Unknown problem system does boot (installed as systemd-boot)

lngndvs · 2020-10-22 01:38:34

Not long I had a satisfactory arch system working, having used systemd-boot as boot manager, one day the system would not boot. After a while, having work to do, I installed Manjaro, mounted /home and /usr/local as separate partitions. My fondest hope was that Manjaro would pick up the Arch partition, and install a stanza to boot it, as it has usually done for other lost systems in the past.

This idea was completely not working. When installing Manjaro, and when running installation isos from other distros (Debian, for example), the paritition was acknowledged as an Arch installation, but no boot stanza appeared in the Grub boot menu.

Finally, I downloaded Systemrescuecd (SRCD) and booted it via USB. I opted to boot an existing system, SRCD saw the Arch partition, but it would not boot. A message said modules could not be loaded. No boot.

Now I'm thinking, 'OK, Arch isn't installed with grub, so SRCD is probably not able to deal with it.' So I've investigated.

This is a UEFI system, so I used an efi parition---I don't remember which I used, either /boot or /boot/efi as the boot mount point, either in the Arch install or Manjaro. I mounted the boot partition, but could not find either a kernel or an initramfs file in that partition. In /usr/lib/modules ... was found a linux-5.8 directory, WITH a vmlinuz folder, which seemed strange. Can it be that the kernel is found in that /usr/lib/modules tree? Or is that the kernel headers? Now things are getting interesting. Here's the file:

# file ./usr/lib/modules/5.8.10-arch1-1/vmlinuz
./usr/lib/modules/5.8.10-arch1-1/vmlinuz: Linux kernel x86 boot executable bzImage, version 5.8.10-arch1-1 (linux@archlinux) #1 SMP PREEMPT Thu, 17 Sep 2020 18:01:06 +0000, RO-rootFS, swap_dev 0x7, Normal VGA

It occurs to me that if I wish to resurrect the Arch system, I may need to do some work. I don't understand what. Install a kernel and make an initramfs ? Install grub?

All of this is very curious.

Someone, Praytell, can you explain this all to me?

First, though, I am pretty happy with the state of my Manjaro system. I was happy with the state of the Arch system. Both of them used the same /usr/local, in which some self-compiled software is installed. (That's a crazy good way to do it, saving me a bunch of work when installing a new OS!).

Maybe I ought to install Arch from scratch again (as I have done a dizzying number of times, which is why I looked for a short cut---I am not one who lives for the system, but one who has found it very, very useful in doing work unrelated to computer science. I like knowing what is going on, but installing arch 30 times is not going to be as useful to me as perhaps to others. This, by the way, is the retort I have finally developed to polite encouragement of Arch developers to do it the hard way in the interest of edification. I like the Manjaro i3 defaults, but I like Arch.

Another issue: this is not the first time a meticulously assembled Arch installation has disappeared on me. My theory has been I have not noticed the need to type my password a second time at the end of a long session of installing or updating.

Aside from this, Arch Rocks! Thanks to the diligence of the Arch community,

Alan Davis

solskog · 2020-10-22 02:25:13

As @Scimmia pointed out my solution not withstand sorry.

Last edited by solskog (2020-10-22 04:17:48)

Scimmia · 2020-10-22 03:05:38

Mounting the ESP to /mnt/boot/efi or /mnt/efi is NOT a good idea with systemd-boot.

See what partitions you have with something like lsblk -f and go from there. That's where things need to start, and without that, there's not much we can really tell you, the previous post not withstanding. It WILL NOT fix your issue.

Last edited by Scimmia (2020-10-22 03:09:34)

solskog · 2020-10-22 03:10:02

Scimmia wrote:

Mounting the ESP to /dev/sdXW /mnt/boot/efi or /mnt/efi is NOT a good idea with systemd-boot.

Because OP's EFI partition is not yet identified, Yes I agree. But, how about a fresh install with systemd-boot?

I have installed systemd-boot on my system to checkout. When I use boot partition of type "Linux extended boot" with filesystem type fat32, then kernel and initramfs can be located on a separate BOOT partition. Therefore I can mount ESP on /mnt/efi and BOOT on /mnt/boot. But I cann't tell OP's partition layout.

Last edited by solskog (2020-10-22 06:03:22)

lngndvs · 2020-10-22 08:34:11

My ESP partition is /dev/nvme1n1p1 . Why is it not a good idea to mount it to /mnt/boot/efi or /mnt/efi?

I have not gotten as far as actually mounting and chrooting the partitions. I mounted the ESP partition only to search for the kernel. Where is the kernel? There is nothing in the partition "/boot" on the parition that is the root partition in that install.

My fear is that either I cannot boot it via SRCD or something important is broken.

I think I will just reinstall Arch.

Thank you for the responses.

V1del · 2020-10-22 08:42:17

Please post the actual output of lsblk -f in [ code ] [ /code ] tags without spaces otherwise we have to rely on your interpretations which might not have the full picture.

It's not a good idea to mount it at these locations because systemd-boot cannot read the kernel image from a linux filesystem. The easiest to fix this is to just map it to /boot so that kernel images are written to the ESP and can thus be handled by systemd-boot. By your account you don't see the kernel images (... you'd see vmlinuz-linux and initramfs-linux.img) on the ESP, which would be inherently wrong and make it unsurprising that systemd-boot cannot find the images... Granted systemd-boot actually works that's also not clear yet.

I suggest you mount the partitions according to your understanding of how they should be and then post

lsblk -f
efibootmgr -v
tree $mounted esp location$ # install tree if it isn't yet

Last edited by V1del (2020-10-22 08:45:28)

Arch Linux

#1 2020-10-22 01:38:34

Unknown problem system does boot (installed as systemd-boot)

#2 2020-10-22 02:25:13

Re: Unknown problem system does boot (installed as systemd-boot)

#3 2020-10-22 03:05:38

Re: Unknown problem system does boot (installed as systemd-boot)

#4 2020-10-22 03:10:02

Re: Unknown problem system does boot (installed as systemd-boot)

#5 2020-10-22 08:34:11

Re: Unknown problem system does boot (installed as systemd-boot)

#6 2020-10-22 08:42:17

Re: Unknown problem system does boot (installed as systemd-boot)

Board footer