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tacos_tacos_tacos
Asked: 2016-09-13 08:20:16 +0800 CST

Fresh CentOS 7.2 VM hangs before asking for drive password after initial yum update and subsequent crash

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Sequence of events:

  1. Start install CentOs 7.2 using Everything ISO in Vmware vSphere 5.5
  2. Choose Server with Gui, manual partitioning, encrypted sdd contains /home, /data
  3. Initial boot is great, fast, works; requests partition password, login with password
  4. Start terminal, run yum update and then yum upgrade -y (I know wrong order)
  5. Do other stuff, eventually it HANGS in VMRC console, and I reboot gracefully with guest tools shutdown
  6. On restart, GRUB2 has two kernels to choose, either one has same result
  7. In either case, hangs before requesting partition password, eventually times out during plymouth and I get dracut shell

It warns me that there is no swap partition detected at /dev/mapper/swap. Note that I put swap to cover the entire sdc on its own, so it takes most of the space.

I am so lost, so any help is appreciated.

centos lvm btrfs dracut

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    So you're dropped into the initramfs shell. That's a very useful diagnostic tool.

    You need to know what block abstraction system is backing your root volume. It's it lvm, or just a partition? Also, what filesystem is it? This is important, as getting dropped to the initramfs shell is almost always due to a failure to discover the root filesystem as defined in the kernel args passed by the grub (either because the path to the root filesystem is wrong, or because Dracut made an initramfs without the tools needed to mount it, such as lacking btrfs or lvm modules).

    /dev/mapper/swap seems wrong, or at least not lvm. Is it encrypted?

    You should have some basic commands in the Dracut shell that will help you gather all of this information. Some possible ones are:

    'df -h' 'mount' 'blkid' 'lsblk' 'lvm'

    The lvm command will open an lvm shell that should give you access to all of the typical lvm commands.

    Also provide your boot time arguments from the 'linux' line in your grub boot menu entry so I can see what we're trying to mount.

    I'll adjust my answer as more information comes in. I suppose screen shots are the best you can provide, but any information will help, ESPECIALLY any info regarding how things are meant to be laid out on your disks.

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