Arch Linux

zoidby

Member

From: UTC+1

Registered: 2009-04-25

Posts: 28

Re: Linux 5.7 cannot boot with intel-ucode.img

The article for rEFInd was already updated on 11 May 2020.

And as i understand this, they changed this in the kernel. Isn’t is obvious that changing the config parser without changing the config file will lead to problems?

WickedWizard

Member

From: Canada

Registered: 2018-10-15

Posts: 29

Re: Linux 5.7 cannot boot with intel-ucode.img

I ran into this today too.  Thank goodness for the Arch Forums.  In rEFInd you have a 'boot into terminal' option.  Once booted into the terminal I opened /boot/refind.conf for editing and made the following changes:

"Boot using default options"       "root=PARTUUID=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx rw add_efi_memmap quiet initrd=/boot/intel-ucode.img initrd=/boot/initramfs-linux.img modprobe.blacklist=nouveau nvidia_drm.modeset=1"
to
"Boot using default options"       "root=PARTUUID=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxxxxxxxxx rw add_efi_memmap quiet initrd=\boot\intel-ucode.img initrd=\boot\initramfs-linux.img modprobe.blacklist=nouveau nvidia_drm.modeset=1"

It works now

Last edited by WickedWizard (2020-06-14 01:23:30)

nourathar

Member

From: Bxl

Registered: 2013-04-26

Posts: 109

Re: Linux 5.7 cannot boot with intel-ucode.img

Thanks for this !
I am using efistub and ran into this yesterday but found this thread first: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=256525
But with properly backward-slashed initrd-paths the new kernel and intel-ucode run with no problem.

Stratoblaster

Member

From: Florida

Registered: 2018-12-04

Posts: 59

Re: Linux 5.7 cannot boot with intel-ucode.img

Thanks for this !
But with properly backward-slashed initrd-paths the new kernel and intel-ucode run with no problem.

I wonder if this was done by a Windows kinda person

---

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

eschwartz

Fellow

Registered: 2014-08-08

Posts: 4,097

Re: Linux 5.7 cannot boot with intel-ucode.img

Keep in mind that the executable file format for the UEFI firmware is "Windows PE32+". I don't think there was ever any doubt which kind of person designed UEFI.

The kernel issue appears to have been caused by code that rewrote the handling from scratch, but did so strictly "according to spec", that spec being "UEFI Uses backslashes as directory separators".

Note: the author of the relevant kernel commit is an arm.com employee and has a kernel.org email address.

---

Managing AUR repos The Right Way -- aurpublish (now a standalone tool)

fent

Member

Registered: 2016-01-09

Posts: 3

Re: Linux 5.7 cannot boot with intel-ucode.img

Sorry- looks like it was efi/libstub: Rewrite file I/O routine.

Thanks for pointing out that regression. I submitted a patch to restore the old behavior. So in the next kernel release "initrd=/EFI/initramfs-linux.img" (with "/" instead of "\") should also work again.

viniciustinti

Member

Registered: 2015-05-07

Posts: 2

Re: Linux 5.7 cannot boot with intel-ucode.img

I can confirm that replacing the slashes in /boot/refind_linux.conf with backslashes and it boots again.

But why was this needed? It did work fine with slashes before. Every other month someone makes a small, seemingly unnecessary, change like that and linux wont boot anymore. Completely without any notice. And then i have to figure out whats the problem again. This really sucks.

Fixed for me too.

MaddyBoo

Member

From: Portland, OR

Registered: 2017-05-02

Posts: 10

Website

Re: Linux 5.7 cannot boot with intel-ucode.img

I ran into this issue too. Because the error message was saying my initramfs wasn't found, and the fact that I hadn't changed my rEFInd configuration in months, I assumed that my initramfs images must have been accidentally deleted or failed to be created properly after my last kernel update.

I booted into archiso, saw that the initramfs images were still in /boot as usual, and though maybe they were corrupted, so tried re-running mkinitcpio. The issue persisted, though, leading me to be really confused.

I had some intuition tell me to try and remove the leading `/`, and to my surprise that worked. I was suddenly extremely confused, wondering if I had somehow added leading `/`s to my configuration on accident at some point?

Really glad I found this thread to reassure me that I'm not totally crazy!

I wonder if this would be a good notice to publish on the Arch news feed? I have a script that checks for new RSS entries before I run `pacman -Syu`, it would have been nice to be warned beforehand that manual intervention might be necessary.

loqs

Member

Registered: 2014-03-06

Posts: 17,310

Re: Linux 5.7 cannot boot with intel-ucode.img

Thanks for pointing out that regression. I submitted a patch to restore the old behavior. So in the next kernel release "initrd=/EFI/initramfs-linux.img" (with "/" instead of "\") should also work again.

Is https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/ke … 7bd8dce8e4 the fix?

fent

Member

Registered: 2016-01-09

Posts: 3

Re: Linux 5.7 cannot boot with intel-ucode.img

Is https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/ke … 7bd8dce8e4 the fix?

Yes, that's the fix. Should apply to both v5.7 and v5.8

quaec

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2010-06-10

Posts: 12

Re: Linux 5.7 cannot boot with intel-ucode.img

I got hit with the same problem today after I upgraded my system. Unfortunately the posted answers didn't apply to me directly because I don't use rEFInd.

I got my system running again by listing the existing UEFI entries and manually copying the existing "Arch Linux" one to use backslashes on the initrd arguments:

efibootmgr -c -d /dev/sda -p 1 -L "Arch Linux new" -l 'vmlinuz-linux' -u 'root=/dev/VGone/LVarch rw initrd=\intel-ucode.img initrd=\initramfs-linux.img'

Unfortunately I'm not sure how this whole UEFI boot-proccess works on my system. I think that it doesn't use rEFInd nor Grub according to the wiki.

This is the content of my EFI-Partition:

$ ls -l /boot/
insgesamt 66560
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 39772188 26. Jun 13:34 initramfs-linux-fallback.img
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 17759522 26. Jun 13:33 initramfs-linux.img
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  3161088 16. Jun 19:50 intel-ucode.img
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root  7455424 26. Jun 13:32 vmlinuz-linux

Could anyone point me into the right direction on how my arch installation works?

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,627

Re: Linux 5.7 cannot boot with intel-ucode.img

You are using EFISTUB which is a direct boot entry stored in the nvram of your BIOS. The change that lead to this issue changed the kernels command line parser to be more in line with the UEFI spec, which mandates backward slashes for path arguments. You might want to read https://www.happyassassin.net/posts/201 … work-then/ for a general overview.

Last edited by V1del (2020-06-26 22:18:59)

loqs

Member

Registered: 2014-03-06

Posts: 17,310

Re: Linux 5.7 cannot boot with intel-ucode.img

linux 5.7.6-arch1 included the fix which restored the old behavior of allowing both forwardand backward slashes https://git.archlinux.org/linux.git/com … f8c8839ed2

quaec

Member

From: Germany

Registered: 2010-06-10

Posts: 12

Re: Linux 5.7 cannot boot with intel-ucode.img

You are using EFISTUB which is a direct boot entry stored in the nvram of your BIOS. The change that lead to this issue changed the kernels command line parser to be more in line with the UEFI spec, which mandates backward slashes for path arguments. You might want to read https://www.happyassassin.net/posts/201 … work-then/ for a general overview.

Thank you, that's exactly what I was looking for! I installed Arch on this system a few years ago and after the installation there was never a need to touch UEFI again so I forgot about how it was set up.