Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8

Upgrading from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8

Instructions for an in-place upgrade from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 to Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 8

Last Updated: 2022-02-08

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Upgrading from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8
Instructions for an in-place upgrade from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8
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Abstract
This document provides instructions on how to perform an in-place upgrade from Red Hat
Enterprise Linux 7 to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 using the Leapp utility. During the in-place
upgrade, the existing RHEL 7 operating system is replaced by a RHEL 8 version.
 Table of Contents

Table of Contents
. . . . . . . . . .OPEN
MAKING . . . . . . SOURCE
. . . . . . . . . .MORE
. . . . . . .INCLUSIVE
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3. . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . . . FEEDBACK
PROVIDING . . . . . . . . . . . . ON
. . . .RED
. . . . .HAT
. . . . .DOCUMENTATION
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .4. . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . MIGRATION
KEY . . . . . . . . . . . . . TERMINOLOGY
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5. . . . . . . . . . . . .

. . . . . . . . . . . 1.. .PLANNING
CHAPTER . . . . . . . . . . . .AN
. . . UPGRADE
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6. . . . . . . . . . . . .

.CHAPTER
. . . . . . . . . . 2.
. . PREPARING
. . . . . . . . . . . . . FOR
. . . . . THE
. . . . . UPGRADE
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8. . . . . . . . . . . . .
2.1. PREPARING A RHEL 7 SYSTEM FOR THE UPGRADE 8
2.2. PREPARING A SATELLITE SYSTEM FOR THE UPGRADE 11

.CHAPTER
. . . . . . . . . . 3.
. . REVIEWING
. . . . . . . . . . . . . THE
. . . . .PRE-UPGRADE
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . REPORT
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
..............
3.1. ASSESSING UPGRADABILITY FROM THE COMMAND LINE 13
3.2. ASSESSING UPGRADABILITY AND APPLYING AUTOMATED REMEDIATIONS THROUGH THE WEB
CONSOLE 14

. . . . . . . . . . . 4.
CHAPTER . . .PERFORMING
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .THE
. . . . UPGRADE
. . . . . . . . . . . .FROM
. . . . . . RHEL
. . . . . . .7. TO
. . . .RHEL
. . . . . . 8. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .20
..............

. . . . . . . . . . . 5.
CHAPTER . . VERIFYING
. . . . . . . . . . . . .THE
. . . . POST-UPGRADE
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . STATE
. . . . . . . .OF
. . . THE
. . . . .RHEL
. . . . . .8
. .SYSTEM
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .22
..............

. . . . . . . . . . . 6.
CHAPTER . . .PERFORMING
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .POST-UPGRADE
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .TASKS
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23
..............

.CHAPTER
. . . . . . . . . . 7.
. . APPLYING
. . . . . . . . . . . .SECURITY
. . . . . . . . . . . POLICIES
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .25
..............
7.1. CHANGING SELINUX MODE TO ENFORCING 25
7.2. SETTING SYSTEM-WIDE CRYPTOGRAPHIC POLICIES 26
7.3. REMEDIATING THE SYSTEM TO A SECURITY BASELINE 26

. . . . . . . . . . . 8.
CHAPTER . . .TROUBLESHOOTING
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28
..............
8.1. TROUBLESHOOTING RESOURCES 28
8.2. TROUBLESHOOTING TIPS 28
8.3. KNOWN ISSUES 30
8.4. OBTAINING SUPPORT 33

. . . . . . . . . . . 9.
CHAPTER . . .RELATED
. . . . . . . . . .INFORMATION
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34
..............

. . . . . . . . . . . .A.
APPENDIX . . RHEL
. . . . . . .7. REPOSITORIES
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .35
..............

. . . . . . . . . . . .B.
APPENDIX . . RHEL
. . . . . . .8. .REPOSITORIES
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37
..............

1
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Upgrading from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8

2
 MAKING OPEN SOURCE MORE INCLUSIVE

MAKING OPEN SOURCE MORE INCLUSIVE

Red Hat is committed to replacing problematic language in our code, documentation, and web
properties. We are beginning with these four terms: master, slave, blacklist, and whitelist. Because of the
enormity of this endeavor, these changes will be implemented gradually over several upcoming releases.
For more details, see our CTO Chris Wright’s message .

3
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Upgrading from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8

PROVIDING FEEDBACK ON RED HAT DOCUMENTATION

We appreciate your input on our documentation. Please let us know how we could make it better. To do
so:

For simple comments on specific passages:

1. Make sure you are viewing the documentation in the Multi-page HTML format. In addition,
ensure you see the Feedback button in the upper right corner of the document.

2. Use your mouse cursor to highlight the part of text that you want to comment on.

3. Click the Add Feedback pop-up that appears below the highlighted text.

4. Follow the displayed instructions.

For submitting more complex feedback, create a Bugzilla ticket:

1. Go to the Bugzilla website.

2. As the Component, use Documentation.

3. Fill in the Description field with your suggestion for improvement. Include a link to the
relevant part(s) of documentation.

4. Click Submit Bug.

4
 KEY MIGRATION TERMINOLOGY

KEY MIGRATION TERMINOLOGY

While the following migration terms are commonly used in the software industry, these definitions are
specific to Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL).

Update

Sometimes called a software patch, an update is an addition to the current version of the application,
operating system, or software that you are running. A software update addresses any issues or bugs to
provide a better experience of working with the technology. In RHEL, an update relates to a minor
release, for example, updating from RHEL 8.1 to 8.2.

Upgrade

An upgrade is when you replace the application, operating system, or software that you are currently
running with a newer version. Typically, you first back up your data according to instructions from Red
Hat. When you upgrade RHEL, you have two options:

In-place upgrade: During an in-place upgrade, you replace the earlier version with the new
version without removing the earlier version first. The installed applications and utilities, along
with the configurations and preferences, are incorporated into the new version.

Clean install: A clean install removes all traces of the previously installed operating system,
system data, configurations, and applications and installs the latest version of the operating
system. A clean install is ideal if you do not need any of the previous data or applications on your
systems or if you are developing a new project that does not rely on prior builds.

Operating system conversion

A conversion is when you convert your operating system from a different Linux distribution to Red Hat
Enterprise Linux. Typically, you first back up your data according to instructions from Red Hat.

Migration

Typically, a migration indicates a change of platform: software or hardware. Moving from Windows to
Linux is a migration. Moving a user from one laptop to another or a company from one server to another
is a migration. However, most migrations also involve upgrades, and sometimes the terms are used
interchangeably.

Migration to RHEL: Conversion of an existing operating system to RHEL

Migration across RHEL: Upgrade from one version of RHEL to another

5
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Upgrading from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8

CHAPTER 1. PLANNING AN UPGRADE

An in-place upgrade is the recommended and supported way to upgrade your system to the next
major version of RHEL.

You should consider the following before upgrading to RHEL 8:

Operating system - The operating system is upgraded by the Leapp utility under the following
conditions:

The Server variant installed of the latest available RHEL 7 version, which currently is:

RHEL 7.9 on the 64-bit Intel, IBM POWER 8 (little endian), and 64-bit IBM Z
architectures and, when on SAP HANA, on the 64-bit Intel architecture

RHEL 7.6 on architectures that require kernel version 4.14: IBM POWER 9 (little
endian) or 64-bit IBM Z (Structure A)

NOTE

The IBM POWER 9 (little endian) and 64-bit IBM Z (Structure A)

architectures have reached end of life. The final upgrade path for these
architectures is from RHEL 7.6 to RHEL 8.4.

