failed yum update, new kernel won't boot

[Chris Murphy]

On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 10:28 PM, Fred Smith
<fredex at fcshome.stoneham.ma.us> wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 09:36:48PM -0700, Chris Murphy wrote:
>> On Wed, Jan 21, 2015 at 6:12 PM, Fred Smith
>> <fredex at fcshome.stoneham.ma.us> wrote:
>> > I tried "yum reinstall" for all the kernel bits of the latest (non-
>> > working) kernel, and it said "not available" for all but (I think
>> > it was) headers. What does "not available" mean here? I mean, it had
>> > just downloaded for installation a little while before, they've
>> > disappeared in the meantime?
>>
>> It might be helpful to include the exact actual error message. Pretty
>
> It's a little hard to get without writing down by hand, unless there's
> a way I don't know of to get panic dumps written out to a network
> drive.
>
> there isn't really any distinct error message, just a panic dump
> full of hexadecimal numbers.

OK I quoted you above where you said "not available" in reference to
doing yum reinstall. That should not produce a kernel panic and you
didn't previously report that yum reinstall caused a kernel panic; you
said booting caused a kernel panic. I'm not asking about the kernel
panic, I'm asking about the yum reinstall error. You can tell I'm
asking about the yum reinstall error because of what I quoted. So
don't change contexts to the kernel panic when I didn't ask about the
kernel panic.

For yum reinstall errors, you can capture this from your terminal
application using good old copy-paste.

If you want to capture the kernel panic, you can take a cell phone
photo and post that somewhere. But I don't need that because it's not
particularly relevant. The kernel package is almost certainly OK
because it's been in stable for nearly a month. So I'd focus on making
sure the filesystem is clean, the bad kernel is deleted first, and
then you install it (not reinstall). If there's still a kernel panic,
then by all means take a photo of the output, that's much easier than
hand copying it and less prone to errors.


>> If it fails on boot again, then you'll need to get more info from the
>> failed boot if you want to use this kernel. Editing that kernel's grub
>> menu entry, and removing boot parameters 'rhgb quiet' should help
>> expose what the problem is. If not, then it gets a bit more involved.
>
> F19 uses grub2, I think? I gotta admit I don't know how to edit a grub2
> configuration. I simply know it's completely different.

It's pretty much the same as grub legacy in this regard. You press e
and you'll get an edit screen, and you can edit the entry. Scroll down
to the linux16 line, follow to the end, and remove 'rhgb quiet' and
then either control-x or Function-10 to boot.

-- 
Chris Murphy