Installed Arch to Vm, installed Cinnamon, now can't boot

lworld · 2013-03-31 20:08:50

Hello, I'm having some first-timer issues.
Arch was successfuly installed to VM Virtualbox setup (nothing special).
I rebooted a couple of times, no problem. Finally I got to installing a DM, I chose LightDM.
Then I installed cinnamon, and then its optional dependencies.
I rebooted = all I got was a blinking cursor at the top left of the screen.

I figured I'd just google 'arch not booting' and stuff and came up with some articles, this being one of a few similar.
I followed that article nicely, until the chroot command, which gave me:

chroot: failed to run command /bin/zsh: No such file or directory

I then tried using arch-chroot as described in the change root wiki article. that gave me:

ERROR: failed to steup API filesystems in chroot ./arch

I've got no idea what I did wrong or where to look more. I looked all over the web in search, but I'm clueless on where to begin.
I even transcribed the hash from the date function to register to the forums from the VM (only afterwards it came to me, there's probably a way to share the clipboard.. hehe) to post this.

I'm kinda don't know where else to go. So, what should I do to get arch working (and hopefully cinnamon with it)?

s1ln7m4s7r · 2013-03-31 22:40:34

Can you post exacly the commands you made that generated those errors?

Last edited by s1ln7m4s7r (2013-03-31 22:41:02)

hungerfish · 2013-03-31 23:11:06

I rebooted = all I got was a blinking cursor at the top left of the screen.

When? Immediately after the bootloader (which one? grub?) hands off to the kernel, or only after trying to start X ?
You say things were working before you installed a DM, was the Xserver working (with just xterm) ?
There seem to be some problems when running Arch inside a VM, related to the current xorg-server version, so what happens when you disable the DM again?

lworld · 2013-04-01 05:44:48

Bootloader : Grub 2.

When is it stuck on a blinking cursor : Right after some FS inspection (it prints out some block information, sda, sda 1..2), which is right after two messages: 1. loading core repo Linux, and loading ramdisk.
selecting in GRUB the second option of Archlinux with fallback initramfs produces the exact same thing
Something odd right before blinking cursor: it tries to re-size the VM a couple of time to no avail, until it's stays in the original size.

I have successfully installed and runned xserver before the aforementioned reboot as per the beginners article that explain it , right to the 'choosing your graphical interface' section (which is, supposedly, where the issue lies).

I can't disable the DM, I don't get a TTY or anything.

side-note: I'm coming from Ubuntu, so I'm not sure about this: I did not set xserver to start at boot, if it does not sets itself that way? (which I think it is, 'cause of the re-sizes mentioned above) then perhaps it's not even graphical issues, but the packages the came with cinnamon.

Exact commands:

cd /mnt/arch
mount -t proc proc proc/
mount -t sysfs sys sys/
mount -o bind /dev dev/
mount -t devpts pts dev/pts/
chroot /mnt/arch OR chroot /mnt/arch /bin/bash

gives me first error or the second.

mkdir /mnt/arch
arch-chroot /mnt/arch

gives me second error.

mkdir /mnt/Arch # Just to be a clean :)
mount /dev/sda3 /mnt/Arch # Mounts the root partition
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/Arch/boot # Mounts the boot partition
mount -t proc none /mnt/Arch/proc # Pulls processes. None needed.
mount -t sysfs none /mnt/Arch/sys # Pulls system files. None needed.
mount --bind /dev /mnt/Arch/dev # Little transparency :P
chroot /mnt/Arch # Changes root to /dev/Arch

(from the article I mentioned) gives me the first one.

lworld · 2013-04-01 06:03:00

Hurray! (I just tried it!) ALT+F1-7 gives me the ability to switch TTYs, which also re-exposes TTY1, so I'm able to log back to the system. I shall try to get cinnamon to work.

TTY7 shows a blinking cursor.

I can get server to work on TTY1.
starting lightdm with --test-mode shows a black screen = I FOUND MY OFFENDER (Also kills option to switch TTYs).

FOUND the problem : I didn't install a greeter . Damn, arch is streching my googling ability, I find that awesome, I considered myself quite the googler.

I have another problem, after I punch my credentials in the greeter, cinnamon comes up, couple of seconds, and then "Oh no! Something has gone wrong." screen with a log out button.
Can't switch ttys. but I guess that's another thing, so I'll research that a bit.

Last edited by lworld (2013-04-01 06:03:27)

hungerfish · 2013-04-01 13:19:56

The

"Oh no! Something has gone wrong."

is probably related to compositing, which I also can't get working atm. I have gnome3 setup in a vm, and it just 'fallsback' to no hw acceleration. Btw, which version of xorg-server are you using? (pacman -Qi xorg-server)

lworld · 2013-04-01 14:37:22

I can't access the terminal, for some reason I can't switch TTYs.
For what its worth, I installed two days ago.

How are you (planning to) fixing it?

hungerfish · 2013-04-02 17:04:13

Well, as I'm not dependent on the VM, I'm probably going to just check back every once in a while, update things, and test.
I've not got the time to look into it further. Its a shame really, but as I see it, there is no 'easy fix'.

Arch Linux

#1 2013-03-31 20:08:50

Installed Arch to Vm, installed Cinnamon, now can't boot

#2 2013-03-31 22:40:34

Re: Installed Arch to Vm, installed Cinnamon, now can't boot

#3 2013-03-31 23:11:06

Re: Installed Arch to Vm, installed Cinnamon, now can't boot

#4 2013-04-01 05:44:48

Re: Installed Arch to Vm, installed Cinnamon, now can't boot

#5 2013-04-01 06:03:00

Re: Installed Arch to Vm, installed Cinnamon, now can't boot

#6 2013-04-01 13:19:56

Re: Installed Arch to Vm, installed Cinnamon, now can't boot

#7 2013-04-01 14:37:22

Re: Installed Arch to Vm, installed Cinnamon, now can't boot

#8 2013-04-02 17:04:13

Re: Installed Arch to Vm, installed Cinnamon, now can't boot

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