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#1 2012-04-07 19:47:36

4on6
Member
Registered: 2011-10-05
Posts: 172

[SOLVED] Can't boot anymore

Hi List,
(writing from my win7 notebook: )

I updated Arch Friday evening, and when starting my computer today it won't boot anymore.
It says this:

Booting the kernel
:: Starting udevd ...
done
:: Running hook [udev]
:: triggering uevents...done
waiting 10 seconds for device '/dev/disk/by-uuid/377c77d7-... [long sequence of numbers and chars]
ERROR 
device '/dev/disk/by-uuid/377c77d7-... [long sequence of numbers and chars]
not found. skipping fsck
unable to find root device /dev/disk/by-uuid/377c77d7-... [long sequence of numbers and chars]
you are being dropped to recovrey shell.
Type 'exit' to try and continue booting

sh: can't access tty: job control turned off
[rootfs /]#

the recovery shell doesn't react at all at any keystroke I have to do a cold restart.
I did not find a related message on the forum.
Any hints? Is that serious?

TIA

Last edited by 4on6 (2012-04-11 23:14:21)

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#2 2012-04-07 19:57:21

Gcool
Member
Registered: 2011-08-16
Posts: 1,456

Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot anymore

I don't say this often, but in this case "use the search button". Just do a search on "unable to find root device" and you'll find plenty of info to get you going.


Burninate!

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#3 2012-04-07 20:31:47

4on6
Member
Registered: 2011-10-05
Posts: 172

Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot anymore

Gcool wrote:

I don't say this often, but in this case "use the search button". Just do a search on "unable to find root device" and you'll find plenty of info to get you going.

I used the search button but with other search terms.

Is this kind of kernel bug (or whatever it is) that does not allow booting anymore not considered a serious issue that probably hits quite a few people and should be addressed with some official statement (and proposed solution) in a prominent spot?

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#4 2012-04-07 21:57:51

funkypotatoe
Member
Registered: 2012-03-23
Posts: 47

Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot anymore

When did you update last time? (with success)

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#5 2012-04-07 23:20:15

4on6
Member
Registered: 2011-10-05
Posts: 172

Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot anymore

funkypotatoe wrote:

When did you update last time? (with success)

That was this Friday evening about 20:00 GMT+0200.
Update worked fine, but then rebooting did not work anymore.

I tried now two things:
1. do something on the recovery shell
I see the prompt, but no keystrokes come through. So I can't follow many of the advices given in other threads, since they talk about using the recovery shell.
2. boot from the fallback image
same error message as described in my first post.

Now I'm installing an archlinux live iso image on a usb stick. Maybe I can boot from there (don't have a dvd/cd drive).

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#6 2012-04-07 23:24:03

graysky
Wiki Maintainer
From: :wq
Registered: 2008-12-01
Posts: 10,595
Website

Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot anymore

U can boot from there.  Look at the installing from existing wiki page.


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#7 2012-04-08 00:06:31

4on6
Member
Registered: 2011-10-05
Posts: 172

Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot anymore

graysky wrote:

U can boot from there.  Look at the installing from existing wiki page.

I used Win32 Disk imager write the arch iso to the usb stick (on win7 labtop) like described in the wiki, but I could not boot. I tried to enable the booting of the usb stick in the startup menu (F2), and I found it under boot sequence hard drives, but couldn't select it (said: disabled).

And there was no option to boot from usb. only harddrive, dvd and diskette.
My dvd-drive is broken unfortunately, I can only use the usb stick.

So, besides the other threads on the topic, I'm not sure what to do now.

Is there another way to install the iso to a usb-stick without win32 disk imager? Is there another way to enable booting from usb stick?

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#8 2012-04-08 01:09:25

hadrons123
Member
From: chennai
Registered: 2011-10-07
Posts: 1,249

Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot anymore

You could try a dd on your usb disk, if you have another linux or unix.


LENOVO Y 580 IVYBRIDGE 660M NVIDIA
Unix is user-friendly. It just isn't promiscuous about which users it's friendly with. - Steven King

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#9 2012-04-08 04:20:25

Surry
Member
Registered: 2012-01-11
Posts: 8

Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot anymore

I had help but I realized that you couldn't type.

