Updated to kernel 4.7.0-1, failed to mount /boot

Lynxrc · 2016-08-13 08:53:50

I just ran "pacman -Syu" and it updated kernel from 4.6.4-1 to 4.7.0-1 so I rebooted after it completed successfully without errors.

Then the startup messages said this:
...
Mounting /boot...
Activated swap
Reached target Swap.
Mounting Temporary Directory...
Mounted Temporary Directory.
Started LVM2 metadata daemon.
systemd[1] Failed to mount /boot.
Failed to mount /boot.
See 'systemctl status boot.mount' for details.
Dependency failed for Local File Systems
...
You are in emergency mode.

Running "systemctl status boot.mount" gives "mount: unknown filesystem type ■vfat■"

Also trying to manually mount "mount /dev/sdd1 /boot" gives the same error "mount: unknown filesystem type ■vfat■"

Rebooting multiple times does not help.

lsblk:

NAME                FSTYPE             MOUNTPOINT
...
sdd
|–sdd1              vfat                               ( <- this is /boot, not mounted)
|–sdd2              crypto_LUKS
  |–arch            LVM2_member
    |–arch-swap     swap               [SWAP]
    |–arch-root     ext4               /

cat /proc/filesystems

nodev     sysfs
nodev     rootfs
nodev     ramsfs
nodev     bdev
nodev     proc
nodev     cpuset
nodev     cgroup
nodev     cgroup2
nodev     tmpfs
nodev     devtmpfs
nodev     binfmt_misc
nodev     configfs
nodev     debugfs
nodev     tracefs
nodev     securityfs
nodev     sockfs
nodev     bpf
nodev     pipefs
nodev     hugetlbfs
nodev     devpts
nodev     autofs
nodev     pstore
nodev     efivars
nodev     mqueue
          ext3
          ext2
          ext4

"uname -a" and "cat /proc/version" says that it is still running 4.6.4-1-ARCH

/lib/modules only contains directories "4.7.0-1-ARCH" and "extramodules-4.7-ARCH". I thought that it may try to load modules from a non-existing directory so I tried "ln -s 4.7.0-1-ARCH 4.6.4-1-ARCH", but it didn't work.

And now I don't know what to do. I probably need to use a live usb, but I don't how to fix this with it.

Spider.007 · 2016-08-13 08:59:49

I guess /boot wasn't mounted when you upgraded, meaning you didn't install the new kernel properly, but removed the modules for it and now it won't boot.

Use a live-usb to mount your root, make sure you mount /boot as well and execute pacman -S linux again

Lynxrc · 2016-08-13 09:30:16

According to pacman logs, /boot was mounted during the upgrade ("Generating gzip-compressed initcpio image: /boot/initramfs-linux.img", "Image generation successful", etc).

But I tried that method anyway, and it worked! Thank you.

Would be nice to know what was actually wrong with it, though. Maybe it was just some weird bug

Edit: figured it out... This was a fairly new installation, and I still have the old one on a different drive. Somehow the old boot partition had the same UUID (I have no idea how that happened). During the kernel update my system must have been like this:

NAME            FSTYPE      LABEL           UUID                                   MOUNTPOINT
sda                                                                                
├─sda1                                                                             
└─sda2                                                                             
sdb                                                                                
├─sdb1          ntfs        System Reserved D4FC309DFC307BB4                       
└─sdb2          ntfs                        3604324B04320DFD                       
sdc                                                                                
├─sdc1          vfat                        5E9B-4FC2                              /boot
├─sdc2          ext4                        788cd99d-fac1-4449-ad6a-4fee62367bfb   
├─sdc3          swap                        9aff9feb-c578-4de2-a704-be3c7c19fd91   
└─sdc4          ext4                        4b04e1ed-d992-4450-9c72-e4729a2d1eae   
sdd                                                                                
├─sdd1          vfat                        5E9B-4FC2
└─sdd2          crypto_LUKS                 b650257e-0c40-4dac-ab1a-08efa7a3da08   
  └─arch        LVM2_member                 fDyl2q-pmeQ-wwEo-Y3xi-WYWc-mH2m-0EFP0u 
    ├─arch-swap swap                        1b2488d7-b38d-44ba-9fb4-01d87bbfdb1a   [SWAP]
    └─arch-root ext4                        d0023e59-a419-4f9e-a9bb-1c149ac9dbc9   /
sr0

So, I changed the sdc1 UUID and reinstalled the kernel on sdd1. Now everything should work as expected.

Last edited by Lynxrc (2016-08-13 10:10:53)

ewaller · 2016-08-13 17:14:03

Lynxrc wrote:

...Somehow the old boot partition had the same UUID (I have no idea how that happened). .

Had you copied it block for block, perhaps using dd ?

Lynxrc · 2016-08-13 17:32:33

ewaller wrote:

Had you copied it block for block, perhaps using dd ?

Yes, I dd'd the old system from sdd to sdc, but after that I wiped the entire sdd and re-partitioned it before installation.

ewaller · 2016-08-13 17:56:58

I had asked because the UUID is duplicated if one does a block by block copy rather than creating a new file system.
Based on what you said, I would expect unique IDs

Arch Linux

#1 2016-08-13 08:53:50

Updated to kernel 4.7.0-1, failed to mount /boot

#2 2016-08-13 08:59:49

Re: Updated to kernel 4.7.0-1, failed to mount /boot

#3 2016-08-13 09:30:16

Re: Updated to kernel 4.7.0-1, failed to mount /boot

#4 2016-08-13 17:14:03

Re: Updated to kernel 4.7.0-1, failed to mount /boot

#5 2016-08-13 17:32:33

Re: Updated to kernel 4.7.0-1, failed to mount /boot

#6 2016-08-13 17:56:58

Re: Updated to kernel 4.7.0-1, failed to mount /boot

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