Arch Linux

Rew

Member

Registered: 2009-11-08

Posts: 15

[SOLVED] Boot hangs after "Started system journal"

When I last shutdown my computer, for some reason it hung on the final black screen and the power never went off.  I didn't think much of it, and (stupidly), held down the power button for 5 seconds to force it to turn off.  When I restarted it the next time, the boot process stopped with the error...

failed to create mount unit file /run/systemd/generator/-.mount: File already exists

I solved this by booting a livecd and mounting the volume, which somehow cleared that lockfile out i guess.  Now however, the boot process simply hangs after something like...

/dev/mapper/lvm-volume: clean 123123/456456456 files, etc.....

When I add the "ignore_loglevel" parameter to the kernel's boot options, I get more information, and it looks like it's hanging right after...

systemd[1] Starting journal...
systemd[1] Started journal

There are no error messages and even after several minutes nothing has happened.  I cannot access other TTY's with Ctrl+Alt+F2,3,4,...  Additionally there don't seem to be any relavent logs in /var/log (though maybe i just don't know where to look?)  Attempting to boot into the fallback initramfs has the same result.

I am tearing my hair out here.    Any ideas???  Thanks in advance!

Last edited by Rew (2014-01-17 01:27:09)

xtraroot

Member

Registered: 2013-12-17

Posts: 59

Re: [SOLVED] Boot hangs after "Started system journal"

Can you post the output of journalctl -b -1

(easiest way might be to append it to a file and upload to usb)

Last edited by xtraroot (2014-01-16 18:30:57)

Rew

Member

Registered: 2009-11-08

Posts: 15

Re: [SOLVED] Boot hangs after "Started system journal"

AHA!  we're getting closer, excellent advice.

relevent... (yes, i know linking to other lib-versions like this is a bad idea, but i can fix it later if i can get it to boot.)

mint@mint ~ $ sudo mount /dev/mapper/lvm-volume /mnt
mint@mint ~ $ sudo chroot /mnt
[root@mint /]# journalctl -b -1
journalctl: error while loading shared libraries: libgcrypt.so.11: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory
[root@mint /]# ln -s /lib/libgcrypt.so /lib/libgcrypt.so.11
[root@mint /]# journalctl -b -1
journalctl: /usr/lib/libgcrypt.so.11: version `GCRYPT_1.2' not found (required by journalctl)
[root@mint /]# pacman -Q libgcrypt
libgcrypt 1.6.0-1

i'm on a mint livecd at the moment, is it safe (or even a good idea) to attempt a "pacman -Syu" from a chroot to try to fix that?  do i need the livecd to be arch as well to do that safely?

EDIT: I should have mentioned... the first time I used the computer this morning (before it froze shutting down), I installed libgcrypt as a dependency for wireshark.  maybe I should have done a full system upgrade then.  opps

I should also mention... after about 25 minutes of hanging while the system journal service starts, the kernel spits out...

EXT4-fs (dm-1): reconnected. Opts: data=ordered

I then veeeery slowly goes through the rest of the boot proccess, and then eventually fails and drops into emergency mode.

grrrrrrrrr

Last edited by Rew (2014-01-16 19:31:18)

Rew

Member

Registered: 2009-11-08

Posts: 15

Re: [SOLVED] Boot hangs after "Started system journal"

I solved it!

for anyone with the same issue, here's what happened...

In the morning, when I installed wireshark, I also updated libgcrypt because of the dependency.  looks like the systemd journalling daemon depended on the old version (v11) however.  My guess it that's why it hung during shutdown, and that's definatly why it hung during boot.

The solution was...
1. boot into a livecd
2. mount the filesystem
3. chroot into it
4. run "pacman -Syu" for a full system update

This resolved all the issues, and it's working great now.

Thanks for the help xtraroot!

xtraroot

Member

Registered: 2013-12-17

Posts: 59

Re: [SOLVED] Boot hangs after "Started system journal"

No problem, but you solved it yourself . Glad you worked it out.