[SOLVED] "Error preparing initrd: not found" Chroot not working

Lacksal · 2024-04-15 00:51:39

Hello everyone!

A couple of days ago, I ran

sudo pacman -Syu

as usual to perform a system update. I guess I closed my computer or something before it finished (although I don't think I did) and the next time I tried to launch Arch, I was greeted with

Error preparing initrd: not found``` in red text at the top left of my screen.

I've dealt with several issues before and assumed that I would be able to chroot in and repair any missing/broken packages in pacman, but I ran into some issues while chrooting in.

I am using a USB with an Arch ISO, but for some reason (this has never happend before) there is only one partition on the USB and it only contains the EFI system but not the "Linux Filesystem". Also, all the root directories are empty. I cannot chroot because /mnt is empty and when I tried to follow this guide:

https://superuser.com/questions/111152/ … stallation

I could not perform

mount -t ext3 /dev/sda1 /mnt

likely because there is no ext3/ext4 filesystem on the USB. I am really not sure where to go from here, so I would appreciate any help!

edit: formatting

Last edited by Lacksal (2024-04-21 21:33:06)

Lacksal · 2024-04-18 19:05:50

Bump:

Has not been resolved yet, and I am still not sure what else to try. I can't post logs or anything unfortunately, but if anyone has any advice, I would greatly appreciate it. Id rather not reinstall OS as I have not run a backup in a couple weeks and would lose a good deal of work. Thanks!

V1del · 2024-04-18 19:55:42

Did you install your Arch Linux to a distinct USB stick or whats the story behind the focus on USB partitions?

From the live USB, post the outputs of

lsblk -f
fdisk -l

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/List_o … n_services

Lacksal · 2024-04-19 02:35:16

Here is lsblk -f:

NAME        FSTYPE   FSVER LABEL       UUID                                 FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS
loop0       squashfs 4.0                                                          0   100% /run/archiso/airootfs
sda                                                                                        
└─sda1      vfat     FAT32 ARCH_202404 080B-0563                                           
nvme0n1                                                                                    
├─nvme0n1p1 vfat     FAT32             DA60-BDA7                                           
├─nvme0n1p2 ext4     1.0               6df21934-7ed3-4d47-b7be-c39ffc00f5e4                
├─nvme0n1p3 ext4     1.0               d92eaae8-4962-4b0d-8941-2731fd74409c                
├─nvme0n1p4                                                                                
└─nvme0n1p5 ntfs                       A2E68E20E68DF537

dfisk -l:

Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 953.87 GiB, 1024209543168 bytes, 2000409264 sectors
Disk model: SAMSUNG MZVLQ1T0HBLB-00B00              
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 16384 bytes / 131072 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: D33F801A-CE29-4084-9B8D-BA0300972EA4

Device              Start        End    Sectors   Size Type
/dev/nvme0n1p1       2048    1048575    1046528   511M EFI System
/dev/nvme0n1p2    1050624  134217727  133167104  63.5G Linux filesystem
/dev/nvme0n1p3  134217728 1610612735 1476395008   704G Linux filesystem
/dev/nvme0n1p4 1610612736 1610645503      32768    16M Microsoft reserved
/dev/nvme0n1p5 1610645504 2000408575  389763072 185.9G Microsoft basic data


Disk /dev/sda: 114.6 GiB, 123048296448 bytes, 240328704 sectors
Disk model:  SanDisk 3.2Gen1
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x00071143

Device     Boot Start       End   Sectors   Size Id Type
/dev/sda1  *     2048 240328703 240326656 114.6G  c W95 FAT32 (LBA)


Disk /dev/loop0: 788.23 MiB, 826523648 bytes, 1614304 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

USB partitions is just that it feels weird to me that there's only one. On previous installs of Arch, there was always more than one and I used the second partition for the install and it feels weird not to have that. My main issue is the lack of anything in my root directory when trying to chroot.

seth · 2024-04-19 07:43:19

sda is the live system…

├─nvme0n1p1 vfat     FAT32             DA60-BDA7                                           
├─nvme0n1p2 ext4     1.0               6df21934-7ed3-4d47-b7be-c39ffc00f5e4                
├─nvme0n1p3 ext4     1.0               d92eaae8-4962-4b0d-8941-2731fd74409c

is probably /boot, root and home.
Mount nvme0n1p2 into /mnt and check whether there's
a) an fstab
b) data in /mnt/boot
Mount the boot partition based on that (fstab lists boot and/or /mnt/boot is empty) and re-install the kernel

3rd link below. Mandatory.
Disable it (it's NOT the BIOS setting!) and reboot windows and linux twice for voodo reasons.

