8.5. Upgrading to Linux Kernel 5.4 or Greater in the RHEL 8 Family

In the Linux kernel version 5.3 or earlier, the LOCKSS system at startup might block [1] or hang [2] due to lack of entropy [3] in the Linux environment. Mitigation of this problem first appeared in Linux kernel version 5.4 [4]. Therefore, Linux kernel 5.4 or later is required to run LOCKSS 2.0-beta1.

Most versions of the Compatible Operating Systems satisfy this requirement out of the box. This section describes how to upgrade operating systems in the RHEL 8 family (AlmaLinux OS 8, Oracle Linux 8, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8, and Rocky Linux 8) to Linux kernel 5.4 or later, as they may be running Linux kernel 5.3 or earlier out of the box.

Type uname --kernel-release, or equivalently uname -r, at the host's command line to see the version of the Linux kernel. If the resulting version is 5.3 or earlier, follow these steps (as root):

  1. Import the ELRepo [5] GPG keys with these two rpm commands [6]:

    rpm --import https://www.elrepo.org/RPM-GPG-KEY-elrepo.org

rpm --import https://www.elrepo.org/RPM-GPG-KEY-v2-elrepo.org

  2. Install ELRepo for RHEL 8 with this yum command [6]:

    yum install https://www.elrepo.org/elrepo-release-8.el8.elrepo.noarch.rpm

  3. Install the kernel-ml package from the elrepo-kernel channel with this dnf command [7]:

    dnf  --enablerepo=elrepo-kernel --refresh install kernel-ml

  4. Reboot the host.

Footnotes