Arch Linux

tontsa28

Member

From: Finland

Registered: 2022-07-11

Posts: 21

[SOLVED] "Unknown filesystem type ntfs" while booting

Hi all,

Not very long ago I started getting this weird error while booting:

mount: /new_root: unknown filesystem type 'ntfs'.
    dmesg(1) may have more information after failed mount system call.
You are now being dropped into an emergency shell.
sh: can't access tty: job control turned off
[rootfs ]# 

Perhaps the most strange thing about this is that it doesn't happen always, only sometimes. But when it happens, it is always at the very beginning of the boot process, right after selecting the Arch Linux boot option (I use rEFInd). I do indeed have a Windows 10 installed on my system (it must have something to do with this error because ntfs is mentioned), but it is on a different SSD. I can't really see anything in the dmesg logs since I can only access them after booting successfully (which, from my understanding, flushes the entire dmesg log). I've had this problem for about 1.5 months now. What is going on here?

Last edited by tontsa28 (2023-04-20 16:16:41)

seth

Member

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 50,983

Re: [SOLVED] "Unknown filesystem type ntfs" while booting

bUt iT Is oN A DiFfErEnT SsD

What makes you believe this would have any reelvance?

Since this is happening when mounting new_root, you're mos likely referencing the root device by it's device name (sda1 or so) which is not reliable (if you've two disks, as acknowledged, sda and sdb can change positions randomly)

Post your refind config(s) but in doubt, use "root=PARTUUID=…" instead of "root=/dev/sdX" (same thing w/ nvme's)

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tontsa28

Member

From: Finland

Registered: 2022-07-11

Posts: 21

Re: [SOLVED] "Unknown filesystem type ntfs" while booting

What makes you believe this would have any relevance?

Nothing to be honest, I just decided to mention it in case it would somehow matter but I kind of knew that it wouldn't lol. Anyway, I don't think I need to post the configs as I believe I managed to solve this already. I took a glance at the config files at /boot/refind_linux.conf and /boot/efi/EFI/refind/refind.conf and they were configured exactly as you thought. I have no idea why I didn't use the PARTUUID method in the first place, I probably thought that it would be simply unnecessary (which it absolutely isn't, I've learned my lesson). I haven't had any problems related to this ever since reconfiguring rEFInd, all seems to be well now (though I still wonder why I didn't encounter this issue sooner than 1.5 months ago). When I booted my PC yesterday, it threw an error saying "failed to enable swap" or something similar, but this error hasn't occurred again after I ran "sudo swapon /dev/nvme0n1p2". With that said, I can mark this post as solved and thank you for the help!

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,655

Re: [SOLVED] "Unknown filesystem type ntfs" while booting

For marking as [SOLVED] please edit the thread title in your initial post.