[SOLVED] Arch keeps rebooting at startup

yoyall · 2015-01-19 17:44:30

Been using a fully-updated Arch system for 6months with no problems until today...when I rebooted, it just now keeps rebooting itself automatically. I believe I may have accidentally corrupted something. I did something I hadn't done before (never a good idea) - e4defrag on both boot and root. I then rebooted and now it just keeps rebooting again and again. I can boot via an installation usb and arch-chroot into the system. I then regenerated the initramfs and it successfully recreated it but that's not helping. I'm not getting as far as the fsck check and what appears on the screen disappears too fast to take note of...

Any ideas on how to recover from what I suspect was self-inflicted? Do I need to regenerate syslinux files or reinstall syslinux? When I arch-chroot, I'm not sure how to use the logs to see how far it got before rebooting or to see what appeared on the screen. Thank you so much for your help as I'm completely stumped as to what I should do next.

Here's what I did (stupidly?):

$ sudo e4defrag -c /boot
$ sudo e4defrag /boot
$ sudo e4defrag -c /
$ sudo e4defrag  /

Here's a summary of my partition scheme:

/dev/sda1 = boot
/dev/sda2 = root
/dev/sda3 = swap
/dev/sda4 = home

My fstab is:

/dev/sda1   /boot       ext4      	rw,relatime,data=ordered	0 2
/dev/sda2   /              ext4      	rw,relatime,data=ordered	0 1
/dev/sda4   /home     ext4       rw,relatime,data=ordered	0 2

My /boot/syslinux/syslinux.cfg is:

DEFAULT arch
PROMPT 0
TIMEOUT 1
LABEL arch
    LINUX ../vmlinuz-linux
    INITRD ../intel-ucode.img,../initramfs-linux.img
    APPEND root=/dev/sda2 rw quiet loglevel=3 ipv6.disable=1

Last edited by yoyall (2015-01-19 23:05:04)

jasonwryan · 2015-01-19 17:54:42

Chroot in and see what is in your journal.

ewaller · 2015-01-19 18:00:28

Instead of mounting the volumes in a chroot, what happens if fsck them by hand from the live media? I don't believe that fsck is invoked when you just mount the volumes.
I don't think boot cares -- and you seem to be getting through the boot loader anyway. Swap certainly should not care and I am not sure what defragmenting it would do -- as a quick and nasty test you might just reformat the swap. Root could be your problem. Fortunately you did not touch home. Perhaps you hosed your initrd. (nevermind -- re-read your post )

yoyall · 2015-01-19 21:43:12

Thanks for the replies. I've done some investigating and here's what I've found.

1) I booted via usb and arch-chroot'ed into system. I mounted root and boot. I checked the journal with the following commands but there are no new enteries. The log stops at the last shutdown - the shutdown before it started the reboot loop. Here's how I checked the journal:

# journalctl -p 0..3 -xn
# journalct -b -p err | less

2) I umounted root and boot and fsck'ed both boot and root and got an exit status of 0 (no errors):

# fsck /dev/sda1 -f -r
# fsck /dev/sda2 -f -r

ewaller · 2015-01-19 21:53:55

I see you are using /dev/sdX nodes in lieu of UUIDs. Any chance you've more than one drive in your system?
Also, is this a BIOS or a UEFI (Mostly curiosity at this point -- I am fishing for ideas)

yoyall · 2015-01-19 21:58:36

Only 1 drive and bios. Cheers!

rebootl · 2015-01-19 22:53:49

I'm guessing either, but maybe try to reinstall syslinux, as you mentioned.
(I mean not the package but the bootloader code: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/sy … c_Install)

I think it should not harm... maybe someone can confirm this first, in order not to make things worse.

yoyall · 2015-01-19 23:04:47

Great news! I've solved it - I'm up and running again! I went to the wiki and was reading up on boot debugging when I saw the following command to reinstall the kernel:

# pacman -Syyu mkinitcpio linux udev

Whatever was wrong is now fixed! Thanks for your assistance - much appreciated!

Just one last question, please: Was it a bad idea to run e4defrag on root and boot?

Cheers!

Arch Linux

#1 2015-01-19 17:44:30

[SOLVED] Arch keeps rebooting at startup

#2 2015-01-19 17:54:42

Re: [SOLVED] Arch keeps rebooting at startup

#3 2015-01-19 18:00:28

Re: [SOLVED] Arch keeps rebooting at startup

#4 2015-01-19 21:43:12

Re: [SOLVED] Arch keeps rebooting at startup

#5 2015-01-19 21:53:55

Re: [SOLVED] Arch keeps rebooting at startup

#6 2015-01-19 21:58:36

Re: [SOLVED] Arch keeps rebooting at startup

#7 2015-01-19 22:53:49

Re: [SOLVED] Arch keeps rebooting at startup

#8 2015-01-19 23:04:47

Re: [SOLVED] Arch keeps rebooting at startup

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