Arch Linux

Lazaretto

Member

Registered: 2019-11-07

Posts: 5

[Solved] Arch hangs on boot after installation

Hi,

I followed the guide in the wiki to install the system (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Installation_guide) (I probably should note I'm using UEFI and dualboot with Windows 10 (tho they're using different disks)) and after the installation I can't manage to boot into the system. I had some problems at first with GRUB that couldn't find the kernel, but that was because of a bad use of pacstrap and it's already solved, so no problem here. After GRUB, the system starts booting into Arch (right thing then), but it freezes/hangs when reading the disk where / is mounted so I can't get to the login prompt, this is what's displayed when it hangs (something alongs these lines):

/dev/sdd2: recovering journal
/dev/sdd2: clean, xxx/xxx files, xxxx/xxxx blocks

I disabled the quiet flag when loading the kernel in GRUB so I could get more info. At first if hanged when the NetworkManager service started, so my bright idea was to chroot into the system using the official iso and disable the service from starting. I booted again but it hanged again, this time with the "[OK] Started: Load/Save RF Kill Switch" message, so after reading a bit through many posts in this forum and other external forums I decided to mask the service using GRUB (kernel params). But it hanged anyways, this time when detecting the audio card of the motherboard (I don't remember this last part very well, but the thing is that the system couldn't boot anyways, again).

Seeing that nothing worked and that it hanged anyways I thought that the NetworkManager wasn't the problem, so I decided to re-enable the NetworkManager service (via chroot) so I don't f*** up the system even more, but I'm completely out of ideas.

If it matters, I'm using an intel cpu (7700K), with the ucode installed, and a AMD GPU (Vega 64) which currently doesn't have drivers installed, tho I don't think I need them now (was planning on installing them once the system worked).

Anyone knows what I'm doing wrong? Any ideas? I'm completely new to Arch (tho I've been using Linux full-time some years now, I only use Windows each couple of months for work related things).

Last edited by Lazaretto (2019-11-07 13:56:21)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,331

Re: [Solved] Arch hangs on boot after installation

You're not necessarily doing anything wrong, there are a few things during early boot that can lead to perceived "hanging". One of the main things in recent times is a lack of entropy, which can be alleviated by adding

random.trust_cpu=on

to your kernel parameters. Another thing that you should ensure depending on when you've followed the installation guide is that you should ensure linux-firmware is installed.

If these two things didn't help, chroot into the system from a live disk after a faulty boot and post

journactl -b-1

see https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Li … in_clients for information on how to best post logs.

PS. You should not rely on /dev/sdXx to identify your harddisk, use https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pe … ice_naming everywhere (mainly boot loader config and fstab)

Last edited by V1del (2019-11-07 12:14:33)

Lazaretto

Member

Registered: 2019-11-07

Posts: 5

Re: [Solved] Arch hangs on boot after installation

Thanks for taking your time to answer

The linux-firmware wasn't installed... oh crap, I really am stupid. Guess this was caused by the pacstrap problem mentioned before. Well I have never have to worry with installing this kind of things so I guess it's normal. I can now finally log into the system and it looks like it boots perfectly fine.

I'm still gonna leave the output of journalctl here just in case: http://ix.io/214E
I see that the GPU causes some warnings (I think those are warnings) but appart from that I don't see any error or panic, I haven't touched many journals so most probably you can see if there really is an error.

To the lack of entropy problem you told me, I did read something about those lines before, I used that parameter but that hadn't work either. I did read on the wiki that haveged package could solve this, so I installed and enabled the service. Maybe I should disable it now?

Thank you so much for the help, really.

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 25,331

Re: [Solved] Arch hangs on boot after installation

Glad to hear.

The journal shows that amdgpu fails to load the non-present firmware  and hence crashes and is unable to display any information anymore. The change regarding explicitly having to install linux-firmware was very recent (it used to be part of the base group) however the installation guide was updated to reflect this.

Regarding the entropy issue, you really only need one of the two, it's not inherently problematic to have both enabled but it also isn't necessary.

If your issue is [SOLVED] please edit the title in your first post to reflect this: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Co … ow_to_post