RHEL System with LVM Fails to Boot After Bare Metal Restore (BMR)

Summary

After performing a Bare Metal Restore (BMR) on a Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) based system that uses Logical Volume Manager (LVM), the system may fail to boot normally and instead drop to a dracut prompt or require booting into rescue mode. This issue can often be resolved by regenerating the initramfs and rebuilding the GRUB configuration.

Symptoms

System fails to boot after a Bare Metal Restore.
Boot process stops at a dracut prompt.
The operating system does not load normally.
Manual intervention is required to access the system.

Environment

Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)
RHEL-based distributions
Systems using Logical Volume Manager (LVM)
Systems restored through a Bare Metal Restore (BMR) process

Resolution

Step 1: Boot into Rescue Mode

Reboot the restored system.
From the boot menu, select the Rescue Mode option.
Log in to the system when prompted.

Step 2: Regenerate the Initramfs

At the dracut prompt (or from the rescue environment shell), run the following command:

 
dracut --regenerate-all -f
 

This command rebuilds the initramfs images for all installed kernels and ensures the necessary drivers and LVM components are included.

Step 3: Rebuild the GRUB Configuration

After the initramfs regeneration completes successfully, rebuild the GRUB configuration:

 
grub2-mkconfig > /boot/grub2/grub.cfg
 

This command recreates the GRUB configuration file to reflect the current system state.

SELinux
If SELinux is used, it may also be necessary to prompt SELinux to scan and reset security context labels by creating an empty .autorelabel file in the root directory.

# touch /.autorelabel

Step 4: Reboot the System

 
reboot
 

Verification

After rebooting, verify that:

The system boots normally without entering rescue mode.
The root filesystem mounts successfully.
LVM volumes are available.
No boot-related errors appear during startup.

Additional Notes

If the issue persists after performing the above steps, review the following logs:

/var/log/messages
journalctl -xb

Also review any GRUB or dracut-related error messages displayed during boot. These logs can provide additional insight into any remaining boot configuration or storage-related issues.