[CentOS] Yum upgrade to 4.4 problem

> Excuse me, sure looked like a Yum upgrade to 4.4 problem to me.

Looks can be deceiving. You said yum completes successfully. This is
not the same as others where yum appears to lock up on them and never
completes during the update. (FWIW, yum update yum, THEN running yum
update worked fine for me) Your issue is a kernel panic on reboot.
This is an entirely separate animal not related to yum, but instead
related to the new software you installed. You did hijack the thread,
though not intentionally.