CentOS 7 1708 Won’t Boot After Grub2 Update

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Hi all,

This is the third fresh install of CentOS 7 1708 the last two months that won’t boot after a regular “yum update” just after the fresh install has finished.

I’ve never had this problem before, it has just worked. The installs are on OEM’s that have previously run CentOS 6.9 x64.

Am I missing something here?

12 thoughts on - CentOS 7 1708 Won’t Boot After Grub2 Update

  • Not nearly enough details given. . . What disk controller? `lspci`
    Legacy BIOS or UEFI?
    What disk layout? `lsblk`
    What storage driver? `lsmod`
    BTW, anyone have a good method for finding driver for a given disk(/dev/sdX)?

  • that

    So, guessing this isn’t a common problem then?
    Details below, please let me know if more or other info is needed.

    00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation C600/X79 series chipset 6-Port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 06)

    Legacy.

    NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
    sda 8:0 0 931.5G 0 disk

  • Define “won’t boot”. Does it stop:

    1. Before the GRUB2 screen?
    2. Between the GRUB2 screen and root device mount?
    3. After root device mount but before entering runlevel 5?
    4. Something else?

    Maybe post a screenshot to imgur.

    You’re a computer person. This means people come to you with problems they want you to solve. I know this because it is a law of the universe; Q.E.D.

    Is “won’t boot” the sort of report you’d like to receive from those depending on you for support? Give us the sort of problem report you’d most dearly love to receive from your users.

  • Not really sure. A few times the screen just went black after the grub menu, a few times it stuck waiting on Plymouth to quit.

    As for a screenshoot, I’ll see if I can find another unused box to try reproducing this on. Don’t want to mess up this particular machine.


    //Sorin

  • This sounds like some kind of graphics card issue .. if you see any text that says ‘booting CentOS’ or a line at the bottom or the ‘7’ grey boot screen, you are past the Grub2 stage.

    Are these machines running X windows and a Desktop Environment.

    If I had to guess, this is an AMD graphics issue .. or possibly another brand of card.

  • 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation C600/X79 series chipset 6-Port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 06)

    While I don’t have experience with this exact controller, I have seen some LSI controllers get removed from RHEL post GA which causes similar issues.
    “It worked when I installed, but after `yum update` my box doesn’t boot.”
    These are typically detailed in release notes. . . We ALL read ALL release notes? Right?

  • Thanks for the feedback.

    No gray 7-boot screen. Might be a graphics issue, the card is a Nvidia 1060 with no particular drivers loaded except for the default Nouveau package. What’s weird is that I can’t even get a CLI login screen with ctrl-alt-Fx at this point.

    Will continue trouble-shooting and see if I can resolve this properly.

    //Sorin

  • Edit the grub line to boot into single user and remove “rhgb” and
    “quiet” so you can see all the messages. See where it stops.

    I’ve seen issues recently with Intel chipset and RAID – a couple of my machines have paused for a very long time after booting and before presenting login screens/prompts. It looks as if checking the array after a non-clean shutdown is sucking so much CPU time that nothing else happens. (The secondary issue is why it’s shutting down without marking the array as clean!)

    P.