[SOLVED] Intermittent boot-time error

punkrockguy318 · 2013-01-05 20:46:12

Hey all,

I've been encountering an issue when rebooting or starting my PC. I'd say this occurs about 2 out of every 3 times I attempt to boot my machine. I'm running Arch Linux 64 on a normal (up to date) BIOS system and using syslinux as my bootloader. When the issue occurs, I receive the following error message and I'm dropped to a shell:

Error: Root device mounted successfully, but /sbin/systemd does not exist.
Bailing out, you are on your own. Good Luck

[root /]#

To get the machine to boot, I will try either soft rebooting or doing a full power cycle a few times until it will boot successfully. "/sbin/systemd" absolutely exists on my system and I am running a pure systemd installation. This issue occurred before and after switching from sysvinit to systemd, so it doesn't seem to be related to that.

If I remember correctly, the issue started to occur after I installed a SSD as my boot device. This would lead me to believe that there is an issue with the SSD, but I do not have *any* other problems with the drive. My BIOS is up to date and I'm really not sure where to begin troubleshooting this. It really hasn't been a deal-breaker for me since the PC is left on most of the time, but when I reboot for kernel upgrades or what-have-you it becomes quite an annoyance. Its also slightly annoying to not be able to remotely-reboot my machine.

I've searched the forums and found one other thread related to this issue, but there isn't a resolution: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=146712

I've tried switching to GRUB2 to see if it was bootloader related, but the problem *seemed* to occur more frequently with GRUB2 than syslinux. This may have been pure coincidence however.

Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks!

Last edited by punkrockguy318 (2013-01-06 02:22:11)

tomegun · 2013-01-05 22:22:55

That message is from your initramfs, so it likely has nothing to do with your bootloader. You should have a look around in your shell to see what might have gone wrong. 'dmesg' might give you a clue, also 'ls /new_root/' might tell you what is actually mounted as your root partition.

Btw, the path should be /bin/systemd, not /sbin/systemd (but if that is your error surely it should happen on every boot).

falconindy · 2013-01-05 22:33:20

Well, but it is a bootloader config problem

Use a persistent name, like a tag or uuid for your root. Seems like you're using a kernel name, like /dev/sda1 (which is unreliable).

punkrockguy318 · 2013-01-05 23:10:27

tomegun wrote:

That message is from your initramfs, so it likely has nothing to do with your bootloader. You should have a look around in your shell to see what might have gone wrong. 'dmesg' might give you a clue, also 'ls /new_root/' might tell you what is actually mounted as your root partition.
Btw, the path should be /bin/systemd, not /sbin/systemd (but if that is your error surely it should happen on every boot).

Yeah; I typoed /sbin -- I was writing it out from a physical picture of the screen since I couldn't really copy and paste from the shell

falconindy wrote:

Well, but it is a bootloader config problem
Use a persistent name, like a tag or uuid for your root. Seems like you're using a kernel name, like /dev/sda1 (which is unreliable).

Using UUID's in my syslinux config fixed it! Thank you so much -- this had been annoying me for a while!

Arch Linux

#1 2013-01-05 20:46:12

[SOLVED] Intermittent boot-time error

#2 2013-01-05 22:22:55

Re: [SOLVED] Intermittent boot-time error

#3 2013-01-05 22:33:20

Re: [SOLVED] Intermittent boot-time error

#4 2013-01-05 23:10:27

Re: [SOLVED] Intermittent boot-time error

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