See Supported in-place upgrade paths for Red Hat Enterprise Linux for more
information.

Minimum hardware requirements for RHEL 8 met

Access to up-to-date RHEL 7.9 and RHEL 8.4 content provided; see Preparing a RHEL 7
system for the upgrade, step 1 for details.

Applications - You can migrate applications installed on your system using Leapp. However, in
certain cases, you have to create custom actors, which specify actions to be performed by
Leapp during the upgrade, for example, reconfiguring an application or installing a specific
hardware driver. For more information, see Handling the migration of your custom and third-
party applications. Note that custom actors are unsupported by Red Hat.

Security - You should evaluate this aspect before the upgrade and take additional steps when
the upgrade process completes. Consider especially the following:

Before the upgrade, define the security standard your system needs to comply with and
understand the security changes in RHEL 8 .

During the upgrade process, the Leapp utility sets SELinux mode to permissive.

In-place upgrades of systems in FIPS mode are not supported.

After the upgrade is finished, re-evaluate and re-apply your security policies. For
information about applying security policies that have been disabled during the upgrade or
newly introduced in RHEL 8, see Applying security policies .

Storage and file systems- You should always back up your system prior to upgrading. For
example, you can use the Relax-and-Recover (ReaR) utility, LVM snapshots, RAID splitting, or a
virtual machine snapshot.

6
 CHAPTER 1. PLANNING AN UPGRADE

Downtime - The upgrade process can take from several minutes to several hours.

Satellite - If you manage your hosts through Satellite, you can upgrade multiple hosts
simultaneously from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8 using the Satellite web UI. For more information, see
Upgrading Hosts from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8 .

SAP HANA - If you are using SAP HANA, follow How to in-place upgrade SAP environments
from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8 instead. Note that the upgrade path for RHEL with SAP HANA might
differ.

Public clouds - The in-place upgrade is supported for on-demand Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG)
instances on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure with Red Hat Update
Infrastructure (RHUI). The in-place upgrade is also supported for Bring Your Own Subscription
instances on all public clouds that use RHSM for a RHEL subscription.

Language - All Leapp reports, logs, and other generated documentation are in English,
regardless of the language configuration.

Bootloader - It is not possible to switch the bootloader from BIOS to UEFI on RHEL 7 or RHEL
8. If your RHEL 7 system uses BIOS and you want your RHEL 8 system to use UEFI, perform a
fresh install of RHEL 8 instead of an in-place upgrade. For more information, see Is it possible to
switch the BIOS boot to UEFI boot on preinstalled Red Hat Enterprise Linux machine?

Known limitations - Notable known limitations of Leapp currently include:

Encryption of the whole disk or a partition, or file-system encryption currently cannot be

used on a system targeted for an in-place upgrade.

No network-based multipath and no kind of network storage mount can be used as a

system partition (for example, iSCSI, or NFS).

The in-place upgrade is currently unsupported for on-demand PAYG instances on the
remaining Public Clouds (Huawei Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, Google Cloud) that use Red Hat
Update Infrastructure but not Red Hat Subscription Manager (RHSM) for a RHEL
subscription.

See also Known Issues.

You can use Red Hat Insights to determine which of the systems you have registered to Insights is on a
supported upgrade path to RHEL 8. To do so, navigate to the respective Advisor recommendation in
Insights, enable the recommendation under the Actions drop-down menu, and inspect the list under the
Affected systems heading. Note that the Advisor recommendation considers only the RHEL 7 minor
version and does not perform a pre-upgrade assessment of the system.

7
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Upgrading from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8

CHAPTER 2. PREPARING FOR THE UPGRADE

To prevent issues after the upgrade and to ensure that your system is ready to be upgraded to the next
major version of RHEL, complete all necessary preparation steps before upgrading.

You must perform the preparation steps described in Preparing a RHEL 7 system for the upgrade on all
systems. In addition, on systems that are registered to Satellite Server, you must also perform the
preparation steps described in Preparing a Satellite system for the upgrade .

2.1. PREPARING A RHEL 7 SYSTEM FOR THE UPGRADE

This procedure describes the steps that are necessary before performing an in-place upgrade to RHEL 8
using the Leapp utility.

If you do not plan to use Red Hat Subscription Manager during the upgrade process, follow instructions
in Upgrading to RHEL 8 without Red Hat Subscription Manager .

Prerequisites

The system meets conditions listed in Planning an upgrade.

Procedure

1. Ensure your system has been successfully registered to the Red Hat Content Delivery Network
(CDN) or Red Hat Satellite using the Red Hat Subscription Manager.

2. If your system is registered to Satellite Server, complete the steps in Preparing a Satellite
system for the upgrade to ensure that your system meets the requirements for the upgrade.

3. Verify that you have the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server subscription attached:

# subscription-manager list --installed

+-------------------------------------------+
Installed Product Status
+-------------------------------------------+
Product Name: Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server
Product ID: 69
Version: 7.9
Arch: x86_64
Status: Subscribed

You should see Server in the product name and Subscribed as the status.

4. Ensure you have appropriate repositories enabled. The following commands list repositories for
the 64-bit Intel architecture; for other architectures, see RHEL 7 repositories.

a. Enable the Base repository:

# subscription-manager repos --enable rhel-7-server-rpms

b. Enable the Extras repository where Leapp and its dependencies are available:

# subscription-manager repos --enable rhel-7-server-extras-rpms

NOTE
8
 CHAPTER 2. PREPARING FOR THE UPGRADE

NOTE

You can also have the Optional or Supplementary repositories enabled; see
their list in RHEL 7 repositories. In such a case, Leapp enables the RHEL 8
CodeReady Linux Builder or the RHEL 8 Supplementary repositories,
respectively.

5. Set the Red Hat Subscription Manager to consume the latest RHEL 7 content:

# subscription-manager release --unset

6. Optional: If you want to use custom repositories, configure them per instructions in Configuring
custom repositories.

7. If you use the yum-plugin-versionlock plug-in to lock packages to a specific version, clear the
lock by running:

# yum versionlock clear

See How to restrict yum to install or upgrade a package to a fixed specific package version? for
more information.

8. If you are upgrading using Red Hat Update Infrastructure (RHUI) on a public cloud, enable
required RHUI repositories and install required RHUI packages to ensure your system is ready
for upgrade.

a. For AWS:

# yum-config-manager --enable rhui-client-config-server-7

# yum-config-manager --enable rhel-7-server-rhui-extras-rpms
# yum -y install rh-amazon-rhui-client leapp-rhui-aws

b. For Microsoft Azure:

# yum-config-manager --enable rhui-microsoft-azure-rhel7

# yum-config-manager --enable rhui-rhel-7-server-rhui-extras-rpms
# yum -y install rhui-azure-rhel7 leapp-rhui-azure

NOTE

If you locked the Azure virtual machine (VM) to a minor release, remove the
version lock. For more information, see Switch a RHEL 7.x VM back to non-
EUS.

