CentOS 7.3

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Hello,

I wonder if you could help.

I have a requirement to load CentOS 7.3 on to a server. I have the distribution on a bootable USB key.

CentOS boots to the first menu but when I select the option to install almost immediately I get the error below:

NMI watchdog: BUG: soft lockup – CPU#82 stuck for 23s! [system-udevd:1221]

The above error is output every 23s

This is a repeatable error condition.

When I load CentOS 7.4 on to the server I get no problems.

When I load the above CentOS 7.3 distribution on to an older server I get no problems.

Has anyone every seen the NMI watchdog error and found a resolution.

Thank you in advance,

Mark

8 thoughts on - CentOS 7.3

  • What kind of server? This is a hardware issue and is going to need to know what kind of CPU and what the firmware on the system is. My uninformed guess is that the kernel is finding a large number of CPUs (either virtual or real) and it is probably only fixed by the kernel/software in 7.4. [A
    test would be to see if 7.2 also has this issue and if not then walk through the kernels until it does.. then look at the change logs for when it starts working again.]

    Or I would try installing with a smaller number of CPUs with a command line entry like

    maxcpus (if this system has 82+?)

  • Is this an AMD system? I remember such a message somehow but don’t know where I saw it.

    Can it be that the system is newer than what was supported with CentOS 7.3?

    Regards, Simon

  • I know this comes up on the list quite often, but if you want security updates for 7.3, you’re going to end up with 7.9 + patches, so why are you making your life difficult and installing such an old release?

    If a vendor is telling you that you have to run a particular version, perhaps you should consider finding another vendor, the baseline 7.3
    has a lot of glaring vulnerabilities in it that are readily exploitable.

  • At 11:47 AM 3/18/2021, you wrote:

    One reason might be that somewhere between 7.3 and 7.9, CentOS ceased being bootable on Apple hardware. At least that failure occurred for me on two machines.

    David

  • But he was talking about a server, something that Apple doesn’t have for a long time now.

    Simon

  • At 02:03 PM 3/18/2021, you wrote:

    Simon:
    I am talking about installing CentOS on a MacMini, and a MacPro. Ubuntu works, CentOS fails.

  • Hello, I have solved the problem but I don’t know why it now works. If I boot the 7.3 USB Key, go to troubleshoot then select installation with basic graphics it all works. I can then boot the system disk and set up the full graphics. As an experiment I tried both 7.2 and 7.4. The above rules apply to 7.2. With 7.4 it works with no problems. To tidy up the boot process ‘irqpoll’ needs to be included in the boot command line/grub. Thank you for all your suggestions. Mark