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#1 2016-06-18 13:31:02

monkeypants
Member
Registered: 2014-08-18
Posts: 64

[SOLVED] OS booting into live environment

**SOLVED** User was an idiot.

I have a chromebook that recently died. I suspected that the m.2 SSD had failed and needed to test it outside of the chromebook.  I have a desktop PC with Arch installed on an SSD and /home on a separate HDD.

I physically removed both the SSD and HDD, taking care to remember which sata port each was plugged in to, then inserted the m.2 from the chromebook along with a USB loaded with the latest Arch iso so that I could debug the broken drive. I took these precautions to ensure that the faulty m.2 would not affect my desktop installation. It turns out that the m.2 is completely dead so I removed it and the bootable USB, and replaced my SSD and HDD.

Now when I boot I get the live boot menu and not my installed OS setup. From the boot menu I can select UEFI OS instead, which leads me to "Arch Linux archiso x86_64 UEFI CD" but selecting this option reboots the machine.

Where did my Arch installation go?

Last edited by monkeypants (2016-06-18 14:29:15)

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#2 2016-06-18 13:35:23

monkeypants
Member
Registered: 2014-08-18
Posts: 64

Re: [SOLVED] OS booting into live environment

In HDT my SSD shows just two partitions.  Partition 1 is 744mb, the same size as the Arch iso and Partition 2 is 40mb EFI.  This is not the partition scheme I set up when I installed Arch.

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#3 2016-06-18 13:57:54

monkeypants
Member
Registered: 2014-08-18
Posts: 64

Re: [SOLVED] OS booting into live environment

I booted into the live environment option to have a look around.  I see .zshrc and .zsh_history in /root and echo $ SHELL prints /usr/bin/zsh. I had installed zsh but other things such as my /media directory are missing.  I would not expect to see it but I am surprised to see zsh. Is it normal for Arch to have zsh in the live environment? I would have assumed that it would be /bin/bash

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#4 2016-06-18 13:59:49

Scimmia
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Registered: 2012-09-01
Posts: 11,461

Re: [SOLVED] OS booting into live environment

I'm confused on what you're doing here. You appear to be booting the install disk.

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#5 2016-06-18 14:13:55

ukhippo
Member
From: Non-paged pool
Registered: 2014-02-21
Posts: 366

Re: [SOLVED] OS booting into live environment

monkeypants wrote:

I would not expect to see it but I am surprised to see zsh. Is it normal for Arch to have zsh in the live environment? I would have assumed that it would be /bin/bash

Yes. This is explicitly mentioned (with the reasons why) in the beginners' guide, boot the installation medium

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#6 2016-06-18 14:18:37

monkeypants
Member
Registered: 2014-08-18
Posts: 64

Re: [SOLVED] OS booting into live environment

Scimmia wrote:

I'm confused on what you're doing here. You appear to be booting the install disk.

I too am confused.

1: I had my desktop set up running Arch linux, been using it for about a fortnight, playing games on steam etc.  When I turn on my PC I get a login screen, I log into my user 'codemonkey' who is a sudoer, I manually run startx to get into my i3 desktop.  It's just a fairly typical Arch desktop setup, nothing fancy, and it works fine.

2: I needed a computer to test a faulty device.  I physically removed my drives from the computer for the duration that I was testing the faulty device.

3: After faulty device testing was complete I put my drives back into the PC.

And now I'm booting into a live environment.  I feel like I'm going mad, but I can send you photos to show that the bootable USB is not in the computer, nor is the m.2 device that I was testing.  Somehow the drive where Arch was installed on my working desktop environment has become a bootable live environment, the same as you would get if you dd'ed the iso onto a USB and booted off that.  I don't know how much I can stress that I physically removed my drives before letting a bootable USB or the faulty m.2 near the computer, and I only replaced them after I had removed the fault m.2 and bootable USB.

Am I just going insane?

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#7 2016-06-18 14:20:40

Head_on_a_Stick
Member
From: London
Registered: 2014-02-20
Posts: 7,679
Website

Re: [SOLVED] OS booting into live environment

Please post the full output of:

efibootmgr -v

EDIT: typo

Last edited by Head_on_a_Stick (2016-06-18 14:21:01)

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#8 2016-06-18 14:21:24

monkeypants
Member
Registered: 2014-08-18
Posts: 64

Re: [SOLVED] OS booting into live environment

Head_on_a_Stick wrote:

Please post the full output of:

efibootmgr -v

EDIT: typo

EFI variables are not supported on this system.

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#9 2016-06-18 14:23:22

Head_on_a_Stick
Member
From: London
Registered: 2014-02-20
Posts: 7,679
Website

Re: [SOLVED] OS booting into live environment

Had you installed a UEFI system?

What was the exact nature of the debugging tests that you carried out on the dead drive?

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#10 2016-06-18 14:26:27

monkeypants
Member
Registered: 2014-08-18
Posts: 64

Re: [SOLVED] OS booting into live environment

I mounted my home partition that was on a seperate drive and checked my .zsh_history.  The last two lines are

sudo dd if=archlinux-2016.06.01-dual.iso of=/dev/sdb bs=4M; sync
shutdown now

Yeah... I fking dd'ed the Arch ISO onto my main drive, and not sdc (the USB).  The reason I didn't realise after reboot is because the USB already had that ISO dd'ed on from when I installed.

I'm going to weep in a corner for a bit then get on with reinstalling.

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#11 2016-06-18 14:26:43

Trilby
Inspector Parrot
Registered: 2011-11-29
Posts: 29,441
Website

Re: [SOLVED] OS booting into live environment

Was the live USB used in these tests just created for these tests?  Are you sure you didn't dd the iso to the wrong device?  Doing so would explain all of your symptoms.

EDIT: apparently I cross posted this with the above.  But hey, I was right hmm


"UNIX is simple and coherent..." - Dennis Ritchie, "GNU's Not UNIX" -  Richard Stallman

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