9. If you manage containers in Docker, recreate those containers with the appropriate container
images using Podman and then attach any in-use volumes. For more information, see How do I
migrate my Docker containers to Podman prior to moving from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 to
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8?

10. Update all packages to the latest RHEL 7 version:

# yum update

9
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Upgrading from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8

11. Reboot the system:

# reboot

12. Install the Leapp utility:

# yum install leapp-upgrade

Note that currently you need version 0.13.0 or later of the leapp package and version 0.15.0 or
later of the leapp-repository package.

NOTE

If your system does not have internet access, you can download the Preupgrade
Assistant and Red Hat Upgrade Tool from the Red Hat Customer Portal .

13. Ensure you have access to the latest version of additional required data files (RPM package
changes, RPM repository mapping, unsupported drivers, and unsupported PCIs).

a. If you are using RHSM for the upgrade, the system has access to cloud.redhat.com, and you
have not downloaded an earlier version of the required data files, no further action is
required from you. The data files are automatically downloaded from cloud.redhat.com. This
also applies to developer subscriptions.

b. Download the data files attached to the Knowledgebase article Data required by the Leapp
utility for an in-place upgrade from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8 and place them in the
/etc/leapp/files/ directory. Note that currently you need data files from the leapp-
data15.tar.gz archive or later. This is necessary for a successful upgrade in the following
scenarios:

i. You are upgrading on a public cloud using RHUI. If you do not have a Red Hat
subscription or Red Hat Customer Portal account, create a no-cost RHEL developer
subscription so that you can access the Knowledgebase article and download required
data packages. For more information, see How do I get a no-cost Red Hat Enterprise
Linux Developer Subscription or renew it?

ii. Your system does not have internet access.

iii. You are using RHSM for the upgrade and you previously downloaded an older version of
the required data files but did not perform the upgrade, for example to create
automated scripts. You can also delete your older version of the data files to initiate the
automatic download of the latest file version.

14. Temporarily disable antivirus software to prevent the upgrade from failing.

15. Ensure that any configuration management system does not interfere with the in-place upgrade
process:

If you use a configuration management system with a client-server architecture, such as

Puppet, Salt, or Chef, disable the system before running the leapp preupgrade command.
Do not enable the configuration management system until after the upgrade is complete to
prevent issues during the upgrade.

If you use a configuration management system with agentless architecture, such as Ansible,
do not execute the configuration and deployment file, such as an Ansible playbook, during
the in-place upgrade as described in Performing the upgrade from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8 .

10
 CHAPTER 2. PREPARING FOR THE UPGRADE

Automation of the pre-upgrade and upgrade process using a configuration management

system is not supported by Red Hat. For more information, see Using configuration
management systems to automate parts of the Leapp pre-upgrade and upgrade process
on Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

16. Ensure your system does not use more than one Network Interface Card (NIC) with a name
based on the prefix used by the kernel (eth). For instructions on how to migrate to another
naming scheme before an in-place upgrade to RHEL 8, see How to perform an in-place
upgrade to RHEL 8 when using kernel NIC names on RHEL 7.

17. Ensure you have a full system backup or a virtual machine snapshot. You should be able to get
your system to the pre-upgrade state if you follow standard disaster recovery procedures within
your environment. For example, you can use the Relax-and-Recover (ReaR) utility. For more
information, see the ReaR documentation and What is Relax and Recover (ReaR) and how can I
use it for disaster recovery?. Alternatively, you can use LVM snapshots, or RAID splitting. In case
of upgrading a virtual machine, you can create a snapshot of the whole VM.

2.2. PREPARING A SATELLITE SYSTEM FOR THE UPGRADE

This procedure describes the steps that are necessary to prepare a system that is registered to Satellite
for the upgrade to RHEL 8.

IMPORTANT

Users on Satellite systems must complete the preparatory steps described both in this
procedure and in Preparing a RHEL 7 system for the upgrade .

Procedure

1. Verify that Satellite is on a version in full or maintenance support. For more information, see
Red Hat Satellite Product Life Cycle .

2. Import a subscription manifest with RHEL 8 repositories into Satellite Server. For more
information, see the Managing Subscriptions chapter in the Content Management Guide for the
particular version of Red Hat Satellite , for example, for version 6.10.

3. Enable and synchronize all required RHEL 7 and RHEL 8 repositories with the latest updates for
RHEL 7.9 and RHEL 8.4.

NOTE

For RHEL 8 repositories, make sure to enable version 8.4 of each repository. If
you have enabled only the RHEL 8 version of the repositories, the in-place
upgrade is inhibited.

For example, for the Intel architecture without an Extended Update Support (EUS) subscription,
enable at minimum the following repositories:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Server (RPMs)

rhel-7-server-rpms

x86_64 7Server or x86_64 7.9

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 Server - Extras (RPMs)

rhel-7-server-extras-rpms

11
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Upgrading from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8

x86_64

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 for x86_64 - AppStream (RPMs)

rhel-8-for-x86_64-appstream-rpms

x86_64 8.4

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 for x86_64 - BaseOS (RPMs)

rhel-8-for-x86_64-baseos-rpms

x86_64 8.4

For other architectures, see RHEL 7 repositories and RHEL 8 repositories .

For more information, see the Importing Content chapter in the Content Management
Guide for the particular version of Red Hat Satellite , for example, for version 6.10.

4. Attach the content host to a Content View containing the required RHEL 7 and RHEL 8
repositories.
For more information, see the Managing Content Views chapter in the Content Management
Guide for the particular version of Red Hat Satellite , for example, for version 6.10.

Verification

Verify that the latest RHEL 8 repositories have been enabled on Satellite Server:

find -L /var/lib/pulp/published/yum/https/repos/ -type d -name repodata -exec /bin/sh -c "ls -l

'{}'/repomd.xml || echo '***** {} *****'" \; 2>&1 | grep rhel8

12
 CHAPTER 3. REVIEWING THE PRE-UPGRADE REPORT

CHAPTER 3. REVIEWING THE PRE-UPGRADE REPORT

To assess upgradability of your system, start the pre-upgrade process by the leapp preupgrade
command. During this phase, the Leapp utility collects data about the system, assesses upgradability,
and generates a pre-upgrade report.

The pre-upgrade report is available both in the /var/log/leapp/leapp-report.txt file and in the web
console. The report summarizes potential problems and proposes recommended solutions. The report
also helps you decide whether it is possible or advisable to proceed with the upgrade.

In certain configurations, Leapp generates true/false questions to determine how to proceed. All
questions are stored in /var/log/leapp/answerfile and in the pre-upgrade report in the Missing
required answers in the answer file message. Leapp inhibits the upgrade if you do not provide
answers to all the questions.

You have two options when assessing upgradability in the pre-upgrade phase:

a. Review the pre-upgrade report in the generated leapp-report.txt file and manually resolve
reported problems using the command-line interface.

b. Use the web console to review the report, apply automated remediations where available, and
fix remaining problems using the suggested remediation hints.

IMPORTANT

During the pre-upgrade phase, Leapp neither simulates the whole in-place upgrade
process nor downloads all RPM packages.

