Arch Linux

sdanave

Member

Registered: 2020-10-23

Posts: 32

[SOLVED] : Arch Linux Boot Fails

Hi All,

While I was updating Arch with sudo pacman -Syu, the machine hanged. I had to hard boot and since then it gives the following error :

Loading linux linux-lts
error : premature end of file /boot/vmlinuz-linux-lts
Loading initial ramdisk
error : you need to load the kernel first

I have tried the following using Arch install medium

After mounting the root and efi volumes, I connected to internet. Then I did arch-chroot and did pacman -S linux. The system went through installation but after rebooting is back to the same error.

I also tried reinstalling by doing a complete overwrite, but no use.

I also tried doing mkinitcpio -P. Did not help.

What can I do additionally ?

Thanks in advance for your help

Solution : Reinstallation of the GRUB bootloader solved my issue.

Sachin

Last edited by sdanave (2023-10-28 16:42:55)

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 13,727

Re: [SOLVED] : Arch Linux Boot Fails

What did you mount and where? it sounds like you didn't mount your /boot partition. Check your fstab to make sure you had everything.

sdanave

Member

Registered: 2020-10-23

Posts: 32

Re: [SOLVED] : Arch Linux Boot Fails

I mounted the following :

/dev/nvme0n1p2 - /mnt - This is the root partition
/dev/nvme0n1p1 - /mnt/boot - This is the EFI partition

arch-chroot was done after mounting.

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 13,727

Re: [SOLVED] : Arch Linux Boot Fails

and fstab?

sdanave

Member

Registered: 2020-10-23

Posts: 32

Re: [SOLVED] : Arch Linux Boot Fails

Did genfstab -U /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
Then did vim /mnt/etc/fstab - the entries seem to be correct

One thing I noticed that when I did pacman -S linux, it gave an error related to Packagekit - is that relevant ?

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 13,727

Re: [SOLVED] : Arch Linux Boot Fails

You were supposed to LOOK at your fstab, not write it. Now who know what you've got.

sdanave

Member

Registered: 2020-10-23

Posts: 32

Re: [SOLVED] : Arch Linux Boot Fails

Oh my bad.

Is anything possible now ? Should I just reinstall - I have data on the partitions, which I would prefer not to lose (I have an old backup).

So can I keep the root partition intact and reinstall ?

Sorry for the basic questions and I much appreciate your time.

sdanave

Member

Registered: 2020-10-23

Posts: 32

Re: [SOLVED] : Arch Linux Boot Fails

I could solve this by reinstalling the bootloader.

Thank you once again for your time.

ThomasG

Member

Registered: 2011-05-16

Posts: 6

Re: [SOLVED] : Arch Linux Boot Fails

Ooooookayyyyy..    I ran into a similar Problem today. Upgrade from linux-lts-6.1.69 to linux-lts-6.6.17

pacman -Syu Update went smoothly according to the output. No errors that caught my eye. But then it did hang on shutdown with active disk light for ~15 minutes. Systemd-journal from that time I pulled afterwards:

