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CentOS 5.11 boot problem

Posted: 2018/03/01 15:43:58
by fawnridge
I have a client running CentOS 5.11 on a Dell PC. It has two USB flash drives that we use for backup plugged into the backplane. It will not boot if the USB drives are plugged in. The server just hangs at the "Starting RedHat nash" message and will not continue until both USB drives are unplugged.

I spent an hour this morning remotely checking the BIOS and everything appears to be correct. There is only one enabled boot device and that's the hard drive. The USBs are set for Legacy mode.

Any help is greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Re: CentOS 5.11 boot problem

Posted: 2018/03/01 16:34:06
by TrevorH
Please note that CentOS 5 in all its incarnations went out of support on March 31st 2017, nearly one year ago. There will be no more updates for CentOS 5 at all, not even for the most severe of security vulnerabilities. You are strongly recommended to install a newer version - either 6 or 7 though at this late stage there's only 2 or so years of life left in CentOS 6 too.

If you boot without the drives attached, can you access them? Are they just using plain partitioning or do you have LVM on them too and if so, are you sure their VG names/LV name don't conflict with the ones in use on your system.

It's been a long time since I ran el5 but is the 'kudzu' service enabled (chkconfig kudzu --list) as that is meant to discover and configure new hardware at boot time. If it is, perhaps disable it.

Re: CentOS 5.11 boot problem

Posted: 2018/03/01 16:41:33
by fawnridge
Thanks. Fully aware of the End of Life situation. Unfortunately, the client is running only one application, a mission-critical one, and it will not run on any version of CentOS beyond 5.11. They could upgrade, but it would cost $$$, lots of them.

The USB drives are formatted in Linux and used to backup a compressed file, generated by that application. I can get around the need for the drives by writing a Linux file and then sending it by FTP to a remote server or something like that, but local backup has always been our policy. There are no LVMs on the server, just four standard partitions - /, /boot, swap, and the partition used by the application.

The server will boot just fine if the USB drives are pulled out prior to power-up.

Re: CentOS 5.11 boot problem

Posted: 2018/03/01 16:44:31
by fawnridge
Not sure how to read this:
kudzu.jpg
kudzu.jpg (18.39 KiB) Viewed 24862 times

Re: CentOS 5.11 boot problem

Posted: 2018/03/01 16:47:48
by fawnridge
One other point - I have 37 other clients running this exact same configuration, some of them on the exact same Dell PC as a server. This is the ONLY one having that problem.

Re: CentOS 5.11 boot problem

Posted: 2018/03/01 17:11:49
by TrevorH
That means kudzu starts and runs in runlevels 3, 4 and 5.

Re: CentOS 5.11 boot problem

Posted: 2018/03/01 17:14:08
by fawnridge
Thanks. How do I disable it at those run levels?

Re: CentOS 5.11 boot problem

Posted: 2018/03/01 17:28:03
by TrevorH
`chkconfig kudzu off` will stop it in all runlevels.

Re: CentOS 5.11 boot problem

Posted: 2018/03/01 17:35:00
by fawnridge
Done. Thanks. I'll have them reboot tomorrow morning and see if it solved the problem.