From what you said it sounds like your BIOS doesn't support booting from usb in which case you're in trouble since your CD doesn't work either. You can try using Unetbootin for the usb (google it) and see if that works but I would venture to guess that it won't because the boot from usb option wasn't there originally.

Are you on a desktop or a laptop? If you're on a desktop have you tried using another keyboard, like a simple ps/2 one if you're using say a wireless or usb keyboard.

If you're ever able to type you'll want to try this:

First see if your block devices are there (ls /dev and look for /dev/sd*). If not

lsmod 

and see if any modules are loaded, if not do

modprobe ahci
modprobe sd_mod 

and see if your block devices did show up. If not this probably isn't going to work. If they did you need to mount your root partition under /root and /new_root and type exit and your system should boot for you.

mount /dev/sdaX /root
mount /dev/sdaX /new_root
exit

If any of these steps gives an error or doesn't work as I said you'll most likely need to boot a live disc somehow.

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#10 2012-04-08 04:39:07

lifeafter2am
Member
From: 127.0.0.1
Registered: 2009-06-10
Posts: 1,332

Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot anymore

4on6 wrote:
graysky wrote:

U can boot from there.  Look at the installing from existing wiki page.

I used Win32 Disk imager write the arch iso to the usb stick (on win7 labtop) like described in the wiki, but I could not boot. I tried to enable the booting of the usb stick in the startup menu (F2), and I found it under boot sequence hard drives, but couldn't select it (said: disabled).

And there was no option to boot from usb. only harddrive, dvd and diskette.
My dvd-drive is broken unfortunately, I can only use the usb stick.

So, besides the other threads on the topic, I'm not sure what to do now.

Is there another way to install the iso to a usb-stick without win32 disk imager? Is there another way to enable booting from usb stick?

There is also UNetBootin for Windows ... but it doesn't sound like your system likes booting from USB devices.


#binarii @ irc.binarii.net
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#11 2012-04-08 10:59:54

4on6
Member
Registered: 2011-10-05
Posts: 172

Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot anymore

Surry wrote:

I had help but I realized that you couldn't type.

From what you said it sounds like your BIOS doesn't support booting from usb in which case you're in trouble since your CD doesn't work either. You can try using Unetbootin for the usb (google it) and see if that works but I would venture to guess that it won't because the boot from usb option wasn't there originally.

Seems like I really have the worst possible constellation for this bug.

Are you on a desktop or a laptop? If you're on a desktop have you tried using another keyboard, like a simple ps/2 one if you're using say a wireless or usb keyboard.

On a desktop, and I replaced my usb keyboard with my old ps/2 keyboard and now can type on the recovery shell. Good tip, forgot about my old keyboard ...

If you're ever able to type you'll want to try this:

First see if your block devices are there (ls /dev and look for /dev/sd*). If not

lsmod 

and see if any modules are loaded, if not do

modprobe ahci
modprobe sd_mod 

and see if your block devices did show up. If not this probably isn't going to work. If they did you need to mount your root partition under /root and /new_root and type exit and your system should boot for you.

mount /dev/sdaX /root
mount /dev/sdaX /new_root
exit

There are no modules loaded. Using modprobe, I get errors in both cases:

FATAL: Module ahci not found
FATAL: Module sd_mode not found

If any of these steps gives an error or doesn't work as I said you'll most likely need to boot a live disc somehow.

I will try unetbootin first.

Then I probably have to get a new dvd-drive and then boot from a live cd.
Is there a description somewhere, what to do then?
pacman -Syu ?
pacman -S mkinitcpio  ?
I found several related posts out there, but most seem to assume the problem is solved once boot from a live cd worked. But I don't really know what is the underlying bug here and what to do once the live cd has booted.

Thanks for your help!

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#12 2012-04-08 11:05:24

Gcool
Member
Registered: 2011-08-16
Posts: 1,456

Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot anymore

Once you manage to boot into a live environment, try following the steps outlined here.


Burninate!

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#13 2012-04-08 12:04:46

4on6
Member
Registered: 2011-10-05
Posts: 172

Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot anymore

Gcool wrote:

Once you manage to boot into a live environment, try following the steps outlined here.

OK, thats what I was looking for.
Thanks.

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#14 2012-04-08 12:47:17

4on6
Member
Registered: 2011-10-05
Posts: 172

Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot anymore

Gcool wrote:

Once you manage to boot into a live environment, try following the steps outlined here.

