This is mainly for if you've done something silly like trying to clone a Live, running VM image. In this example, the VM initially finds grub and tries to boot but is kicked straight into initramfs rescue mode/busybox right after this. If you've done this "silly" thing, you could have dataloss but a lot of times just using fsck will fix it as you are guaranteed at best to have some corruption and inconsistencies in the filesystem. My theory is that some files wer........

Step 1.) Upgrade to Debian 11 first The process to go to Debian 12 is not as smooth as 11, when trying to upgrade from Debian 10. In fact, it doesn't work directly, so you'll first need to follow this guide to update to Debian 11, reboot and come back here if successful. Step 2.) Update sources.list Update your /etc/apt/sources.list like this: deb http://........

Check your initramfs if it's missing /dev/null or /dev/console, this is likely the reason. If you want all actual devices to be created you could also enable devtmpfs in your kernel (.config) and mount like this during init: CONFIG_DEVTMPFS=y CONFIG_DEVTMPFS_MOUNT=y mount -t devtmpfs none /dev But note devtmpfs will not create /dev/null or /dev/console for........

This seems to have changed for RHEL 8 where a normal dracut to update your initramfs creates a system that only boots for the running kernel. For example if you have Kernel 5 and then chroot into a RHEL 8 variant which uses kernel 4.18, and run dracut, it seems that by default the system will be unbootable. It is also the case that if you move your RAID array or drives to another server that it will be unbootable, because dracut seems to only include modules needed for the curre........

The easiest way for the current running kernel is: update-initramfs -u -k `uname -r` You could change -k to a specific kernel name if for some reason the current is not running (eg. if you are chrooted or in recovery mode). If you want to update all kernels then use "-k all" update-initramfs -k all -u update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-5.4.0-162-generic........

This article about migrating to a CentOS 7 /8 RAID mdadm array has a lot of info but I wanted to focus specifically on what newer versions of CentOS 7 require to boot mdadm and what changes are necessary on CentOS 7.8+ CentOS 7 / 8 mdadm RAID booting requirements This assumes you are chrooting into an existing install or using it to get a new deployment ready. However, these steps can........

There aren't too many simple guides that show you how to use commands to setup your USB or other drive as a normal bootable drive where you can easily boot custom kernels or whatever OS you would like. 1. Get the tools we need: We install "syslinux" for MBR and "syslinux-efi" for EFI and "MBR" as we need a tool that embeds the actual MBR into our USB: sudo apt install syslinux syslinux-efi mbr........

The problem seems to be that whatever kernel and initrd you have is tied to an old version of CentOS 7 that is no longer in the current repos of most mirrors. If you were previously able to PXEboot and install CentOS and you are sure your network and tftp are good the problem is that you have an outdated kernel and initramfs that point to a defunct version.........

This is only really necessary in the case you don't want DHCP. If you are dealing with an encrypted LUKS server on the internet, you will often want to have a static IP so you know which IP to connect to (or if you have a semi-static IP assigned by DHCP). SET IP Address by /etc/initramfs-tools/initramfs.conf IP Address=192.168.1.27 Gateway=192.168.1.1 Subnet Mask: 255.255.255.0 Hostname=myhome.com IP=192.1........

The reason for doing this is that the installer doesn't seem to work properly for LUKS and the server installer doesn't even support LUKS anymore. When you use the GUI install on Desktop for LUKS it won't boot and will just hang after you enter your password. So the only reliable way is to do it ourselves. 1.) Make a default minimal install of Ubuntu 2.) Have a secondary disk on the server or VM. 3.)........

The cool thing here is that we only need 1 drive to make a RAID 10 or RAID 1 array, we just tell the Linux mdadm utility that the other drive is "missing" and we can then add our original drive to the array after booting into our new RAID array. Step#1 Install tools we need yum -y install mdadm rsync Step #2 Create your partitions on the drive that will be our RAID array Here I assume it is /dev........