Reviewing a pre-upgrade report is useful also if you decide or need to redeploy a RHEL 8 system
without the in-place upgrade process.

NOTE

You can process the pre-upgrade report using your own custom scripts, for example, to
compare results from multiple reports across different environments. For more
information, see Automating your Red Hat Enterprise Linux pre-upgrade report workflow .

3.1. ASSESSING UPGRADABILITY FROM THE COMMAND LINE

Identify potential upgrade problems during the pre-upgrade phase using the command-line interface.

Prerequisites

The steps listed in Preparing for the upgrade have been completed.

Procedure

1. On your RHEL 7 system, perform the pre-upgrade phase:

# leapp preupgrade

NOTE
13
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Upgrading from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8

NOTE

If you are going to use custom repositories from the /etc/yum.repos.d/ directory
for the upgrade, enable the selected repositories as follows:

# leapp preupgrade --enablerepo repository_id1 --enablerepo repository_id2

...

If you are going to upgrade without RHSM or using RHUI, add the --no-rhsm
option.

If you have an Extended Upgrade Support (EUS), Advanced Update Support

(AUS), or Update Services for SAP Solutions (E4S) subscription, add the --
channel channel option. Replace channel with the channel, for example eus,
aus, or e4s. Note that SAP HANA customers should perform the in-place
upgrade using the How to in-place upgrade SAP environments from RHEL 7 to
RHEL 8 Knowledgebase article.

2. Provide answers to each question required by Leapp by either of the following methods:

a. Execute the leapp answer command, specifying the question you are responding to and
your confirmed answer.

# leapp answer --section question_section.confirm=answer

For example, to confirm a True response to the question Disable pam_pkcs11 module in
PAM configuration?, execute the following command:

# leapp answer --section remove_pam_pkcs11_module_check.confirm=True

b. Manually edit the /var/log/leapp/answerfile file, uncomment the confirm line of the file by
deleting the # symbol, and confirm your answer as True or False; see Leapp answerfile.

1. Examine the report in the /var/log/leapp/leapp-report.txt file, and manually resolve all the
reported problems before proceeding with the in-place upgrade.

3.2. ASSESSING UPGRADABILITY AND APPLYING AUTOMATED

REMEDIATIONS THROUGH THE WEB CONSOLE
Identify potential problems in the pre-upgrade phase and how to apply automated remediations using
the web console.

Prerequisites

The steps listed in Preparing for the upgrade have been completed.

Procedure

1. Install the cockpit-leapp plug-in:

# yum install cockpit-leapp

2. Navigate to the web console in your browser and log in as root or as a user configured in the

14
 CHAPTER 3. REVIEWING THE PRE-UPGRADE REPORT

2. Navigate to the web console in your browser and log in as root or as a user configured in the
/etc/sudoers file. See Managing systems using the RHEL 7 web console for more information
about the web console.

3. On your RHEL 7 system, perform the pre-upgrade phase either from the command-line
interface or from the web console terminal:

# leapp preupgrade

NOTE

If you are going to use custom repositories from the /etc/yum.repos.d/ directory
for the upgrade, enable the selected repositories as follows:

# leapp preupgrade --enablerepo repository_id1 --enablerepo repository_id2

...

If you are going to upgrade without RHSM or using RHUI, add the --no-rhsm
option.

If you have an Extended Upgrade Support (EUS), Advanced Update Support

(AUS), or Update Services for SAP Solutions (E4S) subscription, add the --
channel channel option. Replace channel with the channel, for example eus,
aus, or e4s. Note that SAP HANA customers should perform the in-place
upgrade using the How to in-place upgrade SAP environments from RHEL 7 to
RHEL 8 Knowledgebase article.

4. In the web console, select In-place Upgrade Report from the left menu.

Figure 3.1. In-place upgrade report in the web console

15
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Upgrading from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8

The report table provides an overview of the problems found, their risk assessment, and
remediations (if available).

Risk factor:

High - very likely to result in a deteriorated system state

Medium - can impact both the system and applications

Low - should not impact the system but can have an impact on applications

Info - informational with no expected impact to the system or applications

Inhibitor - will inhibit (hard stop) the upgrade process, otherwise the system could become
unbootable, inaccessible, or dysfunctional

Remediation - an actionable solution to a reported problem:

Remediation command - can be executed directly through the web console

Remediation hint - instructions on how to resolve the problem manually

5. Examine the content of the report. You can sort the table by clicking a header. To open a detail
pane, click a selected row.

Figure 3.2. Detail pane

16
 CHAPTER 3. REVIEWING THE PRE-UPGRADE REPORT

Figure 3.2. Detail pane

The detail pane displays the following additional information:

Summary of the problem and links to Knowledgebase articles describing the problem in
more detail

Remediations - you can run or schedule an automated remediation (if available), and see its
results when applied

Affected system resources: packages, repositories, files (configuration, data), disks,

volumes

6. Optionally filter the results. Click the Filters button in the top left corner above the report and
apply a filter based on your preferences. Filter categories are applied in conjunction with one
another.

Figure 3.3. Filters

17
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Upgrading from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8

Figure 3.3. Filters

7. Select issues for which you want to apply an automated remediation. You have two options:

a. Choose individual items by clicking the Add to Remediation Plan button in the detail pane.
Alternatively, you can execute individual remediations directly by clicking Run Remediation
in the detail pane.

b. Select all items for which a remediation is available by clicking the Add all remediations to
plan button in the top right corner above the report.

8. Review and answer questions required by Leapp in the web console. Each unanswered question
appears as a Missing required answers in the answer file title in the Upgrade Report. Select a
title to answer the question:

a. To confirm the default True answer, select Add to Remediation Plan to execute the
remediation later or Run Remediation to execute the remediation immediately.

b. To select the non-default answer instead, perform either of the following:

i. Execute the leapp answer command, specifying the question you are responding to
and your confirmed answer.

# leapp answer --section question_section.confirm=answer

For example, to confirm a False response to the question Disable pam_pkcs11 module
in PAM configuration?, execute the following command:

# leapp answer --section remove_pam_pkcs11_module_check.confirm=False

ii. Manually edit the /var/log/leapp/answerfile file, uncomment the confirm line of the

18
 CHAPTER 3. REVIEWING THE PRE-UPGRADE REPORT

ii. Manually edit the /var/log/leapp/answerfile file, uncomment the confirm line of the
file by deleting the # symbol, and confirm your answer as True or False; see Leapp
answerfile example.

Figure 3.4. Missing unanswered Leapp question

9. Open the remediation plan by clicking the Remediation plan link in the top right corner above
the report. The remediation plan provides a list of all executed or scheduled remediations.

Figure 3.5. Remediation plan

10. Process all scheduled remediations by clicking Execute Remediation Plan. The following
information is displayed for each remediation entry:

A unique ID of the remediation

Exit status of the command

Elapsed time of the executed remediation

Standard output

Standard error

11. After executing selected remediations, generate the pre-upgrade report again by using the
leapp preupgrade command, examine the new report, and take additional remediation steps if
needed.

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Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Upgrading from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8

CHAPTER 4. PERFORMING THE UPGRADE FROM RHEL 7 TO

RHEL 8
Upgrade to RHEL 8 using the Leapp utility.

