[CentOS] a peculiar LVM failure on CentOS 6 run as a VMware 5.5 guest

[Boris Epstein]

Hello Leonard,

Thank you very much for your response.

While it most likely is related the problem description provided at the
link seems a bit vague, and tips on how to resolve the issue seem to be
even more so.

I have done some research and in the process stumbled upon this:

http://linoxide.com/linux-how-to/fixing-broken-initrd-image-linux/

The discussion there circled around using mkinitrd (as opposed to dracut
which in my case did not help).

So, while mounted off a Centos DVD ISO I chroot'ed into the root of my
installation on the disk and then ran the following:

mkinitrd /boot/initramfs-2.6.32-573.3.1.el6.x86_64.img 2.6.32-573.3.1

I saved the original content of
/boot/initramfs-2.6.32-573.3.1.el6.x86_64.img too. So now the problem is
resolved, and it is reproducible - it boots with the one I generated but
not with the original one which was the one that got there as a result of
an update.

I have not been able to see what the issue was with the original image.

Cheers,

Boris.


On Wed, Aug 26, 2015 at 9:47 AM, Leonard den Ottolander <
leonard at den.ottolander.nl> wrote:

> Hello Boris,
>
> On Tue, 2015-08-25 at 15:59 -0400, Boris Epstein wrote:
> > We have a Centos 6 VM (64 bit) running on a VMware vSphere 5.5 server. It
> > was running just fine until one day I decided to reboot it and it just
> > would not boot up. Effectively, dracut failed to initialize the LVM, much
> > like under the scenario described here:
> >
> >
> http://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/207593/how-to-make-lvms-at-available-boot-kernel-panic-dracut-cannot-find-logical-vo#
> >
>
> Perhaps this is related?
> https://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2015-1615.html
>
> Prior to this update, using the lvm utility when the persistent cache
> file was
> outdated caused devices that were stored in the persistent cache to
> unintentionally bypass logical volume manager (LVM) filters set in the
> LVM
> configuration. As a consequence, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization hosts
> in some
> cases failed to start with an outdated cache file. This update fixes
> LVM's
> internal cache handling so that the filters are applied properly, and
> the
> described problem no longer occurs. (BZ#1248032)
>
> Try updating LVM to the latest version and see if it helps.
>
> Regards,
> Leonard.
>
> --
> mount -t life -o ro /dev/dna /genetic/research
>
>
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