Arch Linux

rius_linux

Member

Registered: 2025-11-30

Posts: 4

[SOLVED] Failed to start Switch Root

[SOLVED]
My system is ACER Nitro 5, intel core i5 9th gen, 2 SSD NVME 1TB (one for this arch install and one for windows), 16GB RAM. So, I **manually** installed Arch, but when booting to my arch installation got the following error (I’m phoneposting because my only computer it’s the one with the problem):

```
[Failed] Failed to start Switch Root
See 'systemctl status initrd-switch-root.service' for details.
You are in emergency mode. After logging in, type "journalctl -xb" to view
system logs, "systemctl reboot" to reboot, or "exit"
to continue bootup.

Cannot open access to console, the root account is locked.
See sulogin(8) man page for more details

Press enter to continue.
[6.317819] usb 1-4: device descriptor read/64, error -110
```

But no ability to type anything on the terminal

I attach some files and command information, if there’s any more information needed I will promptly proved it.

**blkid:**

```
/dev/nvme0n1p1: UUID="2B5C-6B99" TYPE="vfat" (EFI FAT32)
/dev/nvme0n1p2: UUID="4d09143c..." TYPE="swap" (SWAP)
/dev/nvme0n1p3: UUID="c6b7f44a..." TYPE="ext4" (ROOT_INSTALL)
```

**/etc/mkinitcpio.conf:**

```
MODULES=(vmd nvme ext4)
BINARIES=()
FILES=()
HOOKS=(base systemd autodetect microcode modconf kms keyboard keymap sd-vconsole block filesystems fsck)
```

**/etc/fstab:**

```
#/dev/nvme0n1p3
UUID=c6b7f44a... / ext4 rw,realtime 0 1
UUID=2B5C-6B99 /boot/efi vfat rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro 0 2
UUUD=4d09143c... none swap defaults 0 0
```

**/boot/refind_linux.conf**

```
"Boot with standard options" "archisobasedir=arch archisosearchuuid=2025-11-01-09-48-55-00"
"Boot to single-user mode" "archisobasedir=arch archisosearchuuid=2025-11-01-09-48-55-00 single"
"Boot with minimal options" "ro root=UUID=c6b7f44a..."
```

**/boot/efi/EFI/refind/refind.conf:**

```
timeout 20
use_nvram false
menuentry "Arch Linux" {
icon /EFI/refind/icons/os_arch.png
volume "Arch Linux"
loader /boot/vmlinuz-linux
initrd /boot/initramfs-linux.img
options "root=UUID=c6b7f44a... rw add_efi_memmap"
submenuentry "Boot using fallback initramsfs" {
  initrd /boot/initramfs-linux-fallback.img
}
submenuentry "Boot to terminal" {
  add_options "systemd.unit=multi-user.target"
}
disabled
}
```

Thanks beforehand to such great forum!

Last edited by rius_linux (2025-11-30 21:24:41)

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 13,341

Re: [SOLVED] Failed to start Switch Root

See https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Mkinit … _is_locked

That will get you into a command prompt so you can check why it failed

rius_linux

Member

Registered: 2025-11-30

Posts: 4

Re: [SOLVED] Failed to start Switch Root

Now I can type. I’ve got the following information:

**systemctl status initrd-switch-root.service:**

initrd-switch-root.service - Switch Root
Active: Failed (Result: exit-code) 

archlinux systemd[1]: Starting switch root
systemctl[200]: Failed to switch root: Failed to check if new root directory '/sysroot' is the same as old root: No such file or directory
systemd[1]: initrd-switch-root.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
systemd[1]: Failed to start switch root
systemd[1]: initrd-switch-root.service: Triggering OnFailure=depedencies.

Sorry for the wait I’ve got to manually type the logs on my phone

Last edited by rius_linux (2025-11-30 21:31:14)

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 13,341

Re: [SOLVED] Failed to start Switch Root

So does /sysroot not exist? If it does, is there anything mounted there? It sounds like maybe the mount failed, which is usually down to misconfiguring the root= option on the kernel command line.

rius_linux

Member

Registered: 2025-11-30

Posts: 4

Re: [SOLVED] Failed to start Switch Root

I fixed it! Just added:

"Arch Linux options"  "ro root=UUID=[UUID] rw add_efi_memmap"

To the refind_linux.conf. Thank you so much!

Last edited by rius_linux (2025-11-30 21:30:40)

system72

Member

Registered: 2025-11-22

Posts: 311

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Failed to start Switch Root

use code tags instead of ```

edit the original post and prefix [solved] to it

also see the automounting link in my signature if you want to avoid fstab and kernel params like "root" and have systemd do everything

Last edited by system72 (2025-11-30 21:08:17)

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rius_linux

Member

Registered: 2025-11-30

Posts: 4

Re: [SOLVED] Failed to start Switch Root

Thanks I’ll fix my boot and improve my future posts!