Last updated 15th June, 2019
Overview
If your VPS isn’t responding as you would like, the quickest way to diagnose the problem is to check what appears in the KVM. This guide explains how to modify the display so that everything is displayed in the console and the KVM.
Please note that for some environments, the KVM won’t provide any useful information because the boot sequence occurs in the serial console, or the GRUB is configured in silent mode.
Requirements
- You must have access to a VPS in rescue mode
Instructions
If your VPS is working normally, go directly to step 4.
These modifications will change the GRUB configuration. Be sure to perform backups before making any modifications. OVH cannot be held responsible for damage or loss of data following these operations.
Step 1: ensure VPS is in rescue mode
If you have not rebooted the VPS into rescue mode yet, you may use the rescue mode guide to help you to reboot it into rescue mode.
Step 2: perform initial verification
After connecting, you should check the name of the disk with the command lsblk:
lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:0 0 3G 0 disk
└─sda1 8:1 0 3G 0 part /
sdb 8:16 0 10G 0 disk
└─sdb1 8:17 0 10G 0 part
Here, the primary disk is sdb and the primary partition is sdb1 (sdais the rescue disk and sda1 is the primary rescue partition mounted on /).
If the result is the following, your primary disk is vdb and your primary partition is vdb1 (vda is the rescue disk and vda1 is the primary rescue partition mounted on /):
lsblk
NAME MAJ:MIN RM SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINT
sda 8:0 0 2.5G 0 disk
└─sda1 8:1 0 2.5G 0 part /
sdb 8:16 0 40G 0 disk
└─sdb1 8:17 0 40G 0 part /mnt/sdb1
For this guide, we will use sdb. If your disk is vdb, simply replace sdb with vdb for each command.
Step 3: Unmount and remount the partition correctly
On a VPS in rescue mode, the primary disk is already mounted. Therefore, it first needs to be unmounted and then remounted with the correct settings:
umount /dev/sdb1
Step 4: mount the disk
Now that the name of the disk has been identified, you can mount it with the correct settings. Since in step 1 we found the disk was mounted under "/mnt/sdb1", we will mount it again in the same folder with these commands:
mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/sdb1
mount -t proc none /mnt/sdb1/proc
mount -o bind /dev /mnt/sdb1/dev
mount -t sysfs none /mnt/sdb1/sys/
These commands will then allow you to use the chroot command and initiate the commands that require access to the sys, dev and proc directories.
Step 5: launch the CHROOT command
To apply it directly to the system, type the following command:
chroot /mnt/sdb1
From now on, all commands will be applied to your VPS and not to your rescue mode.
Step 4: make the modifications in GRUB
For CentOS 6 (grub):
Edit the file /boot/grub/grub.conf and remove the rhgb and quiet arguments from the kernel lines and and the "console=ttyS0" "loglevel=7" parameter instead if missing:
Before:
title CentOS (2.6.32-754.12.1.el6.x86_64)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-754.12.1.el6.x86_64 ro root=UUID=7e192559-d669-4919-840b-4c9a846fafa7 rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_LVM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 rd_NO_MD SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 crashkernel=auto KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us rd_NO_DM rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/initramfs-2.6.32-754.12.1.el6.x86_64.img
title CentOS (2.6.32-642.15.1.el6.x86_64)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-642.15.1.el6.x86_64 ro root=UUID=7e192559-d669-4919-840b-4c9a846fafa7 rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_LVM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 rd_NO_MD SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 crashkernel=auto KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us rd_NO_DM rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/initramfs-2.6.32-642.15.1.el6.x86_64.img
title CentOS 6 (2.6.32-642.el6.x86_64)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-642.el6.x86_64 ro root=UUID=7e192559-d669-4919-840b-4c9a846fafa7 rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_LVM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 rd_NO_MD SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 crashkernel=auto KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us rd_NO_DM rhgb quiet
initrd /boot/initramfs-2.6.32-642.el6.x86_64.img
After:
title CentOS (2.6.32-754.12.1.el6.x86_64)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-754.12.1.el6.x86_64 ro root=UUID=7e192559-d669-4919-840b-4c9a846fafa7 rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_LVM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 rd_NO_MD SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 crashkernel=auto KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us rd_NO_DM console=ttyS0 loglevel=7
initrd /boot/initramfs-2.6.32-754.12.1.el6.x86_64.img
title CentOS (2.6.32-642.15.1.el6.x86_64)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-642.15.1.el6.x86_64 ro root=UUID=7e192559-d669-4919-840b-4c9a846fafa7 rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_LVM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 rd_NO_MD SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 crashkernel=auto KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us rd_NO_DM console=ttyS0 loglevel=7
initrd /boot/initramfs-2.6.32-642.15.1.el6.x86_64.img
title CentOS 6 (2.6.32-642.el6.x86_64)
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.32-642.el6.x86_64 ro root=UUID=7e192559-d669-4919-840b-4c9a846fafa7 rd_NO_LUKS rd_NO_LVM LANG=en_US.UTF-8 rd_NO_MD SYSFONT=latarcyrheb-sun16 crashkernel=auto KEYBOARDTYPE=pc KEYTABLE=us rd_NO_DM console=ttyS0 loglevel=7
initrd /boot/initramfs-2.6.32-642.el6.x86_64.img
Save the file and exit. The change will reflect on the next reboot.
For CentOS 7 (grub2):
In order to access the boot log in the KVM, make sure you have the following values in the /etc/default/grub file:
GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT="console"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="crashkernel=auto rhgb"
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="console=tty0 console=ttyS0"
If you don’t have these values, edit and modify your file, then save it.
Then use the following command to regenerate the GRUB configuration file (the values will be saved for the next reboot):
grub2-mkconfig -o "$(readlink /etc/grub2.cfg)"
For Debian (7/8/9) and Ubuntu (16.04/18.04):
In order to access the boot log in the KVM, make sure you have the following values in the /etc/default/grub file:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="console=ttyS0 console=tty0"
If you don’t have these values, edit and modify your file, then save it.
Then use the following command to regenerate the GRUB configuration file (the values will be saved for the next reboot):
update-grub
Once you have made the modifications, reboot the VPS or the instance in normal mode and check the KVM: the boot log information should appear.
Go further
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