Hi Emanuel Thanks for that link. It's OK - I'm not hosting websites on my CentOS 6 box! There are a number of reasons why I've been terrified of trying to upgrade this box up to now - and the experience of the last fortnight has tended to confirm most of my existing fears and add a few more besides. I'm just glad that I decided to take a clone of the hard disk before starting the upgrade.
If the grub guys have just arbitrarily decided not to support kernel v2, then it was probably a bit high-handed of them. Red Hat/CentOS/Scientific Linux/Oracle version 6 was the last version before systemd'struction, and I suspect that there may be quite a lot of boxes around still running it. On Sun, 2022-02-13 at 23:09 +0100, Emanuel Loos via Dng wrote: > Hello Peter, > > looks like someone else is experiencing the same issue (though there > where no answers yet): > > https://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-kernel-70/gnu-grub-version-2-04-you-need-to-load-the-kernel-first-4175707760/ > > I don't see version 2 of the Linux kernel listed on https://kernel.org/ > so if you are hosting websites there how is this secure? If you want a > stable kernel, how about a longterm version? How about configuring and > compiling it yourself so it matches your needs best? > > By the way: They are GNU/Linux or GNU+Linux distributions, Devuan calls > itself a GNU+Linux distribution, Debbian calls itself a GNU/Linux > distribution. They are all based on the GNU operating system with the > Linux kernel. > > The GNU Project, developing an operating system that's completely free > software (as in freedom, not free beer), was the start of the free > software movement, long before Open Source existed, but it doesn't get > acknowledged that much since companies are okay with the idea of Open > Source (viewing releasing the source code as a good idea sometimes, > because it is more profitable), but really don't like the idea of free > software (viewing the freedom of computer users as a must and not > granting the four essential freedoms of free software when releasing > software as something unethical which does harm to society). > > Kind Regards > > Emanuel Loos > > On 2/13/22 10:05 PM, Peter Duffy wrote: > > I've got an old box running CentOS 6.2 and Windows 7. Without going into > > details, this box is vital and I use it every day. Finally I decided > > that I had to bite the bullet and upgrade the linux system, and I > > decided to go for chimaera. > > > > Built a new box from scratch and cloned all the disks, using dd, to > > fresh HDDs (there are several big data disks in the box). Made another > > clone of the first disk just for safety's sake, then installed chimaera > > on free space on the first disk - successful; chimaera and windows 7 > > both booted fine. But CentOS 6.2 wouldn't boot - sometimes automatic > > reboot, sometimes blank screen and hung box. > > > > Switched back to the latest clone disk, which fortunately booted > > successfully, made a fresh clone of the working disk, then tried again: > > this time, installed beowulf. Install was successful - and this time > > devuan, windows 7 and CentOS 6.2 all booted successfully. > > > > Took another safety clone of the first disk (I'm beginning to wonder if > > I've exhausted the world's stock of 2T HDDs) and then upgraded beowulf > > to chimaera. Upgrade successful. Again, the CentOS 6.2 system wouldn't > > boot. > > > > CentOS 6.2 uses kernel 2.6 - it's possible to upgrade to a later one, > > but this is frowned upon. I suppose it's based on RedHat and > > derivatives' policy of setting a base version per distro and then > > retrofitting updates. (I did once try upgrading to a v4 kernel, and the > > system became completely unstable.) > > > > Removed the primary disk, put in the clone with beowulf installed, and > > verified that all was still working. Then put the disk with chimaera in > > another box with identical hardware, and started digging into the > > problem. Grub on chimaera = 2.04-20; on beowulf = 2.02+dfsg1-20 > > +deb10u4. Booted into chimaera and downloaded the packages for the > > beowulf grub release (grub2, grub2-common, grub-common, grub-pc, and > > grub-pc-bin), and used them to downgrade grub on the chimaera system - > > successful. Rebooted - CentOS 6.2 now boots. Tried going into the grub > > command line environment on each box, and using the "linux" command to > > load the 2.6 kernel image: result was in grub 2.02, it works fine, and > > in 2.04, the box reboots at that point. > > > > So current conclusion is that something has happened between grub 2.02 > > and 2.04 which prevents the latter from loading linux v2 kernels. The > > challenge now is to find out what, and if it's possible to work around > > it in grub 2.04. (I should say that I originally assumed that the > > problem was down to moving a disk (or a clone of it) from a non-UEFI > > environment to a UEFI one - but setting everything in the firmware to > > "legacy only" didn't have any effect.) > > > > Just wondered if anyone had any thoughts and comments (other than why > > the hell am I still running CentOS 6.2 on this box), before I start > > rummaging through the grub changelogs. Apologies for the length of this > > and also if I've missed something obvious. The above is a heavily > > boiled-down summary of about a fortnight of stress and lost sleep. > > > > _______________________________________________ > > Dng mailing list > > Dng@lists.dyne.org > > https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng > _______________________________________________ > Dng mailing list > Dng@lists.dyne.org > https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng _______________________________________________ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
