[bitfolk] EPEL kernel-ml boot problems - no block devices

Hi, Some time in the last 6 months the kernel-ml kernel and associated packages from EPEL (used to work under Xen on CentOS 7, 8 and later and other RHEL-like) seems to not include the module xen-blkfront in the initramfs that it creates. As a result you don't see any block devices at boot. I don't know if this is intentional. I don't exactly know how it's meant to work. I *think* that dracut is supposed to be able to work out what drivers are required for your root filesystem and include those without you having to do anything special. Whatever the case it is not doing it right now. It's easy to fix though. # lsinitrd /boot/initramfs-5.15.6-1.el7.elrepo.x86_64.img | grep xen- xen-netfront # # note: no xen-blkfront # cat > /etc/dracut.conf.d/xen.conf <<End-of-script add_drivers+=" xen-blkfront " End-of-script # dracut -f --kver "5.15.6-1.el7.elrepo.x86_64" /boot/initramfs-5.15.6-1.el7.elrepo.x86_64.img # lsinitrd /boot/initramfs-5.15.6-1.el7.elrepo.x86_64.img | grep xen- xen-netfront xen-blkfront If your VM is currently unbootable you'll need to do this from the rescue VM: user@rescue:~$ sudo -s root@rescue:/home/user# mount /dev/xvda1 /mnt root@rescue:/home/user# cd /mnt root@rescue:/mnt# mount -t proc /proc proc/ root@rescue:/mnt# mount --rbind /sys sys/ root@rescue:/mnt# mount --rbind /dev dev/ root@rescue:/mnt# chroot /mnt /bin/bash [root@rescue /]# # This is your CentOS install, proceed as above Our installer for CentOS 8 takes care of the above for you right now, but if you have a pre-existing CentOS 7 or 8 (or whatever) system using kernel-ml from EPEL then you may want to confirm that your initramfs still has xen-blkfront inside of it otherwise you will get a nasty surprise at next boot. Cheers, Andy -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting