Arch Linux

jouissance

Member

Registered: 2015-07-15

Posts: 20

Can't boot into USB drive installation after fixing fstab

I installed Arch on a USB drive from an existing Arch installation, during which I set the root dir to /mnt/install. When I booted into the newly installed Arch, it mounted the root partition to /mnt/install, as was in my /etc/fstab (this was unintended--I was just using a temporary mountpoint for the install and forgot to change /etc/fstab afterwards). I don't want this; I want the root dir to be /. So I changed /etc/fstab to reflect that:

# /dev/sdb2
UUID=f51dab85-e26d-4793-b12c-0c247cefc62d       /       ext4            rw,relatime,data=ordered        0 1

# /dev/sdb1
UUID=7502-016C          /boot           vfat            rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro    0 2

But now I can't boot into the USB drive anymore. I set it to first priority in BIOS, it ignores that and boots into my HDD install, and when I reboot into BIOS again the priorities have been reset to how they were before I changed them.

My /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf references the correct root device:

title           Arch Linux
linux           /vmlinuz-linux
initrd          /initramfs-linux.img
options         root=/dev/sdb2 rw nomodeset

So I guess I'm missing something... Help appreciated.

Last edited by jouissance (2015-11-24 14:23:13)

Slithery

Administrator

From: Norfolk, UK

Registered: 2013-12-01

Posts: 5,776

Re: Can't boot into USB drive installation after fixing fstab

My /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf references the correct root device:

You don't know that for sure, device names aren't guaranteed to stay the same between boots.
Try using the UUID in your bootloader config.

---

No, it didn't "fix" anything. It just shifted the brokeness one space to the right. - jasonwryan
Closing -- for deletion; Banning -- for muppetry. - jasonwryan

aur - dotfiles