Prerequisites

The steps listed in Preparing for the upgrade have been completed, including a full system
backup.

The steps listed in Reviewing the pre-upgrade report have been completed and all reported
issues resolved.

Procedure

1. On your RHEL 7 system, start the upgrade process:

# leapp upgrade

NOTE

If you are going to use custom repositories from the /etc/yum.repos.d/ directory
for the upgrade, enable the selected repositories as follows:

# leapp upgrade --enablerepo repository_id1 --enablerepo repository_id2 ...

If you are going to upgrade without RHSM or using RHUI, add the --no-rhsm
option.

If you have an Extended Upgrade Support (EUS), Advanced Update Support

(AUS), or Update Services for SAP Solutions (E4S) subscription, add the --
channel channel option. Replace channel with the value you used with the leapp
preupgrade command, for example eus, aus, or e4s. Note that you must use the
same value with the --channel option in both the leapp preupgrade and leapp
upgrade commands.

At the beginning of the upgrade process, Leapp performs the pre-upgrade phase described in
Reviewing the pre-upgrade report

If the system is upgradable, Leapp downloads necessary data and prepares an RPM transaction
for the upgrade.

If your system does not meet the parameters for a reliable upgrade, Leapp terminates the
upgrade process and provides a record describing the issue and a recommended solution in the
/var/log/leapp/leapp-report.txt file. For more information, see Troubleshooting.

2. Manually reboot the system:

# reboot

In this phase, the system boots into a RHEL 8-based initial RAM disk image, initramfs. Leapp
upgrades all packages and automatically reboots to the RHEL 8 system.

Alternatively, you can run the leapp upgrade command with the --reboot option and skip this
20
 CHAPTER 4. PERFORMING THE UPGRADE FROM RHEL 7 TO RHEL 8

Alternatively, you can run the leapp upgrade command with the --reboot option and skip this
manual step.

If a failure occurs, investigate logs as described in Troubleshooting.

3. Log in to the RHEL 8 system and verify its state as described in Verifying the post-upgrade
state of the RHEL 8 system.

4. Complete post-upgrade tasks as described in Performing post-upgrade tasks. Especially, re-

evaluate and re-apply your security policies.

21
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Upgrading from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8

CHAPTER 5. VERIFYING THE POST-UPGRADE STATE OF THE

RHEL 8 SYSTEM
This procedure lists verification steps recommended to perform after an in-place upgrade to RHEL 8.

Prerequisites

The system has been upgraded following the steps described in Performing the upgrade from
RHEL 7 to RHEL 8 and you have been able to log in to RHEL 8.

Procedure
After the upgrade completes, determine whether the system is in the required state, at least:

Verify that the current OS version is Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8:

# cat /etc/redhat-release
Red Hat Enterprise Linux release 8.4 (Ootpa)

Check the OS kernel version:

# uname -r
4.18.0-305.el8_4.x86_64

Note that .el8 is important and the version should not be earlier than 4.18.0-305.

If you are using the Red Hat Subscription Manager:

Verify that the correct product is installed:

# subscription-manager list --installed

+-----------------------------------------+
Installed Product Status
+-----------------------------------------+
Product Name: Red Hat Enterprise Linux for x86_64
Product ID: 479
Version: 8.4
Arch: x86_64
Status: Subscribed

Verify that the release version is set to 8.4 immediately after the upgrade:

# subscription-manager release
Release: 8.4

Verify that network services are operational, for example, try to connect to a server using SSH.

Check the post-upgrade status of your applications. In some cases, you may need to perform
migration and configuration changes manually. For example, to migrate your databases, follow
instructions in RHEL 8 Database servers documentation .

22
 CHAPTER 6. PERFORMING POST-UPGRADE TASKS

CHAPTER 6. PERFORMING POST-UPGRADE TASKS

This procedure lists major tasks recommended to perform after an in-place upgrade to RHEL 8.

Prerequisites

The system has been upgraded following the steps described in Performing the upgrade from
RHEL 7 to RHEL 8 and you have been able to log in to RHEL 8.

The status of the in-place upgrade has been verified following the steps described in Verifying
the post-upgrade status of the RHEL 8 system.

Procedure
After performing the upgrade, complete the following tasks:

1. Remove any remaining Leapp packages from the exclude list in the /etc/dnf/dnf.conf
configuration file, including the snactor package. During the in-place upgrade, Leapp packages
that were installed with the Leapp utility are automatically added to the exclude list to prevent
critical files from being removed or updated. After the in-place upgrade, these Leapp packages
must be removed from the exclude list before they can be removed from the system.

To manually remove packages from the exclude list, edit the /etc/dnf/dnf.conf
configuration file and remove the desired Leapp packages from the exclude list.

To remove all packages from the exclude list:

# dnf config-manager --save --setopt exclude=''

2. Remove remaining RHEL 7 packages, including remaining Leapp packages.

a. Locate remaining RHEL 7 packages:

# rpm -qa | grep -e '\.el[67]' | grep -vE '^(gpg-pubkey|libmodulemd|katello-ca-consumer)' |

sort

b. Determine the old kernel version:

# cd /lib/modules && ls -d *.el7*

c. Remove weak modules from the old kernel:

# [ -x /usr/sbin/weak-modules ] && /usr/sbin/weak-modules --remove-kernel <version>

Replace version with the kernel version determined in the previous step, for example:

# [ -x /usr/sbin/weak-modules ] && /usr/sbin/weak-modules --remove-kernel 3.10.0-

1160.25.1.el7.x86_64

d. Remove the old kernel from the bootloader entry:

# /bin/kernel-install remove <version> /lib/modules/<version>/vmlinuz

Replace version with the kernel version determined in the previous step, for example:

23
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Upgrading from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8

# /bin/kernel-install remove 3.10.0-1160.25.1.el7.x86_64 /lib/modules/3.10.0-

1160.25.1.el7.x86_64/vmlinuz

3. Ensure your system remains supported after the in-place upgrade. With the general availability
of RHEL 8.5, ensure that your system is updated to either RHEL 8.5 or to RHEL 8.4 Extended
Update Support (EUS).

a. Update the system to RHEL 8.5:

i. Unset Red Hat Subscription Manager to consume the latest RHEL 8.5 content:

# subscription-manager release --unset

ii. Update your system to the latest RHEL 8.5 version:

# yum update

b. Ensure that your system is updated to RHEL 8.4 EUS. If you used the --channel option to
set the EUS channel during the in-place upgrade, you do not need to take further steps.
Otherwise, update the system to RHEL 8.4 EUS:

i. Enable RHEL 8 EUS repositories:

# subscription-manager repos --enable repository_id1 --enable repository_id2 …

Replace repository_id* with IDs of EUS repositories available with your subscription.
Enable at least the BaseOS and AppStream repositories. For example, on the Intel 64
architecture:

# subscription-manager repos --enable rhel-8-for-x86_64-baseos-eus-rpms --enable

rhel-8-for-x86_64-appstream-eus-rpms

ii. Update your system to the latest RHEL 8.4 EUS version:

# yum update

4. Re-evaluate and re-apply your security policies. Especially, change the SELinux mode to
enforcing. For details, see Applying security policies .

