Arch Linux

matthew02

Member

Registered: 2012-08-01

Posts: 42

[SOLVED] Kernel will not boot. No early hooks, nothing...

I am having some serious trouble getting my machine to boot. It never even gets to ":: running early hooks (udev)."

I normally shut it down every night, but I recently kept in on for a few days straight. I was having some trouble with a USB flash drive being read-only in Windows 8 in VirtualBox. I shut down Windows 8 and then arch wouldn't even read the flash drive. I'm pretty sure that pacman updated the kernel since I last shut down the machine, so I decided to restart just for good measure. I never got back in...

I am UEFI booting, running LVM on top of LUKS on top of two Samsung 830 256GB SSDs in mdadm raid 0. I have encrypted root and no swap. I have /boot mounted on a 512MB FAT32 partition and use a straight efibootmgr entry to start the system. It has worked fine until today.

My mkinitcpio.conf has

# vim:set ft=sh
# MODULES
# The following modules are loaded before any boot hooks are run.  Advanced users may wish to specify all system modules in this array.
MODULES="ahci dm_mod dm_crypt aes_x86_64 raid0"

# BINARIES
# This setting includes any additional binaries a given user may wish into the CPIO image.  This is run last, so it may be used to override the actual binaries included by a given hook
# BINARIES are dependency parsed, so you may safely ignore libraries
BINARIES=""

# FILES
# This setting is similar to BINARIES above, however, files are added as-is and are not parsed in any way.  This is useful for config files.
# Some users may wish to include modprobe.conf for custom module options like so:
#    FILES="/etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf"
FILES=""

# HOOKS
# This is the most important setting in this file.  The HOOKS control the modules and scripts added to the image, and what happens at boot time.
# Order is important, and it is recommended that you do not change the order in which HOOKS are added.  Run 'mkinitcpio -H <hook name>' for help on a given hook.
# 'base' is _required_ unless you know precisely what you are doing.
# 'udev' is _required_ in order to automatically load modules
# 'filesystems' is _required_ unless you specify your fs modules in MODULES
# Examples:
##   This setup specifies all modules in the MODULES setting above.
##   No raid, lvm2, or encrypted root is needed.
#    HOOKS="base"
#
##   This setup will autodetect all modules for your system and should
##   work as a sane default
#    HOOKS="base udev autodetect pata scsi sata filesystems"
#
##   NOTE: If you have /usr on a separate partition, you MUST include the
#    usr, fsck and shutdown hooks.
## ORIGINAL ##HOOKS="base udev autodetect pata scsi sata filesystems usbinput fsck"
HOOKS="base udev autodetect sata mdadm usbinput keymap encrypt lvm2 filesystems fsck shutdown"

# COMPRESSION
# Use this to compress the initramfs image. By default, gzip compression
# is used. Use 'cat' to create an uncompressed image.
#COMPRESSION="gzip"
#COMPRESSION="bzip2"
#COMPRESSION="lzma"
#COMPRESSION="xz"
#COMPRESSION="lzop"

# COMPRESSION_OPTIONS
# Additional options for the compressor
#COMPRESSION_OPTIONS=""

My kernel parameters are

cryptdevice=/dev/md1:RootVault root=/dev/RootArray/VolRoot ro rootfstype=ext4 init=/bin/systemd add_efi_memmap initrd=initramfs-linux.img

I can boot fine from the Arch install media via UEFI at which point I can luksOpen, activate the lvm volumes, mount everything, and chroot in like normal. I have:
rebuilt the initramfs
reinstalled linux, mkinitcpio, and udev
erased and recreated the efibootmgr entry
tried to boot straight from the UEFI shell
slimmed down to minimal hooks in mkinitcpio
tried nomodeset and mem=4G kernel parameters
tried booting the kernel with debugging enabled at various levels

I get nothing at all every time. I boot up to a black screen with a static white cursor in the top left.

I am happy to offer any more necessary information and I would be extremely grateful for any suggestions. Thanks.

Last edited by matthew02 (2012-11-02 15:14:46)

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 13,729

Re: [SOLVED] Kernel will not boot. No early hooks, nothing...

try adding mem=4G to the kernel parameters and see if it goes.

jasonwryan

Anarchist

From: .nz

Registered: 2009-05-09

Posts: 30,426

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Kernel will not boot. No early hooks, nothing...

The mdadm hook is either unsupported or looked on with disdain (or, more likely, both). I'm not sure of it's current status, but you should use mdadm_udev.

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matthew02

Member

Registered: 2012-08-01

Posts: 42

Re: [SOLVED] Kernel will not boot. No early hooks, nothing...

try adding mem=4G to the kernel parameters and see if it goes.

Same result.

The mdadm hook is either unsupported or looked on with disdain (or, more likely, both). I'm not sure of it's current status, but you should use mdadm_udev.

I was never able to boot with mdadm_udev. I should have researched it more, and I will once I get back going. Thanks for the reminder.

shaurz

Member

Registered: 2004-02-02

Posts: 360

Re: [SOLVED] Kernel will not boot. No early hooks, nothing...

I have the same problem. I've also tried the fallback kernel. I am not using LUKS or anything that fancy, just a plain unencrypted standard GUID partition.

It only gets this far:
http://i.imgur.com/Q91oCl.jpg

-- mod edit: read the Forum Etiquette and only post thumbnails http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/For … s_and_Code [jwr] --

Last edited by shaurz (2012-11-02 13:48:36)

lesto

Member

Registered: 2010-07-13

Posts: 115

Re: [SOLVED] Kernel will not boot. No early hooks, nothing...

same problem here with a stock kernel. solver rolling back to 3.6.3-1 by livecd.

seems a problem with AMD cpu. solution here https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=151686

matthew02

Member

Registered: 2012-08-01

Posts: 42

Re: [SOLVED] Kernel will not boot. No early hooks, nothing...

same problem here with a stock kernel. solver rolling back to 3.6.3-1 by livecd.

seems a problem with AMD cpu. solution here https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=151686

I had just rolled back my kernel and was about to comment here that it worked when I saw your post. I had actually skimmed that other post, but since mem=4G didn't work for me, I didn't figure it applied. I suppose I should have read it more thoroughly. Thanks for the help everyone!

shaurz

Member

Registered: 2004-02-02

Posts: 360

Re: [SOLVED] Kernel will not boot. No early hooks, nothing...

Worked for me too. Cheers.