Upgrade Linux Kernel on RAC Servers

Every once a while, you may need to upgrade your linux kernel on your RAC servers. Upgrading kernel itself is pretty straight forward, however you need to make sure if other components in your RAC environment need to be upgraded as well, such as PowerPath, OCFS2, ASMlib, etc. We use ASM directly on top of raw devices, so we don't need to worry about ASMlib upgrade. Here are the detailed steps to get the kernel upgraded from 2.6.9-55 to 2.6.9-67, and PowerPath and OCFS2 upgraded to a corresponding version.

Pre-upgrade Steps:

Download kernel-largesmp-2.6.9-67.EL.x86_64.rpm from RedHat

Download PowerPath 5.1 EMCpower.LINUX-5.1.0-194.rhel.x86_64.rpm from EMC

Download OCFS2 ocfs2-2.6.9-67.ELlargesmp-1.2.8-2.el4.x86_64.rpm from oracle

Upgrade Steps:

Shutdown all RAC components gracefully on the server
a. setup environment variable

b. $ srvctl stop instance -d {database name} -i {instance name} -o transactional
c. $ srvctl stop asm -n {node}
d. $ srvctl stop nodeapps -n {node}

e. # crsctl stop crs

Comment out the last 3 lines in /etc/inittab, then reboot server, this is to disable oracle clusterware upon server reboot

#h1:35:respawn:/etc/init.d/init.evmd run >/dev/null 2>&1

#h2:35:respawn:/etc/init.d/init.cssd fatal >/dev/null 2>&1

#h3:35:respawn:/etc/init.d/init.crsd run >/dev/null 2>&1

Install the new kernel
# rpm -ivh kernel-largesmp-2.6.9-67.EL.x86_64.rpm

Edit /etc/grub.conf to enable new kernel upon reboot, then reboot server

Upgrade PowerPath 5.1 and reboot server, check all PowerPath device names are mapped correctly
# powermt save
# rpm -Uvh EMCpower.LINUX-5.1.0-194.rhel.x86_64.rpm
# reboot

Upgrade OCFS2 1.2.8-2 and reboot server, check all cluster filesystems are mounted correctly
# rpm -Uvh ocfs2-2.6.9-67.ELlargesmp-1.2.8-2.el4.x86_64.rpm
# reboot

Uncomment out the last 3 lines in /etc/inittab, then reboot server, check all oracle services are up correctly.