Centos Failed Update Kernel

Today I did a kernel update on my server with Centos 7 OS. At the end of the update process, I found a kernel update error. With details as below:

Message from syslogd@myserver_hostname at Aug 16 14:18:39 ...
 dracut:dracut: creation of /boot/initramfs-3.10.0-1160.119.1.el7.x86_64.img failed
/sbin/dracut: line 1670: cpio: command not found
dracut: creation of /boot/initramfs-3.10.0-1160.119.1.el7.x86_64.img failed
mkinitrd failed
ERROR: installing kernel-3.10.0-1160.119.1.el7.x86_64: no space left for creating initramfs. Clean up /boot partition and re-run '/usr/sbin/new-kernel-pkg --package kernel --mkinitrd --dracut --depmod --install 3.10.0-1160.119.1.el7.x86_64'
warning: %posttrans(kernel-3.10.0-1160.119.1.el7.x86_64) scriptlet failed, exit status 1
Non-fatal POSTTRANS scriptlet failure in rpm package kernel-3.10.0-1160.119.1.el7.x86_64

After reading the error in detail, it seems that the error occurred because the “cpio” package was not/has not been installed. Or it could be that the “cpio” installation package is damaged. So it cannot copy the latest kernel update results into the /boot system.

Then the second error, I found to be asked to “Clean up /boot partition”. and re-run “/usr/sbin/new-kernel-pkg …”

To solve this problem, what I did was as follows.

Install/reinstall cpio.

The error written is clear, that “yum update kernel” cannot be successful because it is considered that the “cpio” package does not exist. To overcome this, install/reinstall the package.

yum reinstall cpio
ls -al /usr/bin/cpio

Clean up /boot partition and re-run ‘/usr/sbin/new-kernel-pkg’

To clean up /boot partition, follow the steps below.

Install yum-utils

yum install yum-utils

Clean Some Old Kernel

Before clean kernel, show list of kernel.

rpm -q kernel

Now we can clean some old kernel packages, to be on the safe side I would recommend keeping the --count argument to at least 2:

package-cleanup --oldkernels --count=2

This is pretty much it, you can then go ahead and update your kernel as normal:

yum -y update kernel kernel-headers

Please note that you would need to reboot your server in order for the change to take effect.

Re-run /usr/sbin/new-kernel-pkg

If still get error, re-run /usr/sbin/new-kernel-pkg manually.

/usr/sbin/new-kernel-pkg --package kernel --mkinitrd --dracut --depmod --install YOUR_KERNEL_UPDATE_VERSION_IN_ERROR_MESSAGE

Example:

/usr/sbin/new-kernel-pkg --package kernel --mkinitrd --dracut --depmod --install 3.10.0-1160.119.1.el7.x86_64

Wait a moment. After install finish and no error, plase “reboot”.