Arch Linux

coopstah13

Member

Registered: 2009-10-29

Posts: 16

[SOLVED] mkinitcpio not generating initramfs

I'm suffering from many of the same kernel 3.10 issues that have been already reported.

That aside, I am unable to revert back to kernel 3.9.9.

I don't have a live cd/usb available, so I'm using another HDD with arch installed to setup the chroot environment on the USB hdd I need to fix.

I downgraded the kernel and it seemed ok but when I rebooted I was getting some errors about not being able to find the initial filesystem and when I look in the /lib/modules the initramfs for kernel 3.10 was the one being used! So when I downgraded the kernel, it didn't properly rebuild initramfs.

I am trying to manually rebuild with "mkinitcpio -p linux" and it just returns, nothing happens. No hooks are run etc. I need some help getting my system usable.

Been using arch for years...first time anything like this has ever happened.

Last edited by coopstah13 (2013-08-03 16:05:36)

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 30,496

Website

Re: [SOLVED] mkinitcpio not generating initramfs

Are you running mkinitcpio from within the chroot, and do you have that boot partition mounted properly?

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"UNIX is simple and coherent" - Dennis Ritchie; "GNU's Not Unix" - Richard Stallman

coopstah13

Member

Registered: 2009-10-29

Posts: 16

Re: [SOLVED] mkinitcpio not generating initramfs

Yes, I am running from within the chroot and I mounted my / partition to /mnt and /boot partition in the /mnt/boot before chroot into /mnt

falconindy

Developer

From: New York, USA

Registered: 2009-10-22

Posts: 4,111

Website

Re: [SOLVED] mkinitcpio not generating initramfs

Filesystem corruption perhaps? Is /usr/bin/mkinitcpio an empty file? It should do *something*, but you clearly haven't looked into it too much.

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coopstah13

Member

Registered: 2009-10-29

Posts: 16

Re: [SOLVED] mkinitcpio not generating initramfs

I'm not sure why you think I haven't looked into it much, I've spent the better part of today and last night trying to solve the problem on my own before arriving here and finally asking for some help.

That being said, you may be onto something with filesystem corruption or the like. My /usr/bin/mkinitcpio file is 0 bytes...

I tried reinstalling that as well but I get a bunch of errors about files already existing on the filesystem.

coopstah13

Member

Registered: 2009-10-29

Posts: 16

Re: [SOLVED] mkinitcpio not generating initramfs

OK I just deleted all the files that were conflicting for the mkinitcpio package and reinstalled it, generated a new mkinitcpio and now I can reboot and get back into XFCE on the 3.9.9 kernel...Going to mark this solved for now.

Would never have thought to check the mkinitcpio binary..thanks!