I have been using CentOS since 4 or 5.

I recently move all of my servers to CentOS7 with no problem.

When I updated the kernel to 3.10.0-514.2.2.el7.x86_64 from 3.10.0-327.36.3.el7.x86_64 they all panic.

It does not seem to matter if I do an upgrade or a clean install.

I have never been able to solve this or even figure the source of the panic.

I am just waiting for a new release that works.

I just leave the system as it is and set the system to boot the older CentOS7.

Yes, but that was in the 1.x days, since 2.x no panics at all

Several times, usually due to a hard drive failure. Then there was the time I bricked the BIOS....

How can a hardware problem cause a problem with 3.10.0-514.2.2.el7.x86_64 but run just fine with 3.10.0-327.36.3.el7.x86_64
I have both images on the same server but can only boot the older version.

I've no idea about that situation, but I have seen a hardware problem prevent some Linux versions from booting when others worked fine. The second time I installed Linux, the installer booted perfectly well from the Mandrake CD, then stopped after a few seconds because it couldn't access the CD. It turned out that my drive didn't play well when accessed by DMA on that particular motherboard, and DMA was the default method in Mandy (including their installers) at the time. It made upgrading interesting. Also meant that one of the first Linux commands I learned was hdparm.

I've had kernel panics happen, but not on Linux. I used to see them on Unix systems. Generally, kernel panics were hardware related.

The most annoying ones occurred when I was a sysadmin whose world included a SCO Unix server. There was a bug in SCO Unix that persisted through a major release that caused it.

When you deleted files on the machine, the superblock was supposed to be updated. The bug affected the updates, and it was possible for the kernel to think that the files had been deleted and that they still existed. Since that simply wasn't possible, the kernel would have a nervous breakdown and panic.

To make it worse, it was possible for the kernel to encounter this problem removing temp files it had created.

The bug was apparently triggered by low disk space conditions, and one thing I had to do was be far more aggressive about space management and removing unneeded files. This often required being, um, stern with users who paid no attention to the space their efforts was occupying.

Stuff like that was a major reason why I was delighted to see the last of SCO, when my employer moved to Solaris and Linux.

Yes, mentioned in this thread:

https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...ic-4175614613/

photo in post #7

Not solved yet. Mint installs & runs OK. Slackware gets nowhere. Tragedy!


Solved now!

Used to get a few when I first started using Linux (1999), some were my fault being a newbie, others were hardware, &, I think, some were just down to the kernel or ram malfunctioning.