that but it may now be the lesser work. Repo/software/and user installs are all scripted as are many service settings, so it's not 'end of life as we know it'; just a minor pain.

Thank you for actually identifying the problem. I don't remember commenting those mappings out. At that time I didn't 'know what I know now', so I wouldn't have done it. None-the-less, knowledge!! I love it!

jje

[jlehtone]

/dev/mapper/rhel/wjoe_*

Those are LVM LVs. Three of them: root, swap, and home. They were all on one LVM PV that was in partition /dev/nvme0n1p6

The kernel command-line and/or initramfs must activate the LV rhel_wjoe-root or else kernel could not mount the '/'.

One can look at LVM volumes with

Code: Select all

pvs
pvdisplay
vgs
vgdisplay
lvs
lvdisplay

The rhel_wjoe-home supposedly has most* of your user data -- the data that cannot be reinstalled from packages or by scripts, but has to be restored from backups.


*Data for httpd, SQL servers, etc tends to be under /var -- not strictly "user" personal data, but definitely data rather than system files.

[lightman47]

Yeh - I know about LVM / LV but absolutely nothing about working with them! Perhaps I'll poke around a bit later after the morning chores; it would be nice to not have to re-install.

I have all that data you mention. It's automatically backed up weekly (yesterday) and had completed several hours prior to my clobbering things. I had started writing a script to 'pull it back' and gotten side-tracked. It's not difficult to do manually anyway.

[TrevorH]

Since these "disappeared" just after you edited /etc/fstab I would check to make sure you didn't fat finger something in there that you didn't intend to.

[lightman47]

On a whim, I booted back into the old kernel that used to be the default (5.14.0-70.30.1.el9_0.x86_6) - it booted almost fine - complaining of low space (0 bytes) left in /boot/efi. I suspect that's the problem, but don't know for sure. Booting newer kernels seems to be where it all goes south. From that old kernel ->

sudo lsblk -o NAME,SIZE,UUID,MOUNTPOINT

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NAME                 SIZE UUID                                   MOUNTPOINT
sda                  7.3T 0abfb277-93ee-704f-d658-15195767bd0e   
└─md127              7.3T b2ea0c39-ea07-497d-b7ed-112c16f0416a   /mnt/RAID-1
sdb                  7.3T 0abfb277-93ee-704f-d658-15195767bd0e   
└─md127              7.3T b2ea0c39-ea07-497d-b7ed-112c16f0416a   /mnt/RAID-1
sr0                 1024M                                        
nvme0n1              1.8T                                        
├─nvme0n1p1          100M 8C57-1BB2                              /boot/efi
├─nvme0n1p2           16M                                        
├─nvme0n1p3        912.6G EA7072F67072C8B9                       /mnt/Win
├─nvme0n1p4          505M C4E89629E89619AE                       
├─nvme0n1p5            1G fedfb33a-2c41-4552-9640-da2106f8b40b   /boot
└─nvme0n1p6        948.8G BCkAYc-AnIr-eTNr-2eda-1MEx-iKjf-IkGmq0 
  ├─rhel_wjoe-root    70G 21cef98c-3b76-4138-95c9-35415f1279c5   /
  ├─rhel_wjoe-swap  31.5G d547fbd7-9cda-4d83-88c3-c1730c8ce529   [SWAP]
  └─rhel_wjoe-home 847.3G 26963065-4067-4b34-8fad-477d780e26b9   /home

sudo cat /etc/fstab

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#
# /etc/fstab
# Created by anaconda on Sun Nov  6 20:09:47 2022
#
# Accessible filesystems, by reference, are maintained under '/dev/disk/'.
# See man pages fstab(5), findfs(8), mount(8) and/or blkid(8) for more info.
#
# After editing this file, run 'systemctl daemon-reload' to update systemd
# units generated from this file.
#
/dev/mapper/rhel_wjoe-root /                       xfs     defaults        0 0
UUID=fedfb33a-2c41-4552-9640-da2106f8b40b /boot                   xfs     defaults        0 0
UUID=8C57-1BB2          /boot/efi               vfat    umask=0077,shortname=winnt 0 2
/dev/mapper/rhel_wjoe-home /home                   xfs     defaults        0 0
/dev/mapper/rhel_wjoe-swap none                    swap    defaults        0 0
wlinux:/mnt/4tb1/ /mnt/wlinux.4tb1 nfs defaults 0 0
wlinux:/mnt/4tb2/ /mnt/wlinux.4tb2 nfs defaults 0 0
wlinux:/mnt/4tb3/ /mnt/wlinux.4tb3 nfs defaults 0 0
wlinux:/var/www /mnt/wlinux.www nfs defaults 0 0
## UNcomment the following if the system has Windows and that drive is labeled 'Win'.
LABEL=Win /mnt/Win ntfs defaults 0 0
/dev/md/name /mnt/RAID-1 ext4 defaults 0 0

[TrevorH]

Well the good news is that LVM LVs are still there so now all you need to do is work out why they are not accessible from the newer kernels. Boot one and try to mount /home manually and see what the error is. Check using pvs/vgs/lvs to see if the LVM PV/VG/LVs are all visible. Check /var/log/messages just after the manual mount attempt - if it doesn't already tell you what went wrong - and see if there's more info there.

[lightman47]

OK after things continued to decline, I wound up wiping both OSs and starting over.

What finally 'iced the cake' was when Windows installed, then backed-out their 22H2 update. The subsequent reboots resulted in screens of gibberish. It was no longer worth my time to attempt a fix.

Thank you, though.