Also read https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Solid_ … leshooting

Lacksal · 2024-04-19 12:48:08

seth wrote:

sda is the live system…
├─nvme0n1p1 vfat     FAT32             DA60-BDA7                                           
├─nvme0n1p2 ext4     1.0               6df21934-7ed3-4d47-b7be-c39ffc00f5e4                
├─nvme0n1p3 ext4     1.0               d92eaae8-4962-4b0d-8941-2731fd74409c   
is probably /boot, root and home.
Mount nvme0n1p2 into /mnt and check whether there's
a) an fstab
b) data in /mnt/boot
Mount the boot partition based on that (fstab lists boot and/or /mnt/boot is empty) and re-install the kernel
3rd link below. Mandatory.
Disable it (it's NOT the BIOS setting!) and reboot windows and linux twice for voodo reasons.
Also read https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Solid_ … leshooting

That....is definitely what I was forgetting. I don't really know how I forgot that, but thank you! I will try this in a sec and let you know. Thank you for your help!

Lacksal · 2024-04-19 13:04:29

Hey! So I got mount to work (thank you), and here's what I got.

Checking fstab:

# Static information about the filesystems.
# See fstab(5) for details.

# <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
# /dev/nvme0n1p2
UUID=6df21934-7ed3-4d47-b7be-c39ffc00f5e4	/         	ext4      	rw,relatime,stripe=32	0 1

# /dev/nvme0n1p1
UUID=DA60-BDA7      	/boot     	vfat      	rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro	0 2

# /dev/nvme0n1p3
UUID=d92eaae8-4962-4b0d-8941-2731fd74409c	/home     	ext4      	rw,relatime,stripe=32	0 2

Boot directory:

total 59584
drwxr-xr-x  2 root root     4096 Nov  4 14:21 .
drwxr-xr-x 19 root root     4096 Apr  9 16:57 ..
-rw-------  1 root root 11461659 Nov  4 14:21 initramfs-linux.img
-rw-------  1 root root 36747159 Nov  4 14:21 initramfs-linux-fallback.img
-rw-r--r--  1 root root 12790144 Nov  4 14:21 vmlinuz-linux

So from here, you think I should mount boot and reinstall kernel?
And I will disable that setting asap!

seth · 2024-04-19 13:11:02

You're typically mounting DA60-BDA7 as /boot but it seems the mountpoint isn't clean but the kernel and initramfs there are VERY old, what does not correlate w/ the "as usual" part in "couple of days ago, I ran sudo pacman -Syu as usual to perform a system update"
Check their presence and timestamps on DA60-BDA7 and also "lsblk -f" (before any chroot) whether that partition is maybe full.

Lacksal · 2024-04-19 17:13:49

here is lsblk -f

NAME        FSTYPE   FSVER LABEL       UUID                                 FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS
loop0       squashfs 4.0                                                          0   100% /run/archiso/airootfs
sda                                                                                        
└─sda1      vfat     FAT32 ARCH_202404 080B-0563                                           
nvme0n1                                                                                    
├─nvme0n1p1 vfat     FAT32             DA60-BDA7                                           
├─nvme0n1p2 ext4     1.0               6df21934-7ed3-4d47-b7be-c39ffc00f5e4                
├─nvme0n1p3 ext4     1.0               d92eaae8-4962-4b0d-8941-2731fd74409c                
├─nvme0n1p4                                                                                
└─nvme0n1p5 ntfs                       A2E68E20E68DF537

I checked volumes after mounting and /boot is 21% full and / is 47%, so that shouldn't be an issue.

