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#1 2017-02-19 18:55:37

rookie0
Member
Registered: 2017-02-19
Posts: 11

Stuck at "Loading initial ramdisk"

Hello,

after hours of trying I did not find a solution...

I have a dual boot setup with arch and win10. I did not use arch for some time now (maybe around 3 months or so).
Today I wanted to boot arch but it did not pass the "Loading initial ramdisk" from grub.
I tried different things and finally reinstalled arch using the bootstrap image.
I just did a minimal installation without graphical stuff and added mdadm in mkinitcpio.conf for my fake raid.
Then I ran grub-install with --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi
My disk layout is like:

-sda (fake raid)
-- md126p7 root partition
-sdb
-- sdb6 boot partition
-- sdb3 efi partition

then I ran grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

But is still hang at "Loading initial ramdisk".
I dont know what to do. I dont remember that I changed lot of stuff after the last successful boot some months ago. I changed mainboard (actually same as before but repaired) and graphic card (gtx 1070).

One thing I noticed is when it is stuck at "Loading initial ramdisk" the usb device still get initialized (background lights are going off and on) but after that the only thing I can do is ctrl+alt+del for reboot.
I also tried to start with nomodeset and nouveau.modeset=0 and disabled/enabled the iGPU but that did not change anything.

Can someone please help me before I become insane? smile

# generated with genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
# from live system

# /dev/md126p7
UUID=5a300da3-f23a-4957-918b-4143b2502b64	/         	ext4      	rw,relatime,stripe=64,data=ordered	0 1

# /dev/sdb6
UUID=ce2966b1-f303-4997-852c-f82e61ca6880	/boot     	ext4      	rw,relatime,data=ordered	0 2

# /dev/sdb3 LABEL=EFI
UUID=F819-B1C3      	/boot/efi 	vfat      	rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro	0 2

grub.cfg

# vim:set ft=sh
MODULES=""
BINARIES="/sbin/mdmon"
FILES=""
HOOKS="base udev autodetect modconf block mdadm_udev filesystems keyboard fsck"

Best regards!

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#2 2017-02-19 20:46:59

loqs
Member
Registered: 2014-03-06
Posts: 17,196

Re: Stuck at "Loading initial ramdisk"

Welcome to the arch linux forums rookie0.
If the system appears to continue booting just with the display none functional then there might be relevant information in the journal.
Could you please try to chroot in from rescue media and see if the journal contains any records from boots with the issue and post them if they exist.
While you are chrooted in I would suggest installing an alternate kernel alongside your existing kernel, if are using the linux package install linux-lts and vice versa.

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#3 2017-02-19 20:52:30

rookie0
Member
Registered: 2017-02-19
Posts: 11

Re: Stuck at "Loading initial ramdisk"

Hi, thanks for the welcome!

I dont think its continue booting. I tried to to login without seeing anyting (just pressing the right keys) and tried to reboot but nothing happends... so I think its not working correctly.
/var/log/journal is also clean... I guess its not logging yet.
I forgot to mention that I also tried linux-lts kernel. But same results.

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#4 2017-02-19 21:23:01

loqs
Member
Registered: 2014-03-06
Posts: 17,196

Re: Stuck at "Loading initial ramdisk"

What version is the kernel on the boot media that does load successfully?
Can you try booting without the quiet parameter and with loglevel=7

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#5 2017-02-20 13:25:18

rookie0
Member
Registered: 2017-02-19
Posts: 11

Re: Stuck at "Loading initial ramdisk"

Hi,

tried with loglevel=7 and without quiet. Also tried verbose and debug.
Nothing is different and there is still not log file.

I am using archlinux-2017.02.01-dual.iso on usb in uefi mode as boot medium which runs kernel 4.9.6-1-ARCH.
I am starting the usb system with nomodeset. Because if I dont, bootings works only about 30% of the time. Otherwise I get black screen after a moment (I guess when its switching to native graphical mode) and then my monitor lost the signal.
Before I reinstalled everything I also tried to reinstall the nvidia package with pacman and reissued mkinitcpio. But this did not help.

Maybe something hardware (or BIOS/UEFI setting) related?
Or can it be related to my fakeraid setup? I am expecting an error message if something can not be found or mounted and grub gives me such an error if I change the path to initrd image so I guess everything important gets mounted fine,
But when its just not showing output on the screen, it should continue booting and creating a log file... which is not the case which looks (for me) that the error happens right after initramfs starts and before it prints something out... but shouldnt it print something before it initialized usb devices...?
Sorry for my weird writing... I am just trying to understand what is going on smile)

Last edited by rookie0 (2017-02-20 13:40:41)

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#6 2017-02-20 15:44:41

rookie0
Member
Registered: 2017-02-19
Posts: 11

Re: Stuck at "Loading initial ramdisk"

Hi,

one problem solved smile
To exclude grub as a cause I removed it and used systemd-boot.
I have no idea why, but now I can see the messages. The root partition cannot be found. mdadm does not seem to work (I dont see /dev/md/* and lsmod does not show the md raid stuff... no idea why because it is included in initramfs image...).
I take this now as an opportunity to replace my fakeraid with a software raid and try again. Forgot my dual boot setup. So no go for software raid.

Thank you for your help and best regards !

PS: Got it working now. Running mdadm now with IMSM_NO_PLATFORM=1 and everything works fine.

Last edited by rookie0 (2017-02-20 20:56:59)

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