With unetbootin I can boot from my usb-stick.
Since I don't really know what I'm doing following the steps in the link you gave, I don't want to trash my installation. Therefore my fist question:

There is no mnt dir, when I do

[ramfs /]# ls

I only see a bootmnt dir (that is empty).

Shall I do
- mkdir bootmnt/arch
or
- mkdir -p mnt/arch
as the first step of the instructions given in the link?

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#15 2012-04-08 12:56:13

Gcool
Member
Registered: 2011-08-16
Posts: 1,456

Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot anymore

By the sound of it, you've either not really booted from your usb-stick (looks like the recovery shell) or the image creation on the stick failed.


Burninate!

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#16 2012-04-08 13:52:22

4on6
Member
Registered: 2011-10-05
Posts: 172

Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot anymore

Gcool wrote:

By the sound of it, you've either not really booted from your usb-stick (looks like the recovery shell) or the image creation on the stick failed.

I have to give up for today, but it looks definitely different than before. lsmod now shows 17 modules including sd_mod. I can load ahci with modprobe. dev sda3 (root) is shown in the /dev directory.

ls at the [ramfs /] prompt shows 20 dirs including root and new_root (both empty).

But

mount /dev/sda3 /root
mount /dev/sda3 /new_root

gives

mounting /dev/sda3 on /root failed: No such file or directory
mounting /dev/sda3 on /new_root failed: No such file or directory

I'm off for today, but any hint about a next step would be appreciated.
- how to find out if I booted from the usb or not?
- if not, does unetbootin not work correctly under Win7? I had a message about unetbootin not being installed properly, but nevertheless it seemed to work fine.
- whats the next step to make my archlinux machine boot again?

Thanks for any help.

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#17 2012-04-09 22:42:37

4on6
Member
Registered: 2011-10-05
Posts: 172

Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot anymore

I still havn't found a solution to this problem.

Maybe a first step would be to find out if my live-usb-stick works?
My computer now definitely boots on the USB stick, since I managed to enable it and disable the hard - disk in the boot menu. However, there is an error message while booting:

"Waiting 30 seconds for device /dev/disk/by-label/None..."
boot device didn't show up after 30 seconds...
Falling back to interactive prompt
sh: can't access tty: job control turned off
[ramfs /]#

There is no by-label dir, only by-id, by-uuid and by-path dirs.

The harddisk with its 4 partitions is recognized, but I don't see the dirs of my normal installation, e.g. I don't see the /mnt dir.

Did I boot successfully from the live-flash-drive?

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#18 2012-04-10 18:04:00

Surry
Member
Registered: 2012-01-11
Posts: 8

Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot anymore

4on6 wrote:

I still havn't found a solution to this problem.

Maybe a first step would be to find out if my live-usb-stick works?
My computer now definitely boots on the USB stick, since I managed to enable it and disable the hard - disk in the boot menu. However, there is an error message while booting:

"Waiting 30 seconds for device /dev/disk/by-label/None..."
boot device didn't show up after 30 seconds...
Falling back to interactive prompt
sh: can't access tty: job control turned off
[ramfs /]#

There is no by-label dir, only by-id, by-uuid and by-path dirs.

The harddisk with its 4 partitions is recognized, but I don't see the dirs of my normal installation, e.g. I don't see the /mnt dir.

Did I boot successfully from the live-flash-drive?

No you didnt.

You need to go into your BIOS options and place the usb before your hard drive in the boot order. Some BIOSs have a menu where you can choose the boot device without changing to order. On my computer its the F12 key to select a different device and the F2 key for the BIOS settings. They're not all the same so look at the text that comes up when you first power on your computer, it'll tell you what keys.

And to my knowledge Unetbootin does work on Windows 7.

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#19 2012-04-10 22:16:42

broi
Member
From: Bosnia & Herzegovina
Registered: 2011-12-10
Posts: 127

Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot anymore

I had same problem, can this help? https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=137264

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#20 2012-04-11 13:31:54

4on6
Member
Registered: 2011-10-05
Posts: 172

Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot anymore

Surry wrote:

No you didnt.

