[solved] Unable to find the root device after an upgrade - diff. case

Raija · 2012-02-27 20:03:31

Background: I recently upgraded my installation done in August 2011 to the most recent packages with 'pacman -Syu' - which, amongst some other minor issues that I fixed, apparently broke my installation's boot sequence. Not sure if this is relevant, but I forced the upgrade as it's been prescribed here.

Note to self: do backups before any major upgrades like this.

Problem: The problem is of the same origin as seen in this post - systems lets me know it cant access the root partition anymore. I'm halfway through the procedure that pineapple-biku suggested but since my partition layout is different - and - because I don't have much understanding of what *exactly* I'm supposed to do and accomplish, I'm stuck for now.

What is the best way to find out the exact labels of encrypted volumes and their corresponding kernel device IDs (i.e. /dev/sda6 for 'tmp' and so on)? I have several volumes of the same size, thus it's hard to guess which is which without knowing for sure.

Details: My setup has an unencrypted '/boot' partition and 7 other encrypted partitions, including /root, /usr and others. These are contained within a single extended partition.

Any help will be greatly appreciated. In case I've left out some important information, let me know, and I'll do my best to provide it.

Last edited by Raija (2012-02-28 03:06:25)

falconindy · 2012-02-27 21:12:39

Not a different case. Same as everyone else, you deleted your udev hooks by forcing the upgrade. The news item you posted says to force the installation of a single package, not the entire upgrade. These two things are not equivalent.

Just the same as everyone else, you need to assemble your devices from a liveCD, chroot, reinstall udev, and regenerate your initramfs images.

Gcool · 2012-02-27 21:36:33

Raija wrote:

What is the best way to find out the exact labels of encrypted volumes and their corresponding kernel device IDs (i.e. /dev/sda6 for 'tmp' and so on)? I have several volumes of the same size, thus it's hard to guess which is which without knowing for sure.

# ls -lah /dev/disk/by-label
# ls -lah /dev/disk/by-id
# ls -lah /dev/disk/by-uuid

This should get you on the way on discovering which disk is what exactly (you'll need to know the / and /boot partition in order to fix the issue).

Raija · 2012-02-28 03:04:48

Thank you both for your assistance. Some more understanding was exactly what I was in need of.

falconindy wrote:

The news item you posted says to force the installation of a single package, not the entire upgrade. These two things are not equivalent.

Thanks for pointing that out. I'm still a newbie when it comes to Pacman, thus prone to such mistakes.

Gcool wrote:

Raija wrote:
What is the best way to find out the exact labels of encrypted volumes and their corresponding kernel device IDs (i.e. /dev/sda6 for 'tmp' and so on)? I have several volumes of the same size, thus it's hard to guess which is which without knowing for sure.
# ls -lah /dev/disk/by-label
# ls -lah /dev/disk/by-id
# ls -lah /dev/disk/by-uuid
This should get you on the way on discovering which disk is what exactly (you'll need to know the / and /boot partition in order to fix the issue).

Thank you. I'll try that.

Roken · 2012-02-28 10:49:35

As a matter of interest, people seem to be assuming that using -f is the root of this problem, though I NEVER -f and still have to mkinitcpio every kernel upgrade.

Arch Linux

#1 2012-02-27 20:03:31

[solved] Unable to find the root device after an upgrade - diff. case

#2 2012-02-27 21:12:39

Re: [solved] Unable to find the root device after an upgrade - diff. case

#3 2012-02-27 21:36:33

Re: [solved] Unable to find the root device after an upgrade - diff. case

#4 2012-02-28 03:04:48

Re: [solved] Unable to find the root device after an upgrade - diff. case

#5 2012-02-28 10:49:35

Re: [solved] Unable to find the root device after an upgrade - diff. case

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