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 CHAPTER 7. APPLYING SECURITY POLICIES

CHAPTER 7. APPLYING SECURITY POLICIES

During the in-place upgrade process, certain security policies must remain disabled. Furthermore, RHEL
8 introduces a new concept of system-wide cryptographic policies and also security profiles might
contain changes between major releases. This section guides you when securing your upgraded RHEL
systems.

7.1. CHANGING SELINUX MODE TO ENFORCING

During the in-place upgrade process, the Leapp utility sets SELinux mode to permissive. When the
system is successfully upgraded, you have to manually change SELinux mode to enforcing.

Prerequisites

The system has been upgraded and you have performed the verification steps described in
Verifying the post-upgrade state of the RHEL 8 system .

Procedure

1. Ensure that there are no SELinux denials, for example, by using the ausearch utility:

# ausearch -m AVC,USER_AVC -ts boot

Note that the previous step covers only the most common scenario. To check for all possible
SELinux denials, see the Identifying SELinux denials section in the Using SELinux title, which
provides a complete procedure.

2. Open the /etc/selinux/config file in a text editor of your choice, for example:

# vi /etc/selinux/config

3. Configure the SELINUX=enforcing option:

# This file controls the state of SELinux on the system.

# SELINUX= can take one of these three values:
# enforcing - SELinux security policy is enforced.
# permissive - SELinux prints warnings instead of enforcing.
# disabled - No SELinux policy is loaded.
SELINUX=enforcing
# SELINUXTYPE= can take one of these two values:
# targeted - Targeted processes are protected,
# mls - Multi Level Security protection.
SELINUXTYPE=targeted

4. Save the change, and restart the system:

# reboot

Verification

1. After the system restarts, confirm that the getenforce command returns Enforcing:

25
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Upgrading from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8

$ getenforce
Enforcing

Additional resources

Troubleshooting problems related to SELinux

Changing SELinux states and modes

7.2. SETTING SYSTEM-WIDE CRYPTOGRAPHIC POLICIES

Crypto policies is a system component that configures the core cryptographic subsystems, covering the
TLS, IPSec, SSH, DNSSec, and Kerberos protocols.

After a successful installation or an in-place upgrade process, the system-wide cryptographic policy is
automatically set to DEFAULT. The DEFAULT system-wide cryptographic policy level offers secure
settings for current threat models.

To view or change the current system-wide cryptographic policy, use the update-crypto-policies tool:

$ update-crypto-policies --show
DEFAULT

For example, the following command switches the system-wide crypto policy level to FUTURE, which
should withstand any near-term future attacks:

# update-crypto-policies --set FUTURE

Setting system policy to FUTURE

You can also customize system-wide cryptographic policies. For details, see the Customizing system-
wide cryptographic policies with policy modifiers and Creating and setting a custom system-wide
cryptographic policy sections.

Additional resources

Using system-wide cryptographic policies

update-crypto-policies(8) man page.

7.3. REMEDIATING THE SYSTEM TO A SECURITY BASELINE

The OpenSCAP suite provides remediations to make your system compliant with security baselines,
such as PCI-DSS, OSPP, or ACSC E8. Use the steps in the following procedure for changing your
system settings to conform with the PCI-DSS profile.

IMPORTANT

Red Hat does not provide any automated method to revert changes made by security-
hardening remediations. Remediations are supported on RHEL systems in the default
configuration. If your system has been altered after the installation, running remediation
might not make it compliant with the required security profile.

Prerequisites

26
 CHAPTER 7. APPLYING SECURITY POLICIES

The scap-security-guide package is installed on your RHEL 8 system.

Procedure

1. Use the oscap command with the --remediate option:

# oscap xccdf eval --profile pci-dss --remediate /usr/share/xml/scap/ssg/content/ssg-rhel8-

ds.xml

You can replace pci-dss in the previous example by a profile required by your scenario.

2. Restart your system:

# reboot

Verification

1. Evaluate the system of how it complies with the PCI-DSS profile, and save results to the
pcidss_report.html file:

$ oscap xccdf eval --report pcidss_report.html --profile pci-dss

/usr/share/xml/scap/ssg/content/ssg-rhel8-ds.xml

Additional resources

Scanning the system for security compliance and vulnerabilities

scap-security-guide(8) man page

oscap(8) man pages

27
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Upgrading from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8

CHAPTER 8. TROUBLESHOOTING
You can refer to the following tips to troubleshoot upgrading from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8.

8.1. TROUBLESHOOTING RESOURCES

You can refer to the following troubleshooting resources.

Console output

By default, only error and critical log level messages are printed to the console output by the Leapp
utility. To change the log level, use the --verbose or --debug options with the leapp upgrade
command.

In verbose mode, Leapp prints info, warning, error, and critical messages.

In debug mode, Leapp prints debug, info, warning, error, and critical messages.

Logs

The /var/log/leapp/leapp-upgrade.log file lists issues found during the initramfs phase.

The /var/log/leapp/dnf-debugdata/ directory contains transaction debug data. This directory is

present only if the leapp upgrade command is executed with the --debug option.

The /var/log/leapp/answerfile contains questions required to be answered by Leapp.

The journalctl utility provides complete logs.

Reports

The /var/log/leapp/leapp-report.txt file lists issues found during the pre-upgrade phase. The
report is also available in the web console, see Assessing upgradability and applying automated
remediations through the web console.

The /var/log/leapp/leapp-report.json file lists issues found during the pre-upgrade phase in a
machine-readable format, which enables you to process the report using custom scripts. For
more information, see Automating your Red Hat Enterprise Linux pre-upgrade report workflow .

8.2. TROUBLESHOOTING TIPS

You can refer to the following troubleshooting tips.

Pre-upgrade phase

Verify that your system meets all conditions listed in Planning an upgrade.

Make sure you have followed all steps described in Preparing for the upgrade for example, your
system does not use more than one Network Interface Card (NIC) with a name based on the
prefix used by the kernel (eth).

Make sure you have answered all questions required by Leapp in the /var/log/leapp/answerfile
file. If any answers are missing, Leapp inhibits the upgrade. Example questions:

Disable pam_pkcs11 module in PAM configuration?

28
 CHAPTER 8. TROUBLESHOOTING

Disable pam_krb5 module in PAM configuration?

Configure PAM and nsswitch.conf with the following authselect call?

Make sure you have resolved all problems identified in the pre-upgrade report, located at
/var/log/leapp/leapp-report.txt. To achieve this, you can also use the web console, as described
in Assessing upgradability and applying automated remediations through the web console .

Example 8.1. Leapp answerfile

The following is an example of an unedited /var/log/leapp/answerfile file that has one unanswered
question:

[remove_pam_pkcs11_module_check]
# Title: None
# Reason: Confirmation
# =================== remove_pam_pkcs11_module_check.confirm ==================
# Label: Disable pam_pkcs11 module in PAM configuration? If no, the upgrade process will
be interrupted.
# Description: PAM module pam_pkcs11 is no longer available in RHEL-8 since it was replaced
by SSSD.
# Type: bool
# Default: None
# Available choices: True/False
# Unanswered question. Uncomment the following line with your answer
# confirm =

The Label field specifies the question that requires an answer. In this example, the question is
Disable pam_pkcs11 module in PAM configuration?