You need to go into your BIOS options and place the usb before your hard drive in the boot order. Some BIOSs have a menu where you can choose the boot device without changing to order. On my computer its the F12 key to select a different device and the F2 key for the BIOS settings. They're not all the same so look at the text that comes up when you first power on your computer, it'll tell you what keys.

And to my knowledge Unetbootin does work on Windows 7.

Actually, I did all that, but it did not work. Now I replaced my broken dvd drive and tried again with the Arch linux live CD, and it did not work either, so maybe somethings wrong with the image? However, I found an Avira rescue CD, and that actually let me boot in a live system and try the solution in the wiki:

# mkdir /mnt/arch
# mount /dev/sdx /mnt/arch (your root partition)
# cd /mnt/arch
# mount -t proc proc proc/
# mount -t sysfs sys sys/
# mount -o bind /dev dev/
# mount /dev/sdx boot/ (your /boot partition)
# chroot . /bin/bash
# pacman -Syu
# pacman -S udev
# pacman -S mkinitcpio
# mkinitcpio -p linux

It works until 'chroot . /bin/bash', there I got

chroot: cannot execute /bin/bash: Exec format error

/bin/bash does exist and my standard shell was always bash. Any idea what might be the problem here?

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#21 2012-04-11 13:38:49

4on6
Member
Registered: 2011-10-05
Posts: 172

Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot anymore

broi wrote:

I had same problem, can this help? https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=137264

In my case I can honestly say that I did not do anything special, just 'pacman -Syu' like always, no '--force', and still ran into this problem.

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#22 2012-04-11 13:52:18

4on6
Member
Registered: 2011-10-05
Posts: 172

Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot anymore

4on6 wrote:

It works until 'chroot . /bin/bash', there I got

chroot: cannot execute /bin/bash: Exec format error

/bin/bash does exist and my standard shell was always bash. Any idea what might be the problem here?

Here is the reason - the Avira rescue DVD is probably 32 bit,  my system is 64bit (sorry, the quote is from a German website).

Fehlerbehebung

[Bearbeiten] Exec format error
Wenn der chroot-befehl mit der Meldung "chroot: cannot run command `/bin/bash': Exec format error" abbricht, heißt das, dass die LiveCD nicht mit dem zu betretenden System kompatibel ist.

Dies tritt vor allem auf, wenn versucht wird, ein System mit einer anderen Architektur als die der LiveCD zu betreten (z.B. amd64) von einer 32-bit LiveCD (z.B. x86).

In diesem Fall muss eine passende LiveCD verwendet werden.

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#23 2012-04-11 14:24:49

windscape
Member
Registered: 2010-04-30
Posts: 69

Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot anymore

4on6,

You can try SystemRescueCd from http://www.sysresccd.org/SystemRescueCd_Homepage

They have 32-bit/64-bit combination images. It should have the correct tools to get your system to boot again.

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#24 2012-04-11 15:18:21

4on6
Member
Registered: 2011-10-05
Posts: 172

Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot anymore

windscape wrote:

4on6,

You can try SystemRescueCd from http://www.sysresccd.org/SystemRescueCd_Homepage

They have 32-bit/64-bit combination images. It should have the correct tools to get your system to boot again.

Thanks, I downloaded a new arch 64bit iso, and finally I was able to boot with an appropriate live CD.
Everything worked fine, until I tried to use 'pacman -Syu' (see the wiki recipe above), then I got error messages. The wiki recipe seems to assume that there is a internet connection. I tried to use 'pon' as usual, and got the same message as usual:

Plugin rp-pppoe.so loaded.
RP-PPPoE plugin version 3.8p compiled against pppd 2.4.5

but apparently no internet conection was established, because neither pacman nor ping worked. There is a /etc/resolv.conf that looks fine to me.
So now I need to open an internet connection somehow to be able to continue ...

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#25 2012-04-11 15:32:21

windscape
Member
Registered: 2010-04-30
Posts: 69

Re: [SOLVED] Can't boot anymore

4on6,

Assuming that you've already downloaded the latest versions of udev and mkinitcpio on this PC, then they should be available in /var/cache/pacman/pkg (or similar, I'm away from my Arch PC at the moment) and can be installed using pacman -U.

If they have not been downloaded to this PC previously, then you should be able to download them using another PC and get them onto this PC using a USB disk or something similar. Once they're on the PC somewhere, they can be installed using pacman -U.

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