Upgrade to 3.8.8-100: now boot loops ! solved: grub2 bug.

[Matthew Saltzman]

On Thu, 2013-05-02 at 22:31 -0400, sean darcy wrote: 
> On 05/02/2013 03:07 PM, Matthew Saltzman wrote:
> > On Thu, 2013-05-02 at 13:17 -0400, sean darcy wrote:
> >> On 04/30/2013 02:05 PM, Joe Zeff wrote:
> >>> On 04/30/2013 10:14 AM, Reindl Harald wrote:
> >>>> * make sure "installonly_limit" in "/etc/yum.conf" is high enough to not
> >>>>     remove the 3.7.x
> >>>
> >>> If you really want to be safe:
> >>>
> >>> yum remove kernel
> >>>
> >>> will remove all installed kernels *except* for the one you're currently
> >>> using.  (That is, yum won't allow you to leave yourself without a kernel
> >>> for the next time you boot.)  You probably don't need to be this
> >>> heavy-handed, but you never know when something like this might come in
> >>> handy.
> >>
> >> I did that. Ran yum update. Same problem.
> >>
> >> But I figured it out. I've been planning to upgrade to F18 when I have
> >> the courage. I've run fedup. But then when I upgrade to a new F17,
> >> grub2, in it's infinite wisdom, places all the upgrade stuff from a
> >> fedup boot to the command line of the new F17 kernel.
> >>
> >> Only way to fix is to go edit grub.cfg itself. And you need to keep
> >> doing it with every kernel upgrade. Sigh.
> >
> > GRUB2 works more like LILO than like old GRUB, in that there is a
> > configuration file to edit and an installation procedure to get the boot
> > process to use the updated configuration.
> >
> > The file to edit is /etc/default/grub.  The installation command is
> >
> >          grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
> >
> > That command runs some scripts that create /boot/grub2/grub.cfg,
> > which--as you've discovered--you should never edit.
> >
> > /etc/default/grub is a set of shell variable definitions.  The one you
> > want to edit is GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX, which contains a template for the
> > kernel command line arguments.  Once this is fixed, the kernel update
> > process should work correctly.
> >
> > If have trouble figuring out what to fix, post the contents of
> > your /etc/default/grub here.
> >
> > If you are annoyed by the "missing font file" error message when grub2
> > starts, add the line
> >
> >          LANG=C
> >
> > to the top of that file.
> >
> >
> >>
> >> sean
> >>
> >>
> >
> 
> You miss the point. /etc/default/grub was never changed, and CMDLINE is 
> the same as always:
> GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="rd.md=0 rd.lvm=0 rd.dm=0 SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 
> KEYTABLE=us rd.luks=0 LANG=en_US.UTF-8"

Sorry, the point wasn't clear, as you only referenced editing grub.cfg.

> 
> Nonetheless, grub2 is putting all the upgrade stuff in the command line. 
> That's the error.

The scripts that are run by grub2-mkconfig reside in /etc/grub.d.  Is
there anything in that directory related to running the update?

Fedup apparently involves some systemd services.  Are some enabled that
should be turned off?

> 
> sean
> 
> 
> 

-- 
Matthew Saltzman
Clemson University Math Sciences
mjs AT clemson DOT edu