How to Boot Up Your Server on an OVH Kernel

Posted on June 4th, 2020

In this tutorial, we will see how to boot up a server on an OVH Kernel.

A kernel is responsible for interfacing the operating system and applications of your server with the physical hardware. The primary use of kernel is for sharing the processes, and it is the first program to load during a start-up after the boot-loader. After that, the kernel handles all the start-up process. It processes the input and output requests from the software and then translates these requests to data-processing instruction. The kernel of your server also handles the memory of the system and its peripheral devices such as monitors, keyboards, speakers, printers, and more.

To identify the kernel version and type of your server, run the following command from the terminal.

# uname -r

If you want to update the kernel packages of your server, execute the following commands on a Debian-based distribution.

# apt-get update

# apt-get dist-upgrade

If you want to update the kernel packages of your server, execute the following command on a RedHat-based distribution.

# yum update

After executing the above commands, you need to reboot your server for the changes to take effect.

# reboot

The OVH offers the Netboot feature for free. The Netboot feature allows you to boot up your OVH dedicated server that runs on a precompiled OVH kernel. If you have configured the Netboot feature on your server, then the server loads the kernel automatically from the network every time. By configuring this feature on your server, you do not need to configure the kernel elsewhere. By this method, updating kernel is simple as all the latest stable version of kernel gets compiled with OVH and it is available on Netboot.

In this knowledge base, we learn the methods by which you can boot up your OVH dedicated server on an OVH Kernel.

Prerequisites

1. A dedicated server
2. Access to the OVH control panel

Methods to Boot Up Your Server on an OVH Kernel

You can boot up your dedicated server on an OVH kernel by using the following methods:

1. Boot from the hard disk
2. Boot in network mode
3. Boot in rescue mode

Boot Server From the Hard Disk

To boot your dedicated server from a hard disk, follow these steps:

• Log in to the OVH control panel as an admin user.
• Navigate to the ‘Dedicated’ section by selecting the Dedicated tab.
• Then, click the ‘Dedicated server’ option at the left-hand side column to list the servers.
• Select the server from the list.
• Navigate to the ‘Server Status’ tab of the selected server.
• Then, go to the ‘General information’ section.
• In the ‘General information’ section, click the three-dot next to the ‘Boot’ menu and click the ‘Edit’ button.
• This above step opens the ‘Change the Netboot’ window.
• Select the ‘Boot from the hard disk’ option from the list and click the ‘Next’ button.

• In the ‘Service status’ page, click the three dots next to the ‘status’ menu.
• Click the ‘Restart’ button to make sure that the modification of the new Netboot gets reflected.

Boot Server in Network Mode

You can intend the network mode only for the servers running Unix or Linux-based distributions. For the FreeBSD, Windows, and virtualization distributions, you should use either the hard disk mode or rescue mode. To boot up your dedicated server on a network kernel, follow the below steps:

• Log in to the OVH control panel as an admin user.
• Navigate to the ‘Dedicated’ section by selecting the Dedicated tab.
• Then, click the ‘Dedicated server’ option at the left-hand side column to list the servers.
• Select the server from the list.
• Navigate to the ‘Server Status’ tab of the selected server.
• Then, go to the ‘General information’ section.
• In the ‘General information’ section, click the three-dot next to the ‘Boot’ menu and click the ‘Edit’ button.
• This above step opens the ‘Change the Netboot’ window.
• From the list, select the ‘Boot in network mode’ option.
• Then, select the kernel type from the drop-down. The list of kernel available are:
  1. Stable Kernel, vanilla – 64bit
  2. Latest Kernel, vanilla – 64bit
  3. Stable Kernel, with GRSec – 64bit
  4. Stable Kernel, hz1000 – 64bit
• Then, Fill the ‘Root Device’ tab with the root partition path of your server. To determine the location of your root partition on your server, follow the below steps:
  1. Log in to the server as a root user via SSH.
  2. open the ‘/etc/fstab’ file to determine the location of the root partition. Execute cat /etc/fstab to do so.

For example, the location of root partition as per the following output is ‘/dev/sda1’.

After that, click the ‘Next’ button and after that, confirm the changes.

Then, from the service status page, you need to restart the server to reflect the changes.

Boot Server in Rescue Mode

To boot your dedicated server in rescue mode, follow these steps:

• Log in to the OVH control panel as an admin user.
• Navigate to the ‘Dedicated’ section by selecting the Dedicated tab.
• Then, click the ‘Dedicated server’ option at the left-hand side column to list the servers.
• Select the server from the list.
• Navigate to the ‘Server Status’ tab of the selected server.
• Then, go to the ‘General information’ section.
• In the ‘General information’ section, click the three-dot next to the ‘Boot’ menu and click the ‘Edit’ button.
• This above step opens the ‘Change the Netboot’ window.
• From the list, select the ‘Boot in rescue mode’ option.
• Then, select the desired rescue mode from the list. By default, the rescue mode is ‘rescue64-pro’.
• Fill the email address to which you want to receive the rescue mode password in the ‘send new login details to’ textbox.
• Then, click the ‘Next’ button and confirm the changes.

Then, from the service status page, you need to restart the server to reflect the changes.

If this is too much trouble for you. Then you can also consider switching to InterServer. 🙂 Our control panels are very user friendly and you can also ask help from our 24×7 support staffs.

We hope that this knowledge base was helpful to you. Please comment below for any questions or queries. If you are an InterServer customer, please reach out to our support team for further help.