Boot fails or gives errors after manually installing updates.

This document (7023233) is provided subject to the disclaimer at the end of this document.

Environment

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12

Situation

Manually selecting a handful of packages to update, and after manually updating these individual packages on a functional server, the server no longer boots, and/or services may not work any longer.

Resolution

Do not manually select to install updates, but properly register a server, and install the updates from the respective update repositories available after registration.

Once a server is registered, if there is an update for any package, this will result in a seamless integration when other packages are also required to be updated at the same time

It is generally recommended to perform :

    zypper patch

and update all and every installed package on the system to prevent any incoherence in the system. This is especially true for everything connected to boot and root file-system and base system like for example

    kernel
    multipath-tools
    dracut
    lvm2
    sg3_utils
    systemd
    udev

Cause

Individually selecting and applying packages does not necessarily warn for missing packages

Issue such as described above wase a result an update was done on only specific packages, like for example :

    zypper up kernel-default
    zypper up glibc
    zypper up systemd

but no updates were applied on dependent packages, such as being there for example dracut & udev in this example, or for any other packages for which updates might also be available.

Additional Information

One such example would be after a manual kernel, glibc and systemd update, the system hangs on reboot in the dracut shell with endless reports of :

dracut-initqueue timeout - starting timeout scripts

The system ccould be brought into working condition again by a skilled Linux System Administrator, but this was an avoidable prolonged downtime situation and caused unnecessary interrupts to the services.

Disclaimer

This Support Knowledgebase provides a valuable tool for SUSE customers and parties interested in our products and solutions to acquire information, ideas and learn from one another. Materials are provided for informational, personal or non-commercial use within your organization and are presented "AS IS" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND.