Arch Linux

okyr

Member

Registered: 2013-02-22

Posts: 6

[Solved] Gummiboot fails to load Initramfs

I installed Arch on two partitions, one encrypted with LVM on LUKS
(sda2) and a separate /boot partition (sda1). I use gummiboot as my bootloader.

The gummiboot entry which loads the initramfs looks as follows:

title       Arch linux
efi         \EFI\arch\vmlinuz-linux.efi
options     initrd=\EFI\arch\initramfs-linux.img cryptdevice=/dev/sda2:vgroup root=/dev/mapper/vgroup-root rw acpi_backlight=vendor

After each kernel update (i.e. rebuilding the initramfs) I manually copy
the images to where the loader entries point.

cp /boot/initramfs-linux.img /boot/EFI/arch/
cp /boot/initramfs-linux-fallback.img /boot/EFI/arch/
cp /boot/vmlinuz-linux /boot/EFI/arch/
cp /boot/vmlinuz-linux /boot/EFI/arch/vmlinuz-linux.efi

(Actually I'm not sure if I need the .efi extension on vimlinuz-linux,
so I copy them both...)

When this Laptop boots, it shows the gummiboot loader and I select the
"Arch Linux" entry. With the last kernel update, when I hit the "Arch
Linux" boot entry, the screen goes black for some seconds, then the
whole screen gets pixelated with some colorful static noise.

It looks like the initramfs is corrupted/not found, so chrooted into my
system from the live installer and reinstalled the kernel, mkinitcpio
and gummiboot ('linux' 3.12.7-2, 'gummiboot' 41-1, 'mkinitcpio' 16-2).

I also re-ran

gummiboot install

Still, the system refuses to boot.

Since I get no error output at all, I can't provide much more debug
information. I am aware of a rather large number of threads but in
virtually all of those cases the boot process crashes with some helpful
error messages...

Anyone got some helpful hint? It looks like I am missing something
obvious.

Last edited by okyr (2014-01-20 15:34:28)

gegenschall

Member

From: Munich, Germany

Registered: 2013-10-09

Posts: 33

Re: [Solved] Gummiboot fails to load Initramfs

You might be affected by this bug. It has been reported upstream but hasn't yet been pinpointed or even solved.

Until then you could try downgrading the kernel or test if compiling the kernel yourself works.

okyr

Member

Registered: 2013-02-22

Posts: 6

Re: [Solved] Gummiboot fails to load Initramfs

Thanks for the help, downgrading indeed solved the problem.

Marking this as solved

alroar

Member

Registered: 2012-10-15

Posts: 27

Re: [Solved] Gummiboot fails to load Initramfs

By the way, why are you copying your bootimages manually? Your folders seem odd to me, but maybe thats just a lack of information on my side.

An loader entry on my box looks like this:

root@x230 /boot/loader/entries # cat arch.conf 
title	Arch Linux
linux	/vmlinuz-linux
initrd	/initramfs-linux.img
options	root=/dev/sda2 quiet rw init=/usr/lib/systemd/systemd add_efi.memmap acpi_osi="!Windows 2012"

The .img files are simply in /boot where mkinitcpio puts them after the kernel update.

gegenschall

Member

From: Munich, Germany

Registered: 2013-10-09

Posts: 33

Re: [Solved] Gummiboot fails to load Initramfs

It's actually add_efi_memmap. No dot. :-)