[SOLVED] Cannot boot. No more disk decryption prompt on boot.

CorvusCorax · 2023-03-30 13:18:15

Hi All,

This is my first time on the forums, so go easy on me. I used to be able to find answers in WiKi or elsewhere before, but seems that I'm stuck on this issue.

I update my Arch install pretty much every day. 2023-03-29 was not an exception. However, today I can no longer boot into my install.

I have encrypted partition that contains LVM group with two logical volumes. One of the logical volumes is my root, another one is swap. Root partition is using btrfs. /boot and /EFI are separate partitions and are not encrypted.

If I boot into some live Linux distro, I can decrypt my disk, mount logical volumes and access the data, so I assume that there is not issue with the file system of data corruption.

I also have Plymouth installed.

What happens when i boot:

If I boot normally (i.e.with Plymouth) I get Plymouth animation, but prompt to unlock/decrypt the disk never comes up. If I remove "quite" and "splash" from my Grub before booting, it waits for my root (i.e., it is looking for LVM volume) for 10 seconds, does not find it (because it never asks to unlock the encrypted partition) and then shows:

ERROR: device '/dev/mapper/ArchSys-root' not found. Skipping fsck.
mount: /new_root: no filesystem type specified.
You are now being dropped into an emergency shell.
sh: can't access tty; job control turned off

What I have tried:

Since the data is intact, I have tried arch-chroot'ing into my root partition and running mkinitcpio -P
At first, it complained that it cannot find hooks for Plymouth. So I removed Plymouth hooks from /etc/mkinitcpio.conf
Then ran mkinitcpio -P again.

When that didn't help, I also tried to rebuild GRUB config by running grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

That didn't help either.

At this point I've decided to ask for help. before I do more damage to the system.

I don't really know what information would be helpful in diagnosing the issue, so if configs or output from certain commands are needed - I'm more than happy to provide them.

Last edited by CorvusCorax (2023-03-30 14:55:37)

City-busz · 2023-03-30 14:35:24

Plymouth was moved to the official repositories, and it needs some manual changes. The plymouth-encrypt hook was removed from the package, because the encrypt hook supports plymouth now. You should replace the 'plymouth-encrypt' hook with 'encrypt' in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf.

CorvusCorax · 2023-03-30 14:55:15

@City-busz

Thank you! replacing "plymouth-encrypt" with "encrypt" in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf and running mkinitcpio -P fixed the issue.

Now my KDE Plasma doesn't load... but that is a anoter issue. <- Oh, ant this is fixed. For whatever reason my SDDM service got disabled.

Last edited by CorvusCorax (2023-03-30 15:39:21)

jabbo · 2023-03-30 15:02:54

I have the same problem as @CorvusCorax and if I was able to successfully boot my system, I'd happily try the solution @City-busz suggested.
But I have no idea how to do that when all I have is the grub console or the rootfs console.
@CorcusCorax, would you mind to describe the steps for me and others with the same problem? Or point us to the info?
Thanks in advance.

CorvusCorax · 2023-03-30 15:15:10

Sure,

This will be based on what I did. It might be different for you, because steps will differ depending on how your system is set-up.

1. Get Arch installation USB. Instructions here -> https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/USB_fl … ion_medium
2. Boot your machine from Arch installation USB
3. Mount you root partition. That's where the things start to differ. For me the steps were:
3.1 decrypt the root disk by running

cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/nvme0n1p1 MyRoot

3.2 Activate LVM volumes by running

vgchange -ay

3.3 Mount logical volume by running

sudo mount /dev/MyRoot/root -o subvol=@ /mnt

3.4 Mound the boot partition

sudo mount /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt/boot

3.5 Mount EFI partition

sudo mount /dev/nvme0n1p3 /mnt/boot/efi

4. Chroot into you mounted disk by running

arch-chroot /mnt

5. Edit mkinitcpio.conf file by running

sudo nvim /etc/mkinitcpio.conf

6. Save the file
7. run

sudo mkinitcpio -P

8. Leave chroot by simply typing

exit

and hitting enter key
9. Once you are back at the install USB prompt - reboot

Last edited by CorvusCorax (2023-03-31 06:23:00)

jabbo · 2023-03-30 18:21:34

Thanks, @CorvusCorax, that was really helpful. And thanks to @City-busz, for the solution, too.

For my setup, it was both less complicated and more complicated, so I'll just leave this here as a second example:

see above up to step 3, where things start to differ. In my case:
3.1 decrypt the root disk by running

cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/nvme0n1p2 cryptlvm

3.2. mount it by running

mount /dev/mapper/cryptlvm /mnt

3.3. I have a separate (unencrypted) boot partition, I had to mount that, too, otherwise step 7 would have failed:

mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/boot

rest, see above.

Last edited by jabbo (2023-03-31 11:11:57)

CorvusCorax · 2023-03-31 06:28:39

jabbo is correct. I forgot to mention, that you need to mount /boot partition as well. I had to do that too, since my kernel images are also on a separate partition. Actually, my EFI related stuff is in a separate partition as well, so I've mounted that too. Not sure if it was necessary, but I did it nonetheless.
I've updated my post for completeness.

Arch Linux

#1 2023-03-30 13:18:15

[SOLVED] Cannot boot. No more disk decryption prompt on boot.

#2 2023-03-30 14:35:24

Re: [SOLVED] Cannot boot. No more disk decryption prompt on boot.

#3 2023-03-30 14:55:15

Re: [SOLVED] Cannot boot. No more disk decryption prompt on boot.

#4 2023-03-30 15:02:54

Re: [SOLVED] Cannot boot. No more disk decryption prompt on boot.

#5 2023-03-30 15:15:10

Re: [SOLVED] Cannot boot. No more disk decryption prompt on boot.

#6 2023-03-30 18:21:34

Re: [SOLVED] Cannot boot. No more disk decryption prompt on boot.

#7 2023-03-31 06:28:39

Re: [SOLVED] Cannot boot. No more disk decryption prompt on boot.

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