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Elevate with linode kernel?

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21 comments

  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator

    Hey there!  Since it's detected as a Blocker and not a Warning, you wouldn't be able to perform ELevate on the server in it's current state.  It's possible they use a custom kernel setup, but I wouldn't be able to say for sure, but I would expect trying to change the type of kernel from a boot menu would keep the system from starting.

    You can always just add another DNS server to the cluster and then decommission the old one once everything is up and running.

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  • Benito

    Hello Rex!

    Today I'm a little stubborn and I want to see if I can do elevate.

    I managed to boot with grub2 following linode's instructions https://www.linode.com/docs/products/compute/compute-instances/guides/manage-the-kernel/

    And then, I have a new blocker. I added that line that Elevate asks me to change, following Linode's instructions. Is it safe to change it to true?

    2024-06-11 17:46:42 [WARN] *** Elevation Blocker detected: ***
      Disabling the BLS boot entry format prevents the resulting system from
      adding kernel updates to any boot loader configuration, because the old
      utility responsible for maintaining native GRUB2 boot loader entries was
      removed and replaced with a wrapper around the new utility, which only
      understands BLS format. This means that the old kernel will be used on
      reboot, unless the GRUB2 configuration file is manually edited to load the
      new kernel. Furthermore, after a few kernel updates, the DNF package
      manager may begin to remove old kernels, including the one still used in
      the configuration file. If that happens, the system will fail to come back
      after a subsequent reboot.

      The safe option is to remove the following line in /etc/default/grub:

      GRUB_ENABLE_BLSCFG=false

      or to change it so that it is set to "true" instead.

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  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator

    This is one I can't answer, because if I tell you the wrong thing your server won't be bootable :D

    It would be best to ask Linode about that setting and how it interacts with their system and tools.

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  • Benito

    There is no time for weak people (I have backups) and I changed the line. Booted correctly. I also had to change the default line of grub2.

    After all it seems that we are ready to elevate. I'll tell you tomorrow, today I'm sleepy.

    [root@ns1 ~]# /scripts/elevate-cpanel --check
    * 2024-06-11 18:05:14 [INFO] Successfully verified signature for cpanel (key types: release).
    * 2024-06-11 18:05:16 [INFO] Checking EasyApache profile compatibility with AlmaLinux 8.
    * 2024-06-11 18:05:16 [WARN] Skipping EA4 backup. EA4 does not appear to be enabled on this system
    * 2024-06-11 18:05:16 [WARN] /boot/grub/grub.cfg is currently a symlink to /boot/grub2/grub.cfg. Your provider
      may have added this to support booting your server using their own
      instance of the GRUB2 bootloader, one which looks for its
      configuration, boot entries, and modules in a different location from
      where your operating system stores this data. In order to allow the
      process to complete successfully, the upgrade process will rename the
      current /boot/grub directory, re-create /boot/grub as a symlink to /boot/grub2,
      and then copy as much of the old /boot/grub into /boot/grub2 as possible.
    * 2024-06-11 18:05:17 [INFO] There are no known blockers to start the elevation process.
      You can consider running:
          /scripts/elevate-cpanel --start
    [root@ns1 ~]#

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  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator

    Glad to hear there's hope!

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  • Benito

    Total success, the Elevate process went perfectly. The ugliest part was between stage 3 and 4 that I spent about 9 minutes blindly because I didn't have ssh and the linode terminal didn't show anything. Then the light came back on and I was able to continue monitoring the process.

    The DNS must have been down for about 20 minutes in total.

    When Elevate finished, all I had to do was update cPanel to version 120 and that's it.

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  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator

    9 minutes is really quick for that stage, so that's great to hear!  It is unsettling as the server doesn't seem to be doing anything, but it's working behind the scenes.

    I'm glad to hear things went so well!

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  • Benito

    cPRex one last thing: 

    The elevated server send us one of these each hour, and one daily. 

    It is something we need to fix or ignore?

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  • Benito

    These are the contents of that cronjob. 

    [root@ns1 cron.hourly]# ll
    total 4
    -rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root 575 Apr  6 08:40 0anacron

    [root@ns1 cron.hourly]# cat 0anacron
    #!/bin/sh
    # Check whether 0anacron was run today already
    if test -r /var/spool/anacron/cron.daily; then
        day=`cat /var/spool/anacron/cron.daily`
    fi
    if [ `date +%Y%m%d` = "$day" ]; then
        exit 0
    fi

    # Do not run jobs when on battery power
    online=1
    for psupply in AC ADP0 ; do
        sysfile="/sys/class/power_supply/$psupply/online"

        if [ -f $sysfile ] ; then
            if [ `cat $sysfile 2>/dev/null`x = 1x ]; then
                online=1
                break
            else
                online=0
            fi
        fi
    done
    if [ $online = 0 ]; then
        exit 0
    fi
    /usr/sbin/anacron -s
    [root@ns1 cron.hourly]#

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  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator

    We see this with the logging tool once in a while after ELevate.  Try this and see if that helps:

    mv -v /dev/log /root/dev-log.bak
    systemctl restart systemd-journald.service

     

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  • Benito

    Hello! 

    Only changed the message. 

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  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator

    Well that wasn't what I was hoping for.  Any chance you'd like to make a ticket for this one?

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  • Benito

    Sure, #95282518

    Thanks!

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  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator

    Thanks - I'm following along now!

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  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator

    I see we noted some possible kernel issues on the machine that you were going to check - let us know how it goes!

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  • cPRex Jurassic Moderator

    For the cron issue we created the following guide here:

    https://support.cpanel.net/hc/en-us/articles/24172069954711-Cron-error-emails-after-Elevate

    that explains how you can manually recreate the missing links, although I'm hoping the ELevate team comes up with an automatic solution.

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  • Benito

    Yes, I had totally ignored that. I never thought Almalinux 8 could be running with a Centos 7 Kernel. Even after several reboots.

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  • ReFresh

    @Benito I was running this on a new Linode instasnce built from a snapshot of my running Linode. I was stuck between 3-4. Switched to the latest Kernal in Linode configs and got SSH back. Got everything up and running but couldn't access cPanel/whm on the new ip before migrating the old ip to the new instance. How did you get past this? Did you just do a full standup migration and allowed you to see Cpanel/WHM?

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  • Benito

    Hello ReFresh

    The entire Elevate process worked fine but my server was stuck with the Centos 7 Kernel. When we made it want to boot with the Almalinux 8 Kernel it didn't work. I could have put the Linode Kernel back and tried to recover it but I preferred not to waste any more time and reinstalled everything again directly with Almalinux 9.

     

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  • ReFresh

    Benito So during the reinstall did you go back to the centOS snap shot and skip Alma 8 going straight to 9? Was there a guide you followed somewhere?

     

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  • Benito

    No, I did not restore my Snapshot because that would be going back to Centos 7 and starting the whole Elevate process. I directly reinstalled the VPS from scratch with an Almalinux 9 image. Then I installed cPanel DNSOnly, configured everything and added the server to the cluster again.

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