[CentOS] Centos 5.5, not booting latest kernel but older one instead

[Keith Roberts]

On Tue, 31 Aug 2010, kalinix wrote:

> To: CentOS mailing list <centos at centos.org>
> From: kalinix <calin.kalinix.cosma at gmail.com>
> Subject: Re: [CentOS] Centos 5.5,
>     not booting latest kernel but older one instead
> 
> On Tue, 2010-08-31 at 07:23 +0100, Keith Roberts wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 30 Aug 2010, fred smith wrote:
>>
>>> To: centos at centos.org
>>> From: fred smith <fredex at fcshome.stoneham.ma.us>
>>> Subject: [CentOS] Centos 5.5, not booting latest kernel but older one instead
>>>
>>> I've been going along not noticing things happening right under my nose.
>>> so imagine my surprise when I discovered last night that my Centos 5 box
>>> has installed multiple new kernels over the last few months, as updates
>>> come out, and IT IS NOT BOOTING THE NEWST ONE.
>>>
>>> grub.conf says to boot kernel 0, and 0 is the newest one. but the one it
>>> actually boots is 6 or 8 down the list (clearly I've not been keeping
>>> things cleaned up, either).
>>>
>>> Below is some info that shows the problem. Can anyone here provide
>>> helpful suggestions on (1) why it is doing this, and more importantly (2)
>>> how I can make it stop?
>>>
>>> Thanks!
>>>
>>> uname reports:  2.6.18-164.15.1.el5PAE #1 SMP Wed Mar 17 12:14:29 EDT 2010 i686 athlon i386 GNU/Linux
>>>
>>> while /etc/grub.conf contains:
>>
>> /etc/grub.conf ??
>>
>> don't you mean /boot/grub/grub.conf ?
>>
>
>
> Actually /etc/grub.conf should be an link to 
/boot/grub/grub.conf, so
> yes, OP correctly pasted the content of /etc/grub.conf

Yes, thanks for that.

> ls -las /etc/grub.conf
> 4 lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 22 Apr  2  2009 /etc/grub.conf
> -> ../boot/grub/grub.conf
>
> I suggest setting an higher timeout (eg 15 sec) and disable hiddenmenu.
> Then try to manually select last kernel out of the list. And oh, first
> of all, you should check whether the /boot/grub/grub.conf links
> to /etc/grub.conf :)

It is possible that grub is booting from the md0 array, and 
there may be a grub.conf on there as well, that ls did not 
find?

The /boot partition does not have to be mounted for GRUB to 
boot from it.

Maybe installing Gparted and looking at your partitions 
would give us a clue?

HTH

Keith