Kernel panic on reboot or upgrade caused by the NMI watch dog

Products

• STARTER PACK-7
• CA Rapid App Security
• CA API Gateway

Issue/Introduction

A Gateway appliance may fail to initialize properly upon a reboot or upgrade of the appliance due to a kernel panic.

Environment

Release:
Component: APIGTW

Resolution

You may see the following error message after performing an upgrade or reboot operation: Kernel panic - not syncing: nmi watchdog. This error message is associated with upgrading older hardware appliance models (such as the X4100, and the X4150) to newer versions of the Gateway platform (specifically 7.0.0 and later).

To resolve this issue, the NMI watchdog scheduler must be disabled in the Gateway appliance's kernel boot parameters. To do so, run through the following procedure from the console of the appliance:

1. Perform a hard power cycle of the Gateway.
2. Press any key when Booting Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server appears.
3. Press <E> to edit the Gateway's boot parameters.
4. Select the "kernel" line.
5. Press <E> to edit the kernel boot parameters.
6. Add " nmi_watchdog=0" to the end of the entry.
7. Press <Enter> to save the entry.
8. Press <B> to boot the Gateway.

At this point, the Gateway should boot successfully. If the issue continues to occur, you will need to edit the Gateway's default boot configuration. To do so:

1. Log into the Gateway as the root user.
2. Open /etc/grub.conf for editing
3. Add " nmi_watchdog=0" to the end of the "kernel" line.
4. Save the file and exit.