Arch Linux

midnightman

Member

Registered: 2024-06-13

Posts: 2

[SOLVED] Boot stuck on "loading initial ramdisk ..."

I'm posting this one for anyone having a similiar problem.

My hardware:

CPU: Ryzen 1400
Mainboard: Asrock B450M Pro4
GPU: AMD Radeon RX570

I didn't update for quite a long time, might have been 4-5 months, or even more.
Yesterday I made a full update of my arch installation, and was presented with being stuck at the boot process, when the initial ramdisk was loaded.

I fixed the issue by chrooting into my arch installation, mounting the root partition and boot partition, and swapping the linux kernel with the linux-lts kernel. Don't forget to rebuild your grub config after installing the linux-lts kernel. I put the linux-lts kernel in the IgnorePkg List in the /etc/pacman.conf, as I don't know which kernelversion introduced this incompatibility, and i want to have a stable system.

If anyone wants to help troubleshooting, so that the underlying issue with the linux-kernel can be adressed, i'd gladly help and deliver log files etc.

But for now I just wanted to have a workaround solution for those who may be struggling in the arch forums.

Best regards

Last edited by midnightman (2024-06-13 10:44:48)

gromit

Administrator

From: Germany

Registered: 2024-02-10

Posts: 1,312

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Boot stuck on "loading initial ramdisk ..."

To which point does the system boot? If you do a Ctrl + Alt + F5 (or any other of these) can you switch to a tty?
Did you retry to boot the linux image after regenerating all initramfs's? (mkinitcpio -P)

Also what was the last linux image you had working?

midnightman

Member

Registered: 2024-06-13

Posts: 2

Re: [SOLVED] Boot stuck on "loading initial ramdisk ..."

To which point does the system boot?

To the point it says:

Loading linux ...
Loading inititial ramdisk ...
_

If you do a Ctrl + Alt + F5 (or any other of these) can you switch to a tty?

I'd have to check with the recent linux-kernel when i'm back home.

Did you retry to boot the linux image after regenerating all initramfs's? (mkinitcpio -P)

No, I didn't. I assumed there might have been a failure in the build of the initramfs. I checked the /boot partition and found that the initramfs had been created during the time the update was finished.
So I assumed that everything was fine.

Also what was the last linux image you had working?

I believe it was another Kernel from version 6. I'd have to check which kernel I was booting from prior, probably I can do so using journalctl? I don't believe it will be found in my pacman pkg cache, because I purge that quite regularly.

Last edited by midnightman (2024-06-13 11:28:11)

gromit

Administrator

From: Germany

Registered: 2024-02-10

Posts: 1,312

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Boot stuck on "loading initial ramdisk ..."

I believe it was another Kernel from version 6.

Kernels don't do semantic versioning, so the major version is 6.8 or 6.7 etc.

I'd have to check which kernel I was booting from prior, probably I can do so using journalctl? I don't believe it will be found in my pacman pkg cache, because I purge that quite regularly

You can check in /var/log/pacman.log from which version you have upgraded

Edit: Also yes, please get back with the relevant information requested from above, it would be cool to get this fixed for everybody ?

Last edited by gromit (2024-06-13 11:35:01)

cryptearth

Member

Registered: 2024-02-03

Posts: 1,722

Re: [SOLVED] Boot stuck on "loading initial ramdisk ..."

Please check your boot commands: If it contains "quite" remove it so you get the full log output. Also: Sometimes errors are not shown due to some framebuffer stuff - so a "nomodeset" could help to get you to more/further messages.