Bug 1059485 - initramfs needs to be regenerated when installing/uninstalling/updating/reinstalling plymouth
Summary: initramfs needs to be regenerated when installing/uninstalling/updating/reins...
Keywords:
Status: NEW
Alias: None
Product: Fedora
Classification: Fedora
Component: plymouth
Version: rawhide
Hardware: Unspecified
OS: Unspecified
unspecified
unspecified
Target Milestone: ---
Assignee: Ray Strode [halfline]
QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance
URL:
Whiteboard:
Depends On:
Blocks:
TreeView+ depends on / blocked
 
Reported: 2014-01-29 23:21 UTC by Christian Stadelmann
Modified: 2019-02-13 19:41 UTC (History)
6 users (show)

Fixed In Version:
Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Clone Of:
Environment:
Last Closed:
Type: Bug
Embargoed:


Attachments (Terms of Use)


Links
System ID Private Priority Status Summary Last Updated
Red Hat Bugzilla 1151651 0 unspecified CLOSED localectl: globally changing locale/keymap does not affect initramfs 2021-02-22 00:41:40 UTC
Red Hat Bugzilla 1304795 0 unspecified CLOSED RFE 'plymouth-set-default-theme -R' should call 'dracut -f' 2021-02-22 00:41:40 UTC

Internal Links: 1151651 1304795

Description Christian Stadelmann 2014-01-29 23:21:56 UTC
In order to work plymouth needs to be integrated into the most recent initramfs.

If we do not update the initramfs after uninstalling plymouth, the system might become unbootable. I ran into a case of this while testing:

Steps to reproduce:
1. Setup: Fedora 20 with 2 encrypted partitions / and /home in separate LUKS containers.
2. remove plymouth using yum/dnf
3. reboot

What happens:
Password prompt for / still visible and running (systemd forwards password request to plymouth), but for /home systemd tries to do the same (forwarding password request to plymouth). Since systemd changed root after mounting / there is no plymouth available to forward password requests for. This leads to a unbootable system with this message:
[ ** ] (1 of 2) A Start job is running …
[*   ] (2 of 2) A Start job is running …

(both in one line alternating. … contains something about dev-mapper, dev-by-uuid and cryptsetup. The asterisk in the brackets is moving making some kind of "busy animation".


Workaround:
1. Reinstalled plymouth from chroot (live disk or different fedora installation)
2. Rebooted (worked fine)
3. Uninstalled plymouth
4. Upgraded kernel (which generates a new initramfs)
5. Reboot (new kernel -> worked fine)

Comment 1 Fedora End Of Life 2015-05-29 10:44:25 UTC
This message is a reminder that Fedora 20 is nearing its end of life.
Approximately 4 (four) weeks from now Fedora will stop maintaining
and issuing updates for Fedora 20. It is Fedora's policy to close all
bug reports from releases that are no longer maintained. At that time
this bug will be closed as EOL if it remains open with a Fedora  'version'
of '20'.

Package Maintainer: If you wish for this bug to remain open because you
plan to fix it in a currently maintained version, simply change the 'version' 
to a later Fedora version.

Thank you for reporting this issue and we are sorry that we were not 
able to fix it before Fedora 20 is end of life. If you would still like 
to see this bug fixed and are able to reproduce it against a later version 
of Fedora, you are encouraged  change the 'version' to a later Fedora 
version prior this bug is closed as described in the policy above.

Although we aim to fix as many bugs as possible during every release's 
lifetime, sometimes those efforts are overtaken by events. Often a 
more recent Fedora release includes newer upstream software that fixes 
bugs or makes them obsolete.

Comment 2 Christian Stadelmann 2016-01-25 16:11:15 UTC
Running `rpm --reinstall kernel-core-[version]` does the trick too.

Comment 3 Christian Stadelmann 2016-07-11 20:36:28 UTC
Workaround in comment #0 is in case you're running into this bug because you've uninstalled plymouth already.

Workaround in case you haven't uninstalled plymouth yet:
1. remove plymouth packages
2. update initramfs (e.g. by upgrading your kernel)
3. reboot
Make sure you don't reboot before updating initramfs.

Comment 4 Christian Stadelmann 2016-07-20 11:04:17 UTC
It might be worth implementing some sort of "rpm file trigger" to trigger initramfs regeneration. Since F24, this is done to reload systemd config after dnf or PackageKit are run: https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Changes/systemd_file_triggers

Bug #1151651 is related, it is about regenerating initramfs after changing locale.

Comment 5 Hans de Goede 2019-02-13 19:41:19 UTC
I'm not convinced regenerating the initrd is a good idea, we do kernel-updates often enough that users will pick-up the new plymouth soon enough and if the new plymouth contains some bug breaking the boot, then regenerating the initrd means we've just broken the users system in a way which is quite hard to recover from.


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