After installing the last system update and oracle-rdbms-server-11gR2-preinstall and restarting the machine, the system boots into the Red Hat kernel. Obviously the Red Hat kernel does not include the oracleasm driver and necessary kernel parameters for the Oracle database installation.
# yum update
# shutdown -r now
# uname -r
3.8.13-98.1.2.el7uek.x86_64
# yum install oracle-rdbms-server-11gR2-preinstall
# shutdown -r now
# uname -r
3.10.0-229.el7.x86_64
The fix the problem, right after installing oracle-rdbms-server-11gR2-preinstall, run the following:
# source /etc/os-release
# grub2-set-default "$PRETTY_NAME, with Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel $(uname -r)"
Or run above after selecting the right kernel in the boot menu.
Below is my analysis of the problem:
The file /boot/grub2/grubenv, which defines the default menu option, shows the following entry:
saved_entry=Oracle Linux Server, with Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel 3.8.13-98.1.2.el7uek.x86_64
After installing oracle-rdbms-server-11gR2-preinstall, which runs grub2-mkconfig to add new kernel paramters from /etc/default/grub, the file /boot/grub2/grub.cfg reads the following:
menuentry 'Oracle Linux Server 7.1, with Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel 3.8.13-98.1.2.el7uek.x86_64
This does no longer match the entry in /boot/grub2/grubenv and the system restarts using whatever is the first kernel listed in the boot menu. The problem may however not be the oracle-rdbms-server-11gR2-preinstall package, but rather the previous kernel update, which generates a grub.cfg menu entry that does not include the version number, like all other UEK kernel entries.
I'm still trying to find my way around in OL 7, but the problem is perhaps that the previous kernel update modifies /boot/grub2/grubenv, which does not match the PRETTY_NAME variable in /etc/os-release, and hence when the oracle-rdbms-server-11gR2-preinstall-verify script runs grub2-mkconfig to rebuild the grub.cfg file, it does no longer match the /boot/grub2/grubenv entry.