Install CentOS Plus kernel (kernel-plus)

This document is about changing over the the CentOS 'plus' kernel. This is in response to a Xen/kernel crash with the release of CentOS v7.4 (as per the release notes)

Steps

Enable the CentOS Plus repository. The '/etc/yum.repos.d/CentOS-Base.repo' defines the location for the repository.

# yum install yum-utils
# yum-config-manager --enable centosplus

Change the default kernel to be :

# sed -e 's/^DEFAULTKERNEL=kernel$/DEFAULTKERNEL=kernel-plus/g' -i /etc/sysconfig/kernel

Install the plus kernel

# yum install kernel-plus

Use the kernel-plus-tools package (and remove the standard kernel tools):

# yum erase kernel-tools kernel-tools-libs
# yum install kernel-plus-tools kernel-plus-tools-libs

Uninstall the standard kernel (so that updates don't override the use of the kernel-plus). This will uninstall all installed standard kernel packages (I checked the new kernel-plus package booted first). Note: yum has a check that it is not possible to delete the running kernel, so a reboot is required to remove the standard kernel.

 # yum erase kernel

Links

• https://wiki.centos.org/AdditionalResources/Repositories/CentOSPlus
  

• https://www.bfccomputing.com/2017/09/15/centos-plus-kernel-for-xen.html
• https://prgmr.com/blog/2017/09/14/centos-7-pv-unsupported.html
  

Appendices

install

# yum install kernel-plus
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package kernel-plus.x86_64 0:3.10.0-693.2.2.el7.centos.plus will be installed
--> Finished Dependency Resolution

Dependencies Resolved

==============================================================================================================================
 Package                   Arch                 Version                                        Repository                Size
==============================================================================================================================
Installing:
 kernel-plus               x86_64               3.10.0-693.2.2.el7.centos.plus                 centosplus                44 M

Transaction Summary
==============================================================================================================================
Install  1 Package

Total download size: 44 M
Installed size: 60 M
Is this ok [y/d/N]: