Upgrade 8.8 to 9.2 using leapp (does not boot into Elevate-Upgrade-Initramfs)

Support
1

Hi,

we are currently preparing a new dedicated server.
The hostingprovider doesn’t provide an 9.x image to install on the server, so we are trying to install 8.8 and upgrading with leapp.

the preupgrade script works fine, also the upgrade script (no errors) but on reboot, the server will not boot into the correct grub entry.

grubby --default-title reports the ELevate-Upgrade-Initramfs
the grubenv file has the …-upgrade.x86_64 entry as saved_entry

As far as i can see, the initramfs and vmlinuz files have been generated and in /boot/loader/entries an conf file hinting the upgrade exists.

But everytime i reboot, the server boots into the installed 8.8 system.

Does anybody have an idea?

Kind Regards

2 Likes
2

Seeing the exact same issue. Curious if this will get fixed soon.

3

Could not fix it by my self but found a workaround for hetzner dedicated server to install 9.x directly

For anyone interested:
in rescueconsole copy the almalinux9.x image to another place and rename it to almalinux-89.tar.gz … this way the hetzner installimage tool allows you to install the image.

you have to change the bootorder with efibootmgr after the installation.

Attention: THIS IS ONLY FOR FRESH INSTALLS, NOT FOR UPDATES!

1 Like
4

I’m having the same issue. I tried to do what you suggested but it didn’t work. It’s still booting into AlmaLinux 8.
This is what I did:
The images are mounted via NFS in /root/.oldroot/nfs/images
cd /root
mkdir images9
cp /root/.oldroot/nfs/images/Alma-92-amd64-base.tar.gz images9/
cp /root/.oldroot/nfs/images/Alma-92-amd64-base.tar.gz.sig images9/
cd images9/
mv Alma-92-amd64-base.tar.gz Alma-89-amd64-base.tar.gz
mv Alma-92-amd64-base.tar.gz.sig Alma-89-amd64-base.tar.gz.sig
ln -s Alma-89-amd64-base.tar.gz Alma-8-latest-amd64-base.tar.gz
rm images
ln -s images9/ images
installimage

When I rebooted (I was still in AlmaLinux 8) I had this EFI configuration:
BootCurrent: 0000
Timeout: 1 seconds
BootOrder: 0000,0001,0002,0003,0004,0005
Boot0000* AlmaLinux
Boot0001* UEFI: PXE IPv4 Intel(R) Ethernet Controller (3) I225-LM
Boot0002* UEFI OS
Boot0003* UEFI OS
Boot0004* UEFI OS
Boot0005* UEFI OS

What is the correct boot order here to boot into AlmaLinux 9 and finish the installation?
I guess Boot0002-5 are from different attempts but what are those entries?

Thanks!

Update: we wrote Hetzner and they answered: “only Alma Linux 8 base is supported on the AX102. Please make use of it instead when using the installimage script.”

5

Thanks to everyone here for the inputs and hints!

I was able to install Alma9 and survive reboots. Here are the detailed instructions:

  1. I used the “renaming” approach by @RedEnzian and slightly adapted the commands from @ajm

    mkdir images9
cp /root/.oldroot/nfs/images/Alma-92-amd64-base.tar.gz images9/
cp /root/.oldroot/nfs/images/Alma-92-amd64-base.tar.gz.sig images9/
cd 

mv images9/Alma-92-amd64-base.tar.gz images9/Alma-89-amd64-base.tar.gz
mv images9/Alma-92-amd64-base.tar.gz.sig images9/Alma-89-amd64-base.tar.gz.sig

ln -s images9/Alma-89-amd64-base.tar.gz images9/Alma-8-latest-amd64-base.tar.gz
rm  /root/images
ln -s images9/ /root/images
installimage

  2. In the GUI of installimage, select the Alma8 installer. Important: At the end of the config, replace the IMAGE line by /root/images9/Alma-89-amd64-base.tar.gz

  3. After the installation, correct the boot order via efibootmgr by
    3.1 Checking which ID the “Almalinux” item has. The output will look like

    BootCurrent: 0002
Timeout: 5 seconds
BootOrder: 0002,0003,0004,0005,0001
Boot0001  UEFI: Built-in EFI Shell
Boot0002* UEFI: PXE IP4 P0 Intel(R) I210 Gigabit  Network Connection
Boot0003* UEFI OS
Boot0004* UEFI OS
Boot0005* almalinux

    3.2 Example: efibootmgr -o 0005,0002,0001,00004,0003
    3.3. reboot

  4. Before doing anything, call echo "exclude=grub2-*" >> /etc/yum.conf. This will prevent grub2 from getting updated, as otherwise subsequent boots won’t succeed.

  5. dnf update

  6. reboot

  7. Success!