[I saw this thread in the mailing list archives, but wasn't subscribed at the time, so sorry it's not a proper follow-up.] The symptoms you describe could be a side effect of being previously hit by <http://bugs.centos.org/view.php?id=2914> and <https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=447841>. Those bug items describe workarounds. After you get mkinitrd upgraded to that in 5.3 the problem should go away, although you may have to manually fix up the results of the bad kernel install. Devin -- You live and learn. Or you don't live long. - Robert Heinlein