[CentOS] CentOS 6.4 kernel panic on boot after upgrading kernel to 2.6.32-431.29.2

Thu Oct 16 08:54:44 UTC 2014
Joakim Ziegler <joakim at terminalmx.com>

On 15/10/14, 8:22, Lamar Owen wrote:
> First question:  can you boot with the old kernel still (by default CentOS 6
> leaves a few old kernels around; I want to say the default is 3, but it might be
> 5, I don't recall, and I don't have a straight default C6 install to check
> against right at the moment)?

> Next question: did you also update the updated kernel-firmware package for the
> updated kernel?

> The first thing I would do is downgrade the kernel and make sure the system is
> working there; you then will need to very carefully check all your hardware
> components together that the kernel update should be ok. You mention GPU's;
> which drivers are you using there? Iterate over all hardware.

> Now, I'm going to sound like a broken record here.  If you absolutely positively
> must stay at a point release for whatever reason (and there are valid reasons
> for this), then you don't need to be running CentOS; it is simply not
> supported.  You either need to pay up for RHEL6 with EUS, or you need to install
> ScientificLinux 6 (built from the same sources that CentOS is built from, with a
> different rebranding); the SL team does support getting only critical updates
> but staying on a particular point release.

Upgrading to 6.5 did fix the problem, and did not (so far) seem to break my 
proprietary software.

For reference, I had already updated the kernel-firmware package (that happened 
automatically), and I could still boot the old kernel, which was how I got 
around to upgrading to 6.5.

More than anything, it's a little annoying that this is such an easy mistake to 
make, and so hard (it seems) to debug. But well, I won't be making it again.

-- 
Joakim Ziegler  -  Supervisor de postproducción  -  Terminal
joakim at terminalmx.com   -   044 55 2971 8514   -   5264 0864