[SOLVED]ip link no longer has devices and X session ignores keypresses

perplexedMurfy · 2016-09-17 16:57:17

Apologies for the title gore, I don't know of a good way to describe this

Arch was operating normally until on one login I had started up my X session and while it would start up successfully (to my knowledge) I couldn't do anything on it. After restarting by holding down the power button (a press seemed to have no effect, even after waiting a minute) I attempted to connect to the internet via the login shell, but upon running the script (automated wpa_supplicent and dhcpcd, didn't get to setting that up properly) it reported that wlp2s0 didn't exist. Investigating further with an `ip link` it only reported the 'lo' device. I figured that I must have somehow messed something up being a newbie at this and did a quick reinstall. However after the reinstall all of the problems persisted! (well, I didn't reinstall my wm because I can't connect to the internet on it so I assumed that the X session ignored the key presses)

Here's a list of everything that I've noticed wrong: (Both before and after the reinstall)
-Caps lock light no longer turns on when caps lock is on, just stays off
-Power button press does nothing
-'lo' is the only listed device with `ip link`
-`iw dev` outputs "nl80211 not found"

I've also noticed that on the Arch ISO that I installed off of none of those problems were present.

I duel boot with Windows 10 with GTP and this issue suddenly appeared so booting into Windows 10 might have caused of these problems. Sadly I do not remember if I had booted into Windows previously to the boot on Arch where these problems occurred.

I don't know where to even begin with trouble shooting this problem so any help is greatly appreciated, thank you in advance.

Last edited by perplexedMurfy (2016-09-17 21:49:22)

ewaller · 2016-09-17 17:45:26

Welcome to Arch Linux.

I always chuckle when I see duel used instead of dual with regards to Windows
I have a sneaky feeling that the Linux kernel you've installed is not the one being loaded by your boot loader. Have you updated your kernel lately?

What are the output of uname -a and of pacman -Qi linux ?
Do the version numbers match?

perplexedMurfy · 2016-09-17 19:19:17

`uname -a` outputs:

Linux TIS-300 4.7.2-1-ARCH #1 SMP PREEPMT Sat Aug 20 23:02:56 CEST 2016 x86_64 GNU/Linux

`pacman -Qi linux` outputs:

Name               : linux
Version            : 4.7.4-1
Description        : The Linux kernel and modules
Architecture       : x86_64
URL                : http://www.kernel.org/
Licenses           : GPL2
Groups             : base
Provides           : None
Depends On         : coreutils  linux-firmware  kmod  mkinitcpio>=0.7
Optional Deps      : crda: to set the correct wireless channels of your country
Required By        : None
Optional For       : None
Conflicts With     : None
Replaces           : None
Installed Size     : 76.74 MiB
Packager           : Tobias Powalowski <tpowa@archlinux.org>
Build Date         : Thu 15 Sep 2016 09:25:52 AM EDT
Install Date       : Sat 17 Sep 2016 11:18:52 AM EDT
Install Reason     : Explicitly installed
Install Script     : Yes
Validated By       : Signature

They don't match. Now that I'm thinking about it I'm pretty sure that I forgot to mount my boot partition on `/boot` while I installing the kernel on my reinstall so that's where the mismatch is coming from. That leads me to speculate that my problems originated by updating my kernal with `pacman -syu` and not having my boot partition mounted, causing them to go out of sync.
Regardless, looks like I should reinstall the Linux kernel the correct way, with the boot partition mounted on `/boot`. Right?

ewaller · 2016-09-17 19:31:47

perplexedMurfy wrote:

They don't match. Now that I'm thinking about it I'm pretty sure that I forgot to mount my boot partition on `/boot` while I installing the kernel on my reinstall so that's where the mismatch is coming from. That leads me to speculate that my problems originated by updating my kernal with `pacman -syu` and not having my boot partition mounted, causing them to go out of sync.
Regardless, looks like I should reinstall the Linux kernel the correct way, with the boot partition mounted on `/boot`. Right?

Precisely. It is easy to fix. Mount the boot partition on /boot and reinstall linux using sudo pacman -S linux
It will install from cache, so you should not need internet access.

Then reboot and see if it is fixed. When you get that working, we will need to do some clean up and then fix it so it does not happen again.

perplexedMurfy · 2016-09-17 19:44:30

Looks like that did the trick, so what do we have to do to make sure this doesn’t happen again?

ewaller · 2016-09-17 20:46:20

First, lets clean up. If you just rebooted, I bet that the boot partition is not mounted on boot. You can verify that with the command mount. If it is mounted, then unmount it.
Then, look in /boot. It should be empty. I'm guessing there are two, maybe three files in there. a kernel, an initrd, and perhaps a boot configuration file. If that is all there are, and you are sure the boot partition is not mounted, then go ahead (as root) and remove those files.

Then, you will need to edit the etc/fstab file to cause the boot partition to be mounted at boot. Add a line that looks like

UUID=585E-2F67      	/boot     	vfat      	rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro	0 2

Replace 585E-2F67 with the UUID for your boot partition. You can find the UUIDs with ls -l /dev/disk/by-partuuid

Edit: Reboot to check. Now the boot partition should be mounted on /boot.

Last edited by ewaller (2016-09-17 20:47:46)

perplexedMurfy · 2016-09-17 21:48:20

Yup, it's now mounted! thanks a bunch for your help!

Arch Linux

#1 2016-09-17 16:57:17

[SOLVED]ip link no longer has devices and X session ignores keypresses

#2 2016-09-17 17:45:26

Re: [SOLVED]ip link no longer has devices and X session ignores keypresses

#3 2016-09-17 19:19:17

Re: [SOLVED]ip link no longer has devices and X session ignores keypresses

#4 2016-09-17 19:31:47

Re: [SOLVED]ip link no longer has devices and X session ignores keypresses

#5 2016-09-17 19:44:30

Re: [SOLVED]ip link no longer has devices and X session ignores keypresses

#6 2016-09-17 20:46:20

Re: [SOLVED]ip link no longer has devices and X session ignores keypresses

#7 2016-09-17 21:48:20

Re: [SOLVED]ip link no longer has devices and X session ignores keypresses

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