This problem has been around forever, Linux seems to think it is fine to use the r8169 driver for an r8168 NIC but this often causes problems including the link not working at all. In my case ethttool shows the link up and detected but it simply does not work especially on a laptop that has been resumed from suspension. Sometimes it takes several minutes for it to work or to unplug and replug the ethernet. Here is the solution: Install th........

I don't consider a lot of these "extra" kernel modules "nice to have" as they often contain drivers for essential items like your soundcard, your NIC and many other devices that may not work. Sometimes you may find that "sound" or "ethernet" worked before a kernel/OS upgrade and now in the new version they don't. Often it will be because you need to install the "extra" kernel modules. One other weird thing is that sometimes........

It is well known hackers, the NSA, CIA and other groups have created malware to secretly turn on your webcam and microphone on your phone, tv etc.. But fortunately on our computers and laptops we have some options. Most webcams use the "uvcvideo" kernel module / driver. You can disable this in two ways on boot. I recommend both just as a failsafe. Disable it on rc.local once your system boots automatically Add the followi........

Iam not sure why this is happening neither the hostnode or VM changed. All I did was reboot the hostnode and startup the Centos VM again, also note it happened with the original kernel on the VM and also the latest 6.9 kernel as of this writing as shown below. Host Node: Centos 6.9 Kernel:2.6.32-696.6.3.el6.x86_64 Kernel: 2.6.32-042stab123.9 Same result in any kernel above........

[1035724.274610] [drm:intel_pipe_update_end [i915_bpo]] *ERROR* Atomic update failure on pipe A (start=62076478 end=62076479) time 102 us, min 894, max 899, scanline start 893, end 900 W: Possible missing firmware /lib/firmware/i915/kbl_dmc_ver1.bin for module i915_bpo I've been getting those errors on a J3455 NUC box with the latest kernel on Linux Mint 18.2. When updating the initramfs I also got the error about the firmware........

Very simple browse to your /boot directory It does make more sense to extract the image in its own directory eg "initramfs-blabla-dir" as it will literally extract directly to the pwd. cp initramfs.img someotherdir cd someotherdir zcat initramfs-3.10.0-514.el7.x86_64.img | cpio -idmv........

Done on Centos 7.3 very important as clearly based on older guides it was a lot easier and more simpler! Hint do not use grub2-install! If you have trouble booting after this check this CentOS mdadm RAID booting/fixing guide. One huge caveat if you are an oldschool user or sysadmin who has avoided UEFIbooting The nor........

This is a 8TB Seagate external USB 3.0 device apparently newer kernels use a module called "UAS" instead of "USB Storage" which causes issues as a lot of devices are not properly supported in UAS mode by the kernel driver. The solution some say is to disable UAS specifically for your USB device but I'd rather just disable UAS altogether. Solution blacklist UAS: *do not do this it does not work and just causes your USB 3.0........

1.) Replicate the number of partitions in your new drives. gdisk /dev/sda gdisk /dev/sdb I created 3 partitions of the same same size. partition #1: +1G (/boot) partition #2: +60G (swap) partition #3: rest of it (/) #note if you are using GPT/gdisk you need to create separate a partition at least 1MB in size (in my case I would a 4th partition and mark it type ef02).........

mdadm won't boot in Ubuntu/Mint/Debian anymore. You just get the following in a loop: mdadm: CREATE group disk not found Incrementally started RAID arrays. Incrementally starting RAID arrays... mdadm: CREATE group disk not found Incrementally started RAID arrays. Incrementally starting RAID arrays... mdadm: CREATE group disk not found Incrementally started RAID arrays. Incrementally starting RAID arrays... mdadm: CREATE group dis........

md127 issue, it should be /dev/md3 per mdadm.conf Any time something is mounted as md127 it almost always means there is no entry for this mdadm array in the mdadm.conf in initramfs (which is separate from your actual /etc/mdadm.conf). cat /etc/mdadm.conf ARRAY /dev/md3 metadata=1.2 UUID=b6722845:381cc94e:7a2c5b5f:8e3b7c4f The reason for this is something strange, most Linux OS's bizarrely always keep their own copy of /etc/mdadm.con........

