RHEL 6.3 questions...

iuKeeler · #1 10th July 2012, 10:55 PM

I'm a fairly new to the world of System Administration, and I was hoping I might find some help here to begin to better understand what is going on with my Red Hat 6.3 Server. Is this the appropriate place to discuss a Kernel Panic issue with RHEL 6.3?

Thanks

***Dan*** · #2 10th July 2012, 10:58 PM

Not really. That appropriate place would be with your paid Redhat support team that came with the license. That being said, I suspect there are some folks around here who may be able to help.

iuKeeler · #3 10th July 2012, 11:01 PM

I am waiting for my "Organizational Administrator" to set me up with a RedHat support account before I can go that route and rather than waiting for the red tape to clear I was hoping to get a head start on the issue here. Wasn't sure if asking this would be ok, but I guess I got my answer.

Sorry

***Dan*** · #4 10th July 2012, 11:04 PM

Don't get me wrong here. I'm not reading you the riot act. You are welcome to ask. But, as I said above, the most appropriate place would be with Redhat. There are still likely some folks here who can help. Just be a bit patient.

Moved to Linux Chat.

iuKeeler · #5 10th July 2012, 11:09 PM

Thanks, Dan. I am having a kernel panic issue. When I attempt to boot up I get the following error message:

Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!
Pid: 1, comm: init Not tainted 2.6.32-279.el6.x86_64 #1
[then I get a call trace which I can add if you would like...]

I have been researching various Kernel Panics via google but none seem to be helping me.

smr54 · #6 11th July 2012, 12:19 AM

Actually, the first thing I would try would be to change the UUID in /etc/grub.conf (by booting with some liveCD) and changing it to the device holding root--that is instead of root=<long_number> try changing it to root=/dev/sda2 (or whatever partition its on).

There's other things, trying to boot into single user mode, and so on, but if you have RH support, you are probably better off waiting for them. (Unless it's a Dell server, in which case, you might just call Dell with the service tag and they might be able to help. Other hardware vendors are similar, but with us, it's either Dell or no name.

iuKeeler · #7 11th July 2012, 12:31 AM

It is a Dell, and I'm hoping I can get access to RedHat's Support people in the next couple of days.

I've tried booting into single user mode and emergency mode and in both cases I get the above error. I'll try the Linux Rescue utility on the CD and see if I can learn anything from the /etc/grub.conf file. I had seem some "advice" on how to approach this from various other forums but all of these were talking about the /boot/grub.conf, and I wasn't sure if the effects would be the same.

smr54 · #8 11th July 2012, 02:41 AM

I would say call Dell with the service tag--you shouldn't need any authorizing from anyone to get that, but that will also depend upon what sort of support was purchased with the server. It will always depend upon who you get. It may be someone clueless, or it might be someone who knows exactly what to do.

It might be a corrupt file system with no other choice but to re-install from backup--kernel panics are not good. Did you just update? Today, I updated a CentOS 6.2, with the 6.3 stuff. Doing it a bit at a time proved to be a good idea, as it turned out the update broke a few things--none of which I've seen mentioned anywhere else, so this might have been a Just Me experience. (This is a personal machine at home, so there was no panic involved).

Hopefully, there are backups. If this happened after an update, it's quite possible that RH has come across the problem already and may have a solution--I hear wildly differing versions of whether RH support is good or bad.

iuKeeler · #9 11th July 2012, 04:49 AM

I have a primary and a backup server, and fortunately this only happened on the backup. I ran my daily 'yum update' about a week ago when this incident occurred, and I have been researching to better understand the issue ever since. I cannot understand why this only occurred on the backup and not the primary, as I was treating both identically. Makes me think it was a hardware issue...

After speaking with Red Hat if the issue isn't resolved I'll contact Dell. I was just hoping to be able to resolve this, and learn something neat in the process. Hopefully this is just a software issue that I can learn from.

smr54 · #10 11th July 2012, 01:43 PM

Just to be clear (I think you realized this, but in case not) Dell usually offers software support for RH installs with their servers. That's why I suggested calling them, since their people will help as long as you give them a service tag number.

iuKeeler · #11 12th July 2012, 03:18 PM

Well, I contacted Dell, but it appears that the powers that be have chosen not purchase the Dell Software support since we have Red Hat Support. Dell is unable to help, however I just received my Red Hat Account this morning... so, now I get down to the nitty-gritty!. Thanks for your advice. Perhaps I'll be back again some time.