I did run ls in /mnt/boot and most items in there say epoch time except amd-ucode.img (id hope that isn't at epoch time), vmlinux-linux, and /loader

edit:
I did everything suggested and rebooted, but I still had the init.rd issue. I am going to chroot in and back up my stuff later today, but do you have any other suggestions?

Last edited by Lacksal (2024-04-19 17:30:11)

seth · 2024-04-19 20:10:41

most items in there say

Please don't paraphrase, https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=57855
What does ls -l /mnt/boot look like aftre re-installing the kernel?

After we fixed this:

└─nvme0n1p5 ntfs                       A2E68E20E68DF537

3rd link below. Mandatory.
Disable it (it's NOT the BIOS setting!) and reboot windows and linux twice for voodo reasons.

Lacksal · 2024-04-20 18:40:36

ls -l /mnt/boot after upgrade:

total 59712
-rw------- 1 root root 36747159 Nov  4 10:21 initramfs-linux-fallback.img
-rw------- 1 root root 11461659 Nov  4 10:21 initramfs-linux.img
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 12927488 Apr 20 14:35 vmlinuz-linux

What do you mean by "after we fixed this" then pointing to my windows partition?

And I disabled fast boot, is there anything else I'd need to do on the windows side?

seth · 2024-04-20 20:32:40

The initramfs were not updated?
How did you go about re-installing the kernel?
"pacman -S linux"? Were there any errors during the mkinitcpio hook?

nb. that "fast boot" and "windows fast start" are not the same thing, I referenced that and the known nvme as post. causes for this situation to look into.

Lacksal · 2024-04-21 20:06:07

My apologies: I did disable windows fast start with

powercfg /h off

in windows command prompt (run as administrator).

I updated my kernel with

pacman -S linux

edit: there was an issue with mkinitcpio. It said that linux.preset was empty or contained no presets.

I found a fix on this post:
https://unix.stackexchange.com/question … et-present

I had to delete /etc/mkinitcpio.d/linux.preset
Then reinstall my kernel "pacman -S linux"
And everything worked when I rebooted!

Thank you all for your help! I will double check the NVME issues you mentioned before right now and make sure I take care of that as I would love to not deal with this ever again.

Last edited by Lacksal (2024-04-21 20:21:22)

seth · 2024-04-21 21:06:45

And everything worked when I rebooted!

\o/
Please always remember to mark resolved threads by editing your initial posts subject - so others will know that there's no task left, but maybe a solution to find.
Thanks.

Arch Linux

#1 2024-04-15 00:51:39

[SOLVED] "Error preparing initrd: not found" Chroot not working

#2 2024-04-18 19:05:50

Re: [SOLVED] "Error preparing initrd: not found" Chroot not working

#3 2024-04-18 19:55:42

Re: [SOLVED] "Error preparing initrd: not found" Chroot not working

#4 2024-04-19 02:35:16

Re: [SOLVED] "Error preparing initrd: not found" Chroot not working

#5 2024-04-19 07:43:19

Re: [SOLVED] "Error preparing initrd: not found" Chroot not working

#6 2024-04-19 12:48:08

Re: [SOLVED] "Error preparing initrd: not found" Chroot not working

#7 2024-04-19 13:04:29

Re: [SOLVED] "Error preparing initrd: not found" Chroot not working

#8 2024-04-19 13:11:02

Re: [SOLVED] "Error preparing initrd: not found" Chroot not working

#9 2024-04-19 17:13:49

Re: [SOLVED] "Error preparing initrd: not found" Chroot not working

#10 2024-04-19 20:10:41

Re: [SOLVED] "Error preparing initrd: not found" Chroot not working

#11 2024-04-20 18:40:36

Re: [SOLVED] "Error preparing initrd: not found" Chroot not working

#12 2024-04-20 20:32:40

Re: [SOLVED] "Error preparing initrd: not found" Chroot not working

#13 2024-04-21 20:06:07

Re: [SOLVED] "Error preparing initrd: not found" Chroot not working

#14 2024-04-21 21:06:45

Re: [SOLVED] "Error preparing initrd: not found" Chroot not working

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