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Kernel panic Issue / how to upgrade kernel [message #40603]

Sat, 04 September 2010 23:54

canfone
Messages: 9
Registered: December 2008

Junior Member

We noticed an issue recently where a few of our hardware node openvz servers would mysteriously crash and require a reboot.

The message on the monitor was a kernel panic. At first we shrugged it off as a freak incident (one of the servers was running for more than a year without being rebooted). And then it kept occurring and only on servers that we have running the specific kernel (this is an old kernel):

2.6.18-92.1.13.el5.028stab059.6

We have now updated to the latest kernel

2.6.18-194.8.1.el5.028stab070.4

Here is a how to guide for anyone out there that needs to upgrade:

1) check the current version of the kernel you are running to see if you need to upgrade:

#uname -a

2) check for the latest stable version available from here:
http://wiki.openvz.org/Download/kernel#Stable

for RHEL5 (CentOs 5), the current latest stable version is:
http://wiki.openvz.org/Download/kernel/rhel5/028stab070.4
(which links to the rpm)

3) we wget the rpm (note the version I am showing here for demonstration purposes only is 64-bit version, if you are running 32-bit then you should install the 32-bit)

#cd /usr
#wget http://download.openvz.org/kernel/branches/rhel5-2.6.18/028s tab070.4/ovzkernel-2.6.18-194.8.1.el5.028stab070.4.x86_64.rp m

4) now let's backup the grub.conf just in case:
#cp /boot/grub/grub.conf /boot/grub/grub.bkp

5) now we update the kernel with
rpm -ivh 2.6.18-194.8.1.el5.028stab070.4.x86_64.rpm

6) now check the /boot/grub/grub.conf with vi or nano
and update the name of the latest kernel to Openvz New.
e.g.: title Openvz new (2.6.18-194.8.1.el5.028stab070.4)

7) now we reboot the server (you can stop the running VE's first if desired)

#reboot

Cool