[SOLVED] Kernel upgrade problems - system unbootable, no error shown

xc1024 · 2012-04-21 10:45:40

Hello. I had a problem with booting after the latest system upgrade.

I did the usual "pacman -Syyu" and rebooted. I was greeted with a blank screen instead of the usual bootup splash. This seemed slightly suspicious - the blank-screen phase never lasted for longer than ~10 seconds. I checked the HDD LED and found that it wasn't flashing - no HDD activity, so nothing was being loaded. I force-rebooted and edited the bootloader entry to only contain "root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/xxxxxxxx" and "ro". After booting, all I saw on the screen was "Loading kernel", "Loading initrd" and "Loading Linux" lines. After that, nothing. The boot process went no further. Fortunately I remembered that you can chroot in from a Live CD and downgrade. After the kernel downgrade from the new 3.3.1 to the old 3.2.9 everything booted up and worked fine.

The pacman upgrade seemed to finish successfully as well as mkinitcpio. There seemed to be no errors at all, and yet this behaviour occurred. Could someone tell me what happened and help me to resolve this issue? I do not want to run an outdated kernel. I'm not using [testing] (as far as I know). My /var/log/pacman.log is located at http://pastebin.com/cRqxCZG9

Last edited by xc1024 (2012-04-29 09:24:51)

Lone_Wolf · 2012-04-21 12:43:16

[2012-04-20 21:46] >>> Generating initial ramdisk, using mkinitcpio.  Please wait...
[2012-04-20 21:46] ==> Building image from preset: 'default'
[2012-04-20 21:46]   -> -k /boot/vmlinuz-linux -c /etc/mkinitcpio.conf -g /boot/initramfs-linux.img
[2012-04-20 21:46] ==> Starting build: 3.2.9-1-ARCH
[2012-04-20 21:46]   -> Parsing hook: [base]
[2012-04-20 21:46]   -> Parsing hook: [udev]
[2012-04-20 21:46]   -> Parsing hook: [autodetect]
[2012-04-20 21:46]   -> Parsing hook: [pata]
[2012-04-20 21:46]   -> Parsing hook: [scsi]
[2012-04-20 21:46]   -> Parsing hook: [sata]
[2012-04-20 21:46]   -> Parsing hook: [resume]
[2012-04-20 21:46]   -> Parsing hook: [fbsplash]
[2012-04-20 21:46] ==> ERROR: Theme invalid or not found: 'arch-black'
[2012-04-20 21:46] ==> ERROR: Theme invalid or not found: 'arch-banner-icons/1024x768.cfg'
[2012-04-20 21:46] ==> ERROR: Theme invalid or not found: 'arch-banner-icons/1280x800.cfg'
[2012-04-20 21:46] ==> ERROR: Theme invalid or not found: 'arch-banner-noicons/1024x768.cfg'
[2012-04-20 21:46] ==> ERROR: Theme invalid or not found: 'arch-banner-noicons/1280x800.cfg'
[2012-04-20 21:46]   -> Parsing hook: [filesystems]
[2012-04-20 21:46]   -> Parsing hook: [usbinput]
[2012-04-20 21:46] ==> Generating module dependencies
[2012-04-20 21:46] ==> Creating xz initcpio image: /boot/initramfs-linux.img
[2012-04-20 21:47] ==> Image generation successful

Looks like something is wrong with your fbsplash installation.
Hard to tell if that's related to your boot problem, but you do need to look into it.

xc1024 · 2012-04-23 16:46:51

That's probably not related. I've been using the default /etc/conf.d/splash ever since I installed fbsplash and I never deleted or commented out the themes I don't use and don't have installed. The error says that the theme can't be found so it can't be included in the initrd, and will therefore be skipped. This never caused problems before, so I just left it this way. I did comment them out now to see if that changes anything.

xc1024 · 2012-04-29 09:24:17

Problem solved. I simply upgraded to kernel 3.3.3. BTW, fbsplash also seems to give more accurate progress than before.

EDIT: Marked as solved.

Last edited by xc1024 (2012-04-29 09:25:14)

Arch Linux

#1 2012-04-21 10:45:40

[SOLVED] Kernel upgrade problems - system unbootable, no error shown

#2 2012-04-21 12:43:16

Re: [SOLVED] Kernel upgrade problems - system unbootable, no error shown

#3 2012-04-23 16:46:51

Re: [SOLVED] Kernel upgrade problems - system unbootable, no error shown

#4 2012-04-29 09:24:17

Re: [SOLVED] Kernel upgrade problems - system unbootable, no error shown

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