You are not logged in.

#1 2017-12-03 05:52:23

jwd
Member
Registered: 2017-12-03
Posts: 5

[SOLVED] Stuck at "Loading initial ramdisk"

Decided today to try a fresh install on my Thinkpad X230 with dm-crypt, and running into some frustrating issues. Hate to make my first post a request for help, but alas.

The details: Fresh install to a Sandisk SSD in a Thinkpad X230. GPT disk, attempting to boot with EFI and Grub. Followed the setup on the wiki here. Partitions are now set up as:

/dev/sda1  EFI System (vfat)
/dev/sda2  Linux filesystem (ext2)
/dev/sda3  Linux filesystem (LUKS encrypted)

with root and swap using LVM on /dev/sda3. I've added hooks to mkinitcpio, and added the cryptdevice=UUID=[uuid] to GRUB config before generating grub.cfg. It was a little unclear if I should use the EFI partition as /boot, or if /dev/sda2 should function for that purpose. I've tried both with no success.

I've searched around the forums a good bit and thus far failed to find a solution. Any help would be much appreciated!

Last edited by jwd (2017-12-03 18:14:56)

Offline

#2 2017-12-03 08:25:19

Monkey_Mod
Member
Registered: 2017-12-02
Posts: 9

Re: [SOLVED] Stuck at "Loading initial ramdisk"

From what I've read it seems your /dev/sda2 will be your /boot partition. Did you preload the LVM module stated here? Are you using LVM for your /boot & are you encrypting the boot partition?

Last edited by Monkey_Mod (2017-12-03 09:24:10)

Offline

#3 2017-12-03 14:08:01

Slithery
Administrator
From: Norfolk, UK
Registered: 2013-12-01
Posts: 5,776

Re: [SOLVED] Stuck at "Loading initial ramdisk"

You don't need a separate boot partition as well as an EFI partition.

The EFI partition should be your /boot.


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

Offline

#4 2017-12-03 15:06:17

jwd
Member
Registered: 2017-12-03
Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] Stuck at "Loading initial ramdisk"

Thanks for your replies! I have tried with setting the EFI partition as boot, and I get the same result. Here are the steps taken:

cryptsetup open /dev/sda3 cryptolvm
mount /dev/mapper/MyVol-root /mnt
swapon /dev/mapper/MyVol-swap
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot
arch-chroot /mnt
grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot --bootloader-id=grub

vi /etc/default/grub
# Add cryptdevice=UUID=f5a72....:cryptolvm to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX
# `root=' gets added correctly by grub-mkconfig so no need to add it to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Am I missing a step? Did I misunderstand something in the wiki along the way?

Offline

#5 2017-12-03 15:46:47

seth
Member
Registered: 2012-09-03
Posts: 49,981

Re: [SOLVED] Stuck at "Loading initial ramdisk"

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot
grub-install ... --efi-directory=/boot ...

Offline

#6 2017-12-03 16:09:15

jwd
Member
Registered: 2017-12-03
Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] Stuck at "Loading initial ramdisk"

seth wrote:

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot
grub-install ... --efi-directory=/boot ...

Thanks for the reply, but I'm not sure I follow. When I navigate to /boot after using `arch-chroot', I see what I'd expect. Is there a problem in how I'm specifying the paths, or the order of running these steps?

Offline

#7 2017-12-03 16:21:22

seth
Member
Registered: 2012-09-03
Posts: 49,981

Re: [SOLVED] Stuck at "Loading initial ramdisk"

Ah, sorry - I missed the chroot step.

Ruling out the obvious: can you boot with the failsafe initramfs?
Are you sure about the grub path (could be /boot/EFI/grub for the config)
Seen https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB#Boot_freezes ?

Offline

#8 2017-12-03 16:36:15

jwd
Member
Registered: 2017-12-03
Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] Stuck at "Loading initial ramdisk"

seth wrote:

Ah, sorry - I missed the chroot step.

Ruling out the obvious: can you boot with the failsafe initramfs?
Are you sure about the grub path (could be /boot/EFI/grub for the config)
Seen https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GRUB#Boot_freezes ?

Using the failsafe initramfs gives the same outcome: I get "Loading Linux linux ... / Loading initial ramdisk ..." and then nothing.

I just tried the instructions here to explicitly specify the boot directory as the same as the EFI directory. Same result as before.

I see that it suggests removing `add_efi_memmap' at the link you provided, but I don't see that anywhere, either in the /etc/default/grub nor in the resulting grub.cfg file. Should I be looking somewhere else?

Offline

#9 2017-12-03 18:14:38

jwd
Member
Registered: 2017-12-03
Posts: 5

Re: [SOLVED] Stuck at "Loading initial ramdisk"

Update: stumbled upon a Thinkpad X230 page on the wiki which I hadn't found previously: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Le … nkPad_X230. Added MODULES=(i915) to mkinitcpio.conf, regenerated, and was able to get past the blockage.

For future googlers: it also didn't like cryptdevice=UUID=[uuid], and dumped me to an emergency console. The fix was to just use cryptdevice=/dev/sdaX:cryptolvm and uncomment the appropriate line in /etc/default/grub.

Thanks all for the help!

Offline

Board footer

Powered by FluxBB