Feb 20 23:17:54 starfury systemd[1]: user-0.slice: Consumed 2w 7h 15min 26.708s CPU time, 60.1G memory peak.
Feb 20 23:19:22 starfury systemd[1]: polkit.service: State 'stop-sigterm' timed out. Killing.
Feb 20 23:19:22 starfury systemd[1]: polkit.service: Killing process 1052 (polkitd) with signal SIGKILL.
Feb 20 23:19:22 starfury systemd[1]: polkit.service: Failed to kill control group /system.slice/polkit.service, ignoring: Invalid argument
Feb 20 23:19:22 starfury systemd[1]: rtkit-daemon.service: State 'stop-sigterm' timed out. Killing.
Feb 20 23:19:22 starfury systemd[1]: rtkit-daemon.service: Killing process 93096 (rtkit-daemon) with signal SIGKILL.
Feb 20 23:19:22 starfury systemd[1]: upower.service: State 'stop-sigterm' timed out. Killing.
Feb 20 23:19:22 starfury systemd[1]: upower.service: Killing process 1645 (upowerd) with signal SIGKILL.
Feb 20 23:19:22 starfury systemd[1]: postfix.service: Stopping timed out. Terminating.
Feb 20 23:19:24 starfury systemd[1]: systemd-logind.service: State 'final-sigterm' timed out. Killing.
Feb 20 23:20:09 starfury systemd[1]: Received SIGINT.
Feb 20 23:20:09 starfury systemd[1]: Activating special unit System Reboot...
Feb 20 23:20:09 starfury systemd[1]: Generate shutdown-ramfs was skipped because of an unmet condition check (ConditionFileIsExecutable=!/run/initramfs/shutdown).
Feb 20 23:20:09 starfury systemd[1]: Received SIGINT.
Feb 20 23:20:09 starfury systemd[1]: Activating special unit System Reboot...
Feb 20 23:20:09 starfury systemd[1]: Generate shutdown-ramfs was skipped because of an unmet condition check (ConditionFileIsExecutable=!/run/initramfs/shutdown).
Feb 20 23:20:09 starfury systemd[1]: Received SIGINT.
Feb 20 23:20:09 starfury systemd[1]: Activating special unit System Reboot...
Feb 20 23:20:09 starfury systemd[1]: Generate shutdown-ramfs was skipped because of an unmet condition check (ConditionFileIsExecutable=!/run/initramfs/shutdown).
Feb 20 23:20:09 starfury systemd[1]: Received SIGINT.
Feb 20 23:20:09 starfury systemd[1]: Activating special unit System Reboot...
Feb 20 23:20:09 starfury systemd[1]: Generate shutdown-ramfs was skipped because of an unmet condition check (ConditionFileIsExecutable=!/run/initramfs/shutdown).
Feb 20 23:20:09 starfury systemd[1]: Received SIGINT.
Feb 20 23:20:09 starfury systemd[1]: Activating special unit System Reboot...
Feb 20 23:20:09 starfury systemd[1]: Generate shutdown-ramfs was skipped because of an unmet condition check (ConditionFileIsExecutable=!/run/initramfs/shutdown).
Feb 20 23:20:09 starfury systemd[1]: Received SIGINT.
Feb 20 23:20:10 starfury systemd[1]: Activating special unit System Reboot...
Feb 20 23:20:10 starfury systemd[1]: Generate shutdown-ramfs was skipped because of an unmet condition check (ConditionFileIsExecutable=!/run/initramfs/shutdown).
Feb 20 23:20:10 starfury systemd[1]: Received SIGINT.
Feb 20 23:20:10 starfury systemd[1]: Activating special unit System Reboot...
Feb 20 23:20:10 starfury systemd[1]: Generate shutdown-ramfs was skipped because of an unmet condition check (ConditionFileIsExecutable=!/run/initramfs/shutdown).
Feb 20 23:20:10 starfury systemd[1]: Received SIGINT.
Feb 20 23:32:30 starfury systemd[1]: Forcibly rebooting: Ctrl-Alt-Del was pressed more than 7 times within 2s
Feb 20 23:32:30 starfury systemd[1]: Shutting down.

After reboot I got the exact same message :

Loading linux linux-lts
error : premature end of file /boot/vmlinuz-linux-lts
Loading initial ramdisk
error : you need to load the kernel first

The following worked for me:

1) booted from rescue-USB, arch-chroot into system

2) Re-install of the Linux kernels with

pacman -S linux linux-headers linux-lts linux-lts-headers mkinitcpio --overwrite "*" --noconfirm

(normal install without --overwrite complained about existing files)

3) re-installing grub with grub-install / grub-mkconfig

Then I was able to boot into the command line of the normal OS.

Then I had to install ~30 packages including X and lxde and some others with the same

pacman -S [package] --overwrite "*" --noconfirm 

when I saw they threw errors in some way to get up and running again....

No errors at all reported in the direction of disc errors or some such.

Weird. But maybe my solution is helpful to someone.

2ManyDogs

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2012-01-15

Posts: 4,648

Re: [SOLVED] : Arch Linux Boot Fails

Closing this old solved thread.