[CentOS] 8.2.2004 Latest yum update renders machine unbootable

Sat Aug 1 09:54:53 UTC 2020
Alessandro Baggi <alessandro.baggi at gmail.com>

Hi Johnny,
thank you very much for clarification.

You said that in the centos infrastructure only one server got the problem.
What are the conditions that permit the breakage? There is a particular
configuration (hw/sw) case that match always the problem or it is random?

Thank you

Il Sab 1 Ago 2020, 05:20 Johnny Hughes <johnny at centos.org> ha scritto:

> On 7/31/20 11:24 AM, Alessandro Baggi wrote:
> >
> > Il 31/07/20 13:08, ja ha scritto:
> >> On Fri, 2020-07-31 at 22:35 +1200, Alan McRae via CentOS wrote:
> >>> I am running an Intel x64 machine using UEFI to boot an SSD.
> >>>
> >>> Installing the latest yum update which includes grub2 and kernel
> >>> 4.18.0-193.14.2.el8_2.x86_64 renders the machine unbootable, blank
> >>> screen where grub should be, no error messages, just hangs.
> >>>
> >>> After some hours I managed to modify another bootable partition
> >>> (containing older software) and boot it from there.
> >>>
> >>> After that, I  found out it is a known problem.
> >>>
> >>> The main point of this message is to make people aware of the problem
> >>> and suggest admins don't run 'yum update' until they understand the
> >>> problem and have a fix at hand.
> >>>
> >>> See 'UEFI boot blank screen post update' for a solution and directions
> >>> to the redhat article.
> >>>
> >>> Regards
> >>>
> >>> Alan
> >>>
> >> I have been punished by this bug - it is/was very nasty.
> >>
> > Me too. Luckily it happened on a test machine.
> >
> > Sorry but seems that those packages were not tested before pushing them
> > in the update repo. Would be great to know what happened to the
> > mainstream chains and how a package like grub reached the update repo
> > when it has serious problem (genuine curiosity but not to blame them).
>
> Of course it was tested before it was pushed. Obviously this is not a
> problem with every install.  Surely you don't think we push items
> without doing any testing.  Certainly not items as important as this
> update.
>
>  The CentOS infrastructure has hundreds of servers, most of them were
> not impacted (as an example). In fact, we seem to have had this happen
> on only one machine in those hundreds so far.  It is a problem, obviously.
>
> The issue seems to be with the shim package (not the grub or kernel
> packages) and we are currently working with Red Hat on a fix.  This
> issue happened in many Linux OSes and even Windows, not just RHEL and
> CentOS.
>
> We will push a fix as soon as one is available.
>
> I would hold off on installing this until we release the new fixes.
>
> >
> > In my case, the restore procedure reported by RH in case of reboot does
> > not work and reports that the packages are already at the lowest version
> > and that the downgrade is not possibile. I don't know why.
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> CentOS mailing list
> CentOS at centos.org
> https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
>