Arch Linux

songohan9000

Member

Registered: 2025-02-11

Posts: 16

Accidentally unplugged USB, now system won't boot up at all

Hello.

I'm dual booting Linux and Windows and I was trying to setup my bluetooth headphones to work with both Linux and Windows. I was following the first tutorial in the top most post on this link: https://unix.stackexchange.com/question … aving-to-p which has always worked for me in the past. Then when I exported the text files from Windows to a USB flash drive to copy the keys over to my Linux system, while rebooting and booting up my Linux system somewhere during the process I accidentally unplugged the USB flash drive I had copied the keys to.

Now I'm getting this error everytime I boot up my Linux system regardless of whether I have the USB flash drive connected to my laptop or not:

https://postimg.cc/vg6L8h6Z/caff88a4

If I plug in the USB and unplug it the message updates to this:

https://postimg.cc/XZNn01m9/fc73d561

Deepest apologies for posting images instead of the actual text as stated in the rules but because all this happens before the system even boots up, I don't know how to copy the text to paste it here.

Not sure what to do from here on other than just reinstalling everything. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 13,694

Re: Accidentally unplugged USB, now system won't boot up at all

I really doubt this has anything to do with the flash drive. It looks like you didn't get the hooks in the initramfs set up correctly?

songohan9000

Member

Registered: 2025-02-11

Posts: 16

Re: Accidentally unplugged USB, now system won't boot up at all

I haven't made any changes to any hooks in the initramfs though. I did remove "crc32c_intel" or "i915" from the modules yesterday, I don't remember which but I can use a live USB to check and the system worked fine after that even after rebooting. This started happening today when I unplugged that flash drive while Linux was booting.

yookibooki

Member

Registered: 2025-06-24

Posts: 3

Re: Accidentally unplugged USB, now system won't boot up at all

1. Open /etc/crypttab
2. replace 'cryptroot  UUID=…  /path/to/usb/keyfile  luks' with 'cryptroot  UUID=…  none   luks'
then you get a password prompt instead of key
3. Re-generate initramfs 'mkinitcpio -P'

Tip: run 'lsblk -f' to check the LUKS device.

Last edited by yookibooki (2025-06-24 13:26:57)