Upgrading Issue for RHEL 7 to 8 With Leapp

Overview

The Leapp utility is a framework for updating and upgrading operating systems as well as applications. The operations of this utility consist of two phases 1. the preupgrade Phase – that chack the upgrade possibilities and 2. the actual upgrade phase – that map packages between previous and current versions of the software packages.

Issue – 01:

After running ‘sudo leapp preupgrade‘ sometimes you find the below issue in ‘/var/log/leapp/leapp-report.txt‘.

Detail:

Risk Factor: high (inhibitor)
Title: Leapp detected loaded kernel drivers which have been removed in RHEL 8. Upgrade cannot proceed.
Summary: Support for the following RHEL 7 device drivers has been removed in RHEL 8:
– pata_acpi

Key: f08a07da902958defa4f5c2699fae9ec2eb67c5b

Remediation:

1. Disable detected kernel drivers in order to proceed with the upgrade process using the rmmod or modprobe -r.

rmmod – Simple program to remove a module from the Linux Kernel
modprobe – Add and remove modules from the Linux Kernel

# sudo rmmod pata_acpi

or

# sudo modprobe -r pata_acpi

Run ‘sudo leapp preupgrade‘ and again check the issue in ‘/var/log/leapp/leapp-report.txt‘.

Issue – 02:

Aftur running ‘sudo leapp preupgrade‘ sometimes you find the below issue in ‘/var/log/leapp/leapp-report.txt‘.

Detail:

Risk Factor: high (inhibitor)
Title: Detected loaded kernel drivers which have been removed in RHEL 8. Upgrade cannot proceed.
Summary: Support for the following RHEL 7 device drivers has been removed in RHEL 8:
mptbase
mptscsih
mptspi

Remediation:

1. Backup currently used kernel image file that is known as initramfs

# sudo cp /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img /boot/initramfs-$(uname -r).img.bak

2. And then build a generic initramfs containing all drivers

# sudo dracut -N -f

3. Shutdown the system

4. On the VMWare Hypervisor side
Login your VM Server such as ESXi and then select your VM machine then go to it’s Edit setting option. Change “SCSI Controller” type to “VMware Paravirtual” if not. After that save change and power on your machine.
5. Once booted run following command

# sudo dracut -f --regenerate-all

Run ‘sudo leapp preupgrade‘ and again check the issue in ‘/var/log/leapp/leapp-report.txt‘.

If your kernel panicked or tempered somehow you can follow this Remediation process to get rid of it.

Issue – 03:

After running ‘sudo leapp preupgrade‘ sometimes you find the below issue in ‘/var/log/leapp/leapp-report.txt‘.

Detail:

Risk Factor: high (inhibitor)
Title: Leapp detected loaded kernel drivers which have been removed in RHEL 8. Upgrade cannot proceed.
Summary: Support for the following RHEL 7 device drivers has been removed in RHEL 8:
– pata_acpi

Key: f08a07da902958defa4f5c2699fae9ec2eb67c5b

Note: pata, Parallel ATA (PATA), originally AT Attachment, is an Internal storage device connector and ACPI stands for Advanced Configuration and Power Interface

Remediation:

To resolve the above issue, we need to disable ACPI completely in grub2.

Disable ACPI completely in grub

If ‘/sys/firmware/efi‘ exists means system uses UEFI otherwise system uses BIOS.

1. For an MBR (BIOS-based) system

1.1. Backup ‘/etc/default/grub‘ and ‘/boot/grub2/grub.cfg‘ files

# sudo cp -v /etc/default/grub /etc/default/grub.bak
# sudo cp -v /boot/grub2/grub.cfg /boot/grub2/grub.cfg.bak

And disable ACPI in ‘/etc/default/grub‘ file by append ‘noacpi acpi=off‘ to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX option.

# sudo vi /etc/default/grub

…
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=”crashkernel=auto rd.lvm.lv=rhel/root rd.lvm.lv=rhel/swap rhgb quiet noacpi acpi=off”

1.2. Now generate a new grub.cfg file and reboot the system.

# sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
# sudo systemctl reboot

2. For a GPT (UEFI-based) system

2.1. Backup ‘/etc/default/grub‘ and ‘/boot/efi/EFI/redhat/grub.cfg‘ files

# sudo cp -v /etc/default/grub /etc/default/grub.bak
# sudo cp -v /boot/efi/EFI/redhat/grub.cfg /boot/efi/EFI/redhat/grub.cfg.bak

And disable ACPI in ‘/etc/default/grub‘ file by append ‘noacpi acpi=off‘ to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX option.

# sudo vi /etc/default/grub

…
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=”crashkernel=auto rd.lvm.lv=rhel/root rd.lvm.lv=rhel/swap rhgb quiet noacpi acpi=off”

2.2. Now generate a new grub.cfg file and reboot the system.

# sudo grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/efi/EFI/redhat/grub.cfg
# sudo systemctl reboot

Run ‘sudo leapp preupgrade‘ and again check the issue in ‘/var/log/leapp/leapp-report.txt‘.

Conclusion

This tutorial helps you How to upgrade your existing Oracle Linux 7 system to 8. If have any queries please comment to us. follow the link to Upgrading Redhat Linux 7 to 8 With Leapp.

References

In this tutorial, I follow the official docs as reference Performing Systems Upgrade With Leapp (Oracle Linux 8).