FFU 13 to 16.1: Leapp fails to update the kernel on UEFI based systems and /etc/fstab does not contain the EFI partition

Environment

• Red Hat OpenStack Platform 16.1
• Framework for Upgrades 13 to 16.1 (FFU)

Issue

• During the overcloud upgrade, when running the upgrade command with the system_upgrade tag, overcloud nodes are booted from the old kernel after the Leapp upgrade and FFU fails.

Resolution

• This is already a known issue and tracked in This content is not included.RHBZ#1925078.

Note: The public visibility of the above mentioned RHBZ may change during the period of time. Contact Technical Support to get more details on RHBZ in case of any issue.

• Following steps can be used to workaround the issue and get past the error observed in system_upgrade steps of overcloud nodes.

  1. Copy /boot/efi/EFI/redhat to /tmp/<backup>.

  2. As the root user, add the /etc/fstab entry for /boot/efi that points to the EFI partition. For example:

     echo UUID=`blkid -s UUID -o value "$(blkid -t TYPE=vfat | grep -i efi | cut -d ':' -f1)"` /boot/efi vfat umask=0077 0 1 >> /etc/fstab
     

  3. As the root user, mount /boot/efi:

     mount /boot/efi
     

  4. Copy /tmp/<backup> to /boot/efi/EFI/redhat.

     NOTE : On RHEL8, ensure that /boot/grub2/grubenv is a link to the file in /boot/efi/EFI/redhat:

     ll /boot/grub2/grubenv 
     lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 25 Jul  8  2022 /boot/grub2/grubenv -> ../efi/EFI/redhat/grubenv
     

  5. Create the boot record:

     DEVICE_PATH="$(blkid -t TYPE=vfat | grep -i efi | cut -d ':' -f1)"
     DEVICE="$(lsblk -no pkname $DEVICE_PATH)"
     PARTITION="$(echo $DEVICE_PATH | awk '{print $NF}' FS=/$DEVICE)"
     efibootmgr -c -L 'Red Hat Enterprise Linux' -d $(echo $DEVICE_PATH | sed s/$PARTITION\$//) -p $PARTITION -l '\EFI\redhat\shimx64.efi'
     

  6. Create the grub config file:

     grub2-mkconfig -o /boot/efi/EFI/redhat/grub.cfg
     

  7. Reboot the system.

     sudo reboot
     

Root Cause

• It is likely that systems that use UEFI boot and a UEFI bootloader in OSP13 might run into UEFI This content is not included.RHBZ#1925078 that results in:

  • /etc/fstab not being updated
  • grub-install is incorrectly used on EFI system

Diagnostic Steps

1. On the affected system, check if the system was booted using EFI. The following path must exist:

    stat /sys/firmware/efi
   

2. Check if the EFI partition is present in /etc/fstab:

    grep efi /etc/fstab
   

   If it is not present, you are running into this issue.

3. Run the following command:

    efibootmgr -v | grep red
   

   If you have a boot record with the name red, you are running into this issue.

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