To answer the question, uncomment the confirm line and enter an answer of True or False. In this
example, the selected answer is True:

[remove_pam_pkcs11_module_check]
...
# Available choices: True/False
# Unanswered question. Uncomment the following line with your answer
confirm = True

Download phase

If a problem occurs during downloading RPM packages, examine transaction debug data located
in the /var/log/leapp/dnf-debugdata/ directory.

initramfs phase

During this phase, potential failures redirect you to the Dracut shell. Check the Journal log:

# journalctl

Alternatively, restart the system from the Dracut shell using the reboot command and check the
/var/log/leapp/leapp-upgrade.log file.

Post-upgrade phase
If your system seems to be successfully upgraded but booted with the old RHEL 7 kernel, restart
29
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Upgrading from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8

If your system seems to be successfully upgraded but booted with the old RHEL 7 kernel, restart
the system and check the kernel version of the default entry in GRUB.

Make sure you have followed the recommended steps in Verifying the post-upgrade state of
the RHEL 8 system.

If your application or a service stops working or behaves incorrectly after you have switched
SELinux to enforcing mode, search for denials using the ausearch, journalctl, or dmesg utilities:

# ausearch -m AVC,USER_AVC -ts boot

# journalctl -t setroubleshoot
# dmesg | grep -i -e selinux -e type=1400

The most common problems are caused by incorrect labeling. See Troubleshooting problems
related to SELinux for more details.

8.3. KNOWN ISSUES

The following are Known Issues you may encounter when upgrading from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8.

Network teaming currently does not work when the in-place upgrade is performed while
Network Manager is disabled or not installed.

If you use an HTTP proxy, Red Hat Subscription Manager must be configured to use such a
proxy, or the subscription-manager command must be executed with the --proxy
<hostname> option. Otherwise, an execution of the subscription-manager command fails. If
you use the --proxy option instead of the configuration change, the upgrade process fails
because Leapp is unable to detect the proxy. To prevent this problem from occurring, manually
edit the rhsm.conf file as described in How to configure HTTP Proxy for Red Hat Subscription
Management. (BZ#1689294)

If your RHEL 7 system is installed on an FCoE Logical Unit Number (LUN) and connected to a
network card that uses the bnx2fc driver, the LUN is not detected in RHEL 8 after the upgrade.
Consequently, the upgraded system fails to boot. (BZ#1718147)

If your RHEL 7 system uses a device driver that is provided by Red Hat but is not available in
RHEL 8, Leapp inhibits the upgrade. However, if the RHEL 7 system uses a third-party device
driver that is not included in the list of removed drivers (located at
/etc/leapp/repos.d/system_upgrade/el7toel8/actors/kernel/checkkerneldrivers/files/remove
d_drivers.txt), Leapp does not detect such a driver and proceeds with the upgrade.
Consequently, the system might fail to boot after the upgrade.

You cannot perform an in-place upgrade when the winbind and wins Samba modules are used
in the /etc/nsswitch.conf file at the moment. The upgrade transaction fails with the following
error messages and Leapp inhibits the upgrade:

upgrade[469]: STDERR:
upgrade[469]: Error in PREIN scriptlet in rpm package unbound-libs
upgrade[469]: Error: Transaction failed
upgrade[469]: Container el8userspace failed with error code 1.
unbound-libs has a PREIN failure

To work around this problem, configure the system so that it uses only local providers for the
user, groups, and hosts database during the update:

1. Open the system /etc/nsswitch.conf configuration file and search for entries that contain

30
 CHAPTER 8. TROUBLESHOOTING

1. Open the system /etc/nsswitch.conf configuration file and search for entries that contain
the winbind or wins strings.

2. If you find such entries, create a backup of /etc/nsswitch.conf.

3. Edit /etc/nsswitch.conf and remove winbind or wins from the entries that contain them.

4. Perform an in-place upgrade.

5. After the upgrade, add the winbind and wins strings to the respective entries in
/etc/nsswitch.conf, based on your system configuration requirements.
(BZ#1410154)

The Leapp utility does not change customized authentication configuration during the upgrade
process. If you used the deprecated authconfig utility to configure authentication on your
RHEL 7 system, authentication on RHEL 8 might not work correctly. To ensure that your custom
configuration functions properly on the RHEL 8 system, re-configure your RHEL 8 system with
the authselect utility.

IMPORTANT

During the in-place upgrade, the deprecated pam_krb5 or pam_pkcs11

pluggable authentication modules (PAM) are removed. Consequently, if the PAM
configuration on your RHEL 7 system contains the pam_krb5 or pam_pkcs11
modules and if these modules have the required or requisite control values,
performing the in-place upgrade might result in locking you out of the system. To
work around this problem, reconfigure your RHEL 7 system to not use pam_krb5
or pam_pkcs11 before you start the upgrade process.

If the name of a third-party package (not signed by Red Hat) installed on your system is the
same as the name of a package provided by Red Hat, the in-place upgrade fails. To work around
this problem, choose one of the following options prior to upgrading:

a. Remove the third-party package

b. Replace the third-party package with the package provided by Red Hat

During an in-place upgrade, the docker package is removed without a warning. If you use
containers in RHEL, migrate to Podman prior to upgrading to RHEL 8. For instructions, see How
do I migrate my Docker containers to Podman prior to moving from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7
to Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8?. (BZ#1858711)

Due to security reasons, support for single-DES (DES) and triple-DES (3DES) encryption types
has been removed from RHEL 8. RHEL 7 Identity Management (IdM), however, still supports
3DES encryption.
Upgrading an IdM environment from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8 is possible because both versions of
RHEL prefer stronger AES encryption types by default:

Version of IdM Default encryption types Additional supported

encryption types

RHEL 7 aes256-cts camellia256-cts

aes128-cts camellia128-cts
des3-hmac
arcfour-hmac

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Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Upgrading from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8

Version of IdM Default encryption types Additional supported

encryption types

RHEL 8 aes256-cts aes256-sha2

aes128-cts aes128-sha2
camellia256-cts
camellia128-cts
arcfour-hmac [a]

[a] RC4 encryption has been deprecated and disabled by default in RHEL 8, as it is considered less secure than
the newer AES-128 and AES-256 encryption types. For more information on enabling RC4 support for
compatibility with legacy Active Directory environments, see Ensuring support for common encryption types in
AD and RHEL.

If you manually configured a non-IdM Kerberos Distribution Center (KDC), any services, or any
users to only use DES or 3DES encryption, you might experience service interruptions after
updating to the latest Kerberos packages in RHEL 8, such as:

Kerberos authentication errors

unknown enctype encryption errors

KDCs with DES-encrypted Database Master Keys (K/M) fail to start

Red Hat recommends you do not use DES or 3DES encryption in your environment. For more
information on re-keying Kerberos principals to use stronger encryption types, see Retiring DES
from MIT Kerberos Documentation.

