CentOS - Oct 2014 - CentOS 6.4 kernel panic on boot after upgrading kernel to 2.6.32-431.29.2

I'm on a Supermicro server, X9DA7 motherboard, Intel C602 chipset, 2x 2.4GHz
Intel Xeon E5-2665 8-core CPU, 96GB RAM, and I'm running CentOS 6.4.

I just tried to use yum to upgrade the kernel from 2.6.32-358 to 
2.6.32-431.29.2. However, I get a kernel panic on boot. The first kernel panic I
got included stuff about acpi, so I tried adding noacpi noapic to the kernel 
boot parameters, which at least changed the kernel panic message, now I get 
(transcribed from a photo I took, so please excuse any errors):

Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init!
Pid: 1, comm: init Not tainted 2.6.32-431.29.2.el6.x86_64 #1
Call Trace:
(excluding addresses, please let me know if they're good for anything)
panic
do_exit
fput
do_group
sys_exit_group
system_call_fastpath


My grub.conf entry looks like this currently:

title CentOS (2.6.32-431.29.2.el6.x86_64)
	root (hd0,0)
	kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-431.29.2.el6.x86_64 ro 
root=UUID=ca1e1248-0a65-4b6c-9f87-0c859eab1f17 rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_LVM 
LANG=en_US.UTF-8 rd_NO_MD SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 crashkernel=auto rhgb quiet 
nomodeset rdblacklist=nouveau  KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us rd_NO_DM verbose 
selinux=0 enforcing=0 noacpi noapic nolapic nouveau.modeset=0
	initrd /boot/initramfs-2.6.32-431.29.2.el6.x86_64.img

(With all the options I added to see if it would work, including a couple from a
very similar box that runs fine with that kernel, but on CentOS 6.5.)

This box has a bunch of cards in it, including some NVidia GPUs in a PCI 
expander, another NVidia GPU for the GUI, an Areca controller, a Mellanox IB 
adapter, and some other stuff.

But, I'm pretty sure this must be something simple I'm missing. Ideas
for
figuring it out?

-- 
Joakim Ziegler  -  Supervisor de postproducci?n  -  Terminal
joakim at terminalmx.com   -   044 55 2971 8514   -   5264 0864

On Mon, Oct 13, 2014 at 10:18:54PM -0500, Joakim Ziegler
wrote:
> I'm on a Supermicro server, X9DA7 motherboard, Intel C602 chipset, 2x 
> 2.4GHz Intel Xeon E5-2665 8-core CPU, 96GB RAM, and I'm running CentOS
6.4.
> 
> I just tried to use yum to upgrade the kernel from 2.6.32-358 to 
> 2.6.32-431.29.2.
Is that a 6.4 kernel? Seems like it ought to be 6.5 from the date.
> But, I'm pretty sure this must be something simple I'm missing.
Ideas for
> figuring it out?
Yeah: don't run random combinations of rpms and then ask the mailing
list for support.

On 10/13/2014 11:18 PM, Joakim Ziegler wrote:
> I'm on a Supermicro server, X9DA7 motherboard, Intel C602 chipset, 2x 
> 2.4GHz Intel Xeon E5-2665 8-core CPU, 96GB RAM, and I'm running CentOS 
> 6.4.
>
> I just tried to use yum to upgrade the kernel from 2.6.32-358 to 
> 2.6.32-431.29.2. However, I get a kernel panic on boot. The first 
> kernel panic I got included stuff about acpi, so I tried adding noacpi 
> noapic to the kernel boot parameters, which at least changed the 
> kernel panic message, now I get (transcribed from a photo I took, so 
> please excuse any errors):
...

First question:  can you boot with the old kernel still (by default 
CentOS 6 leaves a few old kernels around; I want to say the default is 
3, but it might be 5, I don't recall, and I don't have a straight 
default C6 install to check against right at the moment)?

Next question: did you also update the updated kernel-firmware package 
for the updated kernel?

The first thing I would do is downgrade the kernel and make sure the 
system is working there; you then will need to very carefully check all 
your hardware components together that the kernel update should be ok.  
You mention GPU's; which drivers are you using there? Iterate over all 
hardware.

Now, I'm going to sound like a broken record here.  If you absolutely 
positively must stay at a point release for whatever reason (and there 
are valid reasons for this), then you don't need to be running CentOS; 
it is simply not supported.  You either need to pay up for RHEL6 with 
EUS, or you need to install ScientificLinux 6 (built from the same 
sources that CentOS is built from, with a different rebranding); the SL 
team does support getting only critical updates but staying on a 
particular point release.