Here is the scenario you or a client have a remote machine that was installed as a standard/default minimal Centos 6.x machine on a single disk with LVM for whatever reason. Often many people do not know how to install it to a RAID array so it is common to have this problem and why reinstall if you don't need to? In some cases on a remote system you can't easily reinstall without physical or KVM access. So in this case you add a second physical or disk or already ha........

./configure ./configure: line 91: cd: /lib/modules/2.6.32-042stab084.25/build: No such file or directory Error: kernel version not found. Please make sure your kernel is configured. dr-xr-xr-x. 4 root root 4096 Feb 21 06:13 .. lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 45 Feb 21 06:13 build -> ../../../usr/src/kernels/2.6.32-042stab084.25 drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Feb 12 20........

This booting error is because the Xen PV guest image uses the Xen kernel, this is not compatible with anything but a host running a Xen kernel. I did a kpartx -av virtual.img and then it created some partitions that showed up in fdisk. I mounted it and did a chroot into it and removed the xen kernel and installed a normal kernel but Xen still shows the same kernel in Grub (only the Xen one). This is strange but it seems like this Xen PV guest has some sort of hidden or........

One of my test Centos 5 containers was on a partition that filled up and it threw all sorts of errors and stopped responding but now I can't boot it again anymore. All the console shows is the Linux Penguin on the top left corner and the xm console says "usbcore: registered new driver hub" and has halted there. Centos 5 Xen container stuck/frozen won't boot on "usbcore: registered new driver hub" Another great way of troubleshooting is booting fro........

I dread updating the kernel and rebooting to find the Ubuntu graphics aren't working and you have to manually intervene. This is usually because Ubuntu for whatever reason didn't update the drivers you need (eg. the manually compiled Nvidia Kernel driver that MUST be recompiled for each and every kernel update unfortunately). The most common reason may be that "linux-source" hasn't been installed automatically on my system. I tried to manually reinstall the........

I thought only a faster CPUand SSDwould help but I already have a Quad-Core CPU and it wasn't being maxed out. The actual tests were performed on an AMD-V enabled 128MB dual core VMWare container though. There is a flag that can be passed to make in order to start multiple threads, by specifying 4 threads I was able to reduce the whole kernel compilation time from scratch by about 50%! (65minutes vs 31minutes!). *Yes I did do a make clean before each co........

I think this will be useful to others because I have a server that kept crashing mysteriously during intense disk usage/RAID checks. It would only crash during the weekly RAID integrity check. ThenI noticed during a reboot that not all CPUs were being brought up, as a result this actually creates much higher temperatures with the output I got from sensors, just booting the system produced higher than normal temperatures. You can imagine that a full blown RAID check........

Moving to RAID was a pain. What you have to do is the following from an existing install: Install mdadm Create your mdadm RAID 1 array on your spare hard drive. Start it with the missing disk. rsync the entire contents of your current / to the md partition. Here's a good way of doing it: rsync -Pha --exclude=/proc/* --exclude=/sys/* --exclude=/mnt/* /. /mnt/md2........

From a LiveCD or if you're doing something like converting your non-RAID install to mdadm here's how you would chroot properly (you have to mount your proc, sys and dev on the running system/LiveCD to your chroot environment if you want things to work right, especially if you need to run update-initramfs due to a driver change etc..) *replace "path" with your mount/chroot path mount -o bind /proc /mnt/path/proc mount -o bind /dev/ mnt/pa........

*This is a bug with initramfs support, all kernels after around 2.6.27.54 suffer from this problem. If you try to include initramfs into your kernel (I mean actually building your binaries into the kernel) this will always happen. Obviously some code has changed in recent kernels that is present in all new kernels, it makes it impossible to boot I've tried the latest 2.6.32, 2.6.33, 2.6.34, 2.6.35, 2.6.36, 2.6.37, 2.6.38 kernels and they all do this. I found one bug re........