The in-place upgrade fails on systems with Software Redundant Array of Independent Disks
(RAID). (BZ#1957192)

Systems with a disabled GRUB bootloader specification, such as systems using Puppet, cannot
create new initramfs for newer kernels. To work around this problem, manually remove packages
and the old kernel from the bootloader entry as described in Chapter 6: Performing post-
upgrade tasks. (BZ#1955099)

The Relax-and-Recover (ReaR) utility is not available on the IBM Z architecture. As a result, IBM
Z systems cannot be completely remediated by the OpenSCAP suite and might not be fully
compliant with security baselines. (BZ#1958939)

During the in-place upgrade, the Leapp utility usually preserves the network interface controller
(NIC) names between RHEL 7 and RHEL 8. However, on some systems, for example systems
with network bonding, the NIC names might need to be updated between RHEL 7 and RHEL 8.
On those systems, set the LEAPP_NO_NETWORK_RENAMING=1 environment variable,
perform the in-place upgrade, and then verify that your network is working as expected. If
needed, manually update the network configuration. (BZ#1919382)

During the pre-upgrade process, users might be required to answer true/false questions before
they can proceed with the upgrade. If the pre-upgrade report was run prior to the release of the
latest version of Leapp, the report might have incorrectly reported that all true/false questions
had been answered and that it was safe to proceed with the upgrade. If you ran the pre-upgrade
report prior to November 9, 2021, complete the following steps to prevent serious issues with
the upgrade:

1. Update all Leapp-related packages.

32
 CHAPTER 8. TROUBLESHOOTING

1. Update all Leapp-related packages.

2. Remove the /var/log/leapp/answerfile and /var/log/leapp/answerfile.userchoices files:

# rm -f /var/log/leapp/answerfile /var/log/leapp/answerfile.userchoices

3. Run the leapp preupgrade command and answer any true/false questions again.
(BZ#2014015)

8.4. OBTAINING SUPPORT

You can open a support case, select RHEL 8 as the product, and provide a sosreport from your system.

To generate a sosreport on your system, run:

# sosreport

Note that you can leave the case ID empty.

For details on generating a sosreport, see the solution What is an sosreport and how to create one in
Red Hat Enterprise Linux?.

For more information on opening and managing a support case on the Customer Portal, see the article
How do I open and manage a support case on the Customer Portal? .

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Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Upgrading from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8

CHAPTER 9. RELATED INFORMATION

You can refer to the following instructional materials:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux technology capabilities and limits

Considerations in adopting RHEL 8

Customizing your Red Hat Enterprise Linux in-place upgrade

Automating your Red Hat Enterprise Linux pre-upgrade report workflow

Upgrading from RHEL 6 to RHEL 7

Upgrading from RHEL 6 to RHEL 8

How to convert from CentOS or Oracle Linux to RHEL

Upgrading Hosts from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8 in Red Hat Satellite

How to in-place upgrade SAP environments from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8

Red Hat Insights Documentation

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 APPENDIX A. RHEL 7 REPOSITORIES

APPENDIX A. RHEL 7 REPOSITORIES

Before the upgrade, ensure you have appropriate repositories enabled as described in step 4 of the
procedure in Preparing a RHEL 7 system for the upgrade .

If you plan to use Red Hat Subscription Manager during the upgrade, you must enable the following
repositories before the upgrade by using the subscription-manager repos --enable repository_id
command:

Architecture Repository Repository ID

64-bit Intel Base rhel-7-server-rpms

Extras rhel-7-server-extras-rpms

IBM POWER8 (little endian) Base rhel-7-for-power-le-rpms

Extras rhel-7-for-power-le-extras-rpms

IBM POWER9 (little endian) Base rhel-7-for-power-9-rpms

Extras rhel-7-for-power-9-extras-rpms

IBM Z Base rhel-7-for-system-z-rpms

Extras rhel-7-for-system-z-extras-rpms

IBM Z (Structure A) Base rhel-7-for-system-z-a-rpms

Extras rhel-7-for-system-z-a-extras-rpms

You can enable the following repositories before the upgrade by using the subscription-manager
repos --enable repository_id command:

Architecture Repository Repository ID

64-bit Intel Optional rhel-7-server-optional-rpms

Supplementary rhel-7-server-supplementary-rpms

IBM POWER8 (little endian) Optional rhel-7-for-power-le-optional-rpms

Supplementary rhel-7-for-power-le-supplementary-rpms

IBM POWER9 (little endian) Optional rhel-7-for-power-9-optional-rpms

Supplementary rhel-7-for-power-9-supplementary-rpms

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Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Upgrading from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8

Architecture Repository Repository ID

IBM Z Optional rhel-7-for-system-z-optional-rpms

Supplementary rhel-7-for-system-z-supplementary-rpms

IBM Z (Structure A) Optional rhel-7-for-system-z-a-optional-rpms

Supplementary N/A

NOTE

If you have enabled a RHEL 7 Optional or a RHEL 7 Supplementary repository before an

in-place upgrade, Leapp enables the RHEL 8 CodeReady Linux Builder or RHEL 8
Supplementary repositories, respectively.

If you decide to use custom repositories, enable them per instructions in Configuring custom
repositories.

36
 APPENDIX B. RHEL 8 REPOSITORIES

APPENDIX B. RHEL 8 REPOSITORIES

If your system is registered to the Red Hat Content Delivery Network (CDN) using the Red Hat
Subscription Manager (RHSM), RHEL 8 repositories are automatically enabled during the in-place
upgrade. However, on systems registered to Red Hat Satellite using RHSM, you must manually enable
and synchronize both RHEL 7 and RHEL 8 repositories before running the pre-upgrade report.

NOTE

Make sure to enable version 8.4 of each repository. If you have enabled only the RHEL 8
version of the repositories, the in-place upgrade is inhibited.

If you plan to use Red Hat Satellite during the upgrade, you must enable and synchronize at least the
following RHEL 8 repositories before the upgrade using either the Satellite web UI or the hammer
repository-set enable and hammer product synchronize commands:

Table B.1. RHEL 8 repositories

Architecture Repository Repository ID Repository name Release version

64-bit Intel BaseOS rhel-8-for- Red Hat x86_64 8.4

x86_64-baseos- Enterprise Linux 8
rpms for x86_64 -
BaseOS (RPMs)

Appstream rhel-8-for- Red Hat x86_64 8.4

x86_64- Enterprise Linux 8
appstream- for x86_64 -
rpms AppStream
(RPMs)

IBM Power8 (little BaseOS rhel-8-for- Red Hat ppc64le 8.4

endian)/IBM ppc64le- Enterprise Linux 8
Power9 (little baseos-rpms for Power, little
endian) endian - BaseOS
(RPMs)

Appstream rhel-8-for- Red Hat ppc64le 8.4

ppc64le- Enterprise Linux 8
appstream- for Power, little
rpms endian -
AppStream
(RPMs)

IBM Z/IBM Z BaseOS rhel-8-for- Red Hat s390x 8.4

(Structure A) s390x-baseos- Enterprise Linux 8
rpms for IBM z Systems
- BaseOS (RPMs)

37
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 Upgrading from RHEL 7 to RHEL 8

Architecture Repository Repository ID Repository name Release version

Appstream rhel-8-for- Red Hat s390x 8.4

s390x- Enterprise Linux 8
appstream- for IBM z Systems
rpms - AppStream
(RPMs)

38