Arch Linux

teo123man

Member

From: Balıkesir

Registered: 2023-08-02

Posts: 3

New Installation - Stuck at "loading initial ramdisk"

Hello! Although I've been somewhat familiar with Debian-based distros, I'm a complete newbie to Arch Linux. I followed a 2-hour tutorial video from Learn Linux TV to install Arch. I made the partitions, installed the system(as kernels both linux and linux-lts) and grub, then rebooted and all of it seemed completely fine. Then I installed XFCE and light dm and rebooted again. This time I got stuck at

    Booting 'Arch Linux'
Loading Linux linux-lts ...
Loading initial ramdisk ...

I tried pressing the button e at grub and adding "nomodeset" "acpi=off" "iommu=soft" "ignore_loglevel" seperately and together, also deleting "quiet", but these did not work, the error persisted.

I don't know what to do really. There could be a lot of missing info in my topic, I don't really know which infos are needed exactly. I'll certainly provide the infos as they are asked for. I am going to be very grateful if this can be solved. Thank you guys in advance!

Last edited by teo123man (2023-08-02 16:37:44)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,811

Re: New Installation - Stuck at "loading initial ramdisk"

Did you install and configure a greeter for lightdm? https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/LightDM#Greeter

That said random video tutorials are not supported here. Ask the author of the video for help, or follow the supported installation methods: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Installation_guide

teo123man

Member

From: Balıkesir

Registered: 2023-08-02

Posts: 3

Re: New Installation - Stuck at "loading initial ramdisk"

I'm not sure what you mean by configuration but I installed a greeter for lightdm and enabled lightdm afterwards.

And please don't worry about the random video, I looked at the arch wiki and what I did seems to match it. I did not use archinstall or any other installer.

Last edited by teo123man (2023-08-02 17:08:03)

V1del

Forum Moderator

Registered: 2012-10-16

Posts: 21,811

Re: New Installation - Stuck at "loading initial ramdisk"

Reading the link would answer that, and if the installed greeter was anything but the gtk-greeter then you need to configure lightdm to start said greeter, otherwise you will simply land in the case of starting lightdm which can't show you anything.

When "failing to boot" can you switch the VT with Ctrl+Alt+F2 and/or try the kernel parameter

systemd.unit=multi-user.target

and does that get you back to a terminal? Which graphics hardware/drivers are used?

Last edited by V1del (2023-08-02 17:18:39)

teo123man

Member

From: Balıkesir

Registered: 2023-08-02

Posts: 3

Re: New Installation - Stuck at "loading initial ramdisk"

To be specific, I installed lightdm and lightdm-gtk-greeter packages, so I guess I don't need a configuration. And well, I can't switch the VT, nothing happens on the screen when I press the buttons. I added that kernel parameter but unfortunately it wasn't any help as it didn't give any more output.

I don't recall the model but the gpu is amd, so I installed mesa for driver. I don't know if it is of any help but I installed Xorg for display server.

Could the problem be because of grub? Because, I saw in Arch wiki that loading initial ramdisk is the job of grub. What do you think?

edit: After trying linux kernel(the one that is not lts) and adding nomodeset and iommu=soft to kernel parameter, it seems I can switch the VT and get into tty2. I have succesfully reached the system but I don't really know what should I do.

Last edited by teo123man (2023-08-03 14:48:05)