Upgrade to SRM/VRMS 8.8 fails "file '/vmlinuz-4.19.182-2.ph3' not found"

Products

• VMware Live Recovery

Issue/Introduction

There was an issue with SRM/VRMS 8.8 while doing the upgrade and the photon.cfg is not updated with the new vmlinuz kernel.

This has been documented in the 8.8.0.1 release notes 

https://techdocs.broadcom.com/us/en/vmware-cis/live-recovery/vsphere-replication/8-8/release-notes/vsphere-replication-8801-release-notes.html

but may not have been fully resolved

Environment

Upgrading SRM/VRMS from version 8.6 or 8.7 to 8.8

Cause

the photon.cfg is not updated with the new vmlinuz kernel.

Resolution

The fix would be to upgrade to the latest version of 9.0 from 8.6/8.7, if the upgrade path from your SRM/VRMS will allow for that.

If upgrade to 9.0 is not possible, the following workaround may be implemented prior to upgrade to 8.8.

You need to determine which linux kernel will be used after the install.

To determine the vmlinuz version to replace the one in the photon.cfg file 

A. mount the upgrade iso as a disk

      mount /dev/sr0 /mnt/cdrom
      
B. change directory to \update\package-pool

     cd \mnt\cdrom\update\package-pool/

C. locate the file that starts with linux-5.10 in the list, e.g. linux--5.10.206-1.ph4.x86_64.rpm in the screenshot

     ls -l linux*

D. Use just the number portion plus the .ph4 suffix for the edit part of the photon.cfg (ie Linux-5.10.206-1.ph4.x86_64.rpm seen and you would use 5.10.206-1.ph4 with the names vmlinuz and initrd.img (see steps 5 and 6)

Before starting the upgrade

1. Revert any snapshot back the SRM/VRMS appliances to 8.6/8.7 (if needed)
2. Take another snapshot of the appliance
3. Connect to the SRM/VRMS appliance with putty and find this file: \boot\photon.cfg
4. Make a back up the file - cp photon.cfg photon.cfg.bak
5. Using vi or other editor, edit the photon.cfg file and replace lines that show "vmlinuz-4.xx.xxx-x.ph3" with "vmlinuz-5.10.206-1.ph4" (if this is the kernel number found in step D above)
6. replace lines that show initrd.img-4.xx.xxx-x.ph3 with initrd.img-5.10.206-1.ph4 (if this is the kernel number found in step D above)
  (on steps 6 and 7 is you see another vmlinuz and initrd.img file reference replace them as shown above with the 5.10.206-1.ph4 values
7. Exit the edit with a save (if using vi then that would be wq!)
8. Run the SRM/VRMS upgrade to 8.8 ( do not reboot before applying the upgrade)