[Solved] Unable to boot into fresh install

novemsol · 2017-03-27 19:21:01

I should preface this with the fact that I am relatively new to Arch. That said, I do run Arch on my XPS13 & I did not run into issues when I initially installed that machine, nor I have run into serious issues running Arch on it since.

I am attempting to install Arch onto an Intel ComputeStick; specifially a core M5 version w/ 4GB RAM. My install procedure is pulled from the wiki, and I have pushed documentation of my exact procedure to github (link here), if anyone has any specific question on what I have done.

Once I attempt to boot into the fresh install, I get dropped out into the emergency shell after some error text that I can't quite decipher (img below), though I believe that this is telling me that the install is having an issue finding a partition on the eMMC storage, or the bootloader is confused somehow.

https://i.imgur.com/1BZWT0f.jpg

Does anyone have an idea of what is going wrong here, or have any more insight than I do on where I should be looking?

Last edited by novemsol (2017-03-27 23:29:56)

Trilby · 2017-03-27 19:46:39

novemsol wrote:

My install procedure is pulled from the wiki, and I have pushed documentation of my exact procedure to github

Where on the wiki did you get those steps? There is no need to reboot in the middle of the install, but no harm done there. But step 3h assumes efi booting; is the compute stick an efi device?

Step 3n is wrong, and steps 3p and 3q would have failed as you did not give a mount point.

As a result, no kernel or initramfs would have been placed on your boot partition. The bootctl install command wouldn't do what you intended, and the fstab generation would be wrong.

Step 3hhii - although not the cause of any of your current problems - will cause problems in the future: and that is definitely not from our wiki.

novemsol · 2017-03-27 20:10:23

Trilby wrote:

Where on the wiki did you get those steps?

Most of the procedure came from the installation page & the links through the wiki. It is true that some of the procedure did come from other sources, which was the reason I figured it would be a good idea to include what I actually did.

Trilby wrote:

There is no need to reboot in the middle of the install, but no harm done there.

I figured as much, but it seemed that rebooting would reduce the possibility of a new drive structure causing any sort of issue. Rebooting was to guarantee that the only structure the device was aware of was the formatting I had just performed.

Trilby wrote:

But step 3h assumes efi booting; is the compute stick an efi device?

Correct. 3nn verifies this again before the reboot. I actually did this much earlier in the process as well, but it looks like I did not include it in the document. Thanks for the catch.

Trilby wrote:

Step 3n is wrong, and steps 3p and 3q would have failed as you did not give a mount point.

3n is indeed a typo. That should read:

mkdir /mnt/boot

3p&q looks like I did leave off /mnt/boot & /mnt/home. I thought I remembered seeing them in the cat of fstab...but I have definitely done some boneheaded things in the past, and that would explain what it looks like is happening.

Thank you very much.

Trilby wrote:

Step 3hhii - although not the cause of any of your current problems - will cause problems in the future: and that is definitely not from our wiki.

32bit compatibility & AUR could obviously cause issues at some point. I couldn't really fault Arch for that.

loqs · 2017-03-27 20:20:15

novemsol wrote:

Trilby wrote:
Step 3hhii - although not the cause of any of your current problems - will cause problems in the future: and that is definitely not from our wiki.
32bit compatibility & AUR could obviously cause issues at some point. I couldn't really fault Arch for that.

You do not need 3hhii to use AUR or for 32bit compatibility, use of that repository is unsupported and known to cause system breakages.

novemsol · 2017-03-27 20:27:26

loqs wrote:

You do not need 3hhii to use AUR or for 32bit compatibility, use of that repository is unsupported and known to cause system breakages.

Good to know. That is my lack of experience w/ Arch, b/c my understanding was that the [archlinuxfr] entry was what gave access to AUR. Once I get this install sorted, I will read more on AUR specifically. Thank you!

loqs · 2017-03-27 21:09:56

Getting back to the failure to boot from rr i) (5) you have

	(5) options=PARTUUID={PARTUUID} rw

Compare that with the example from Systemd-boot#Standard_root_installations
Should it not be ( with the appropriate PARTUUID ) ?

options    root=PARTUUID={PARTUUID} rw

novemsol · 2017-03-27 22:03:23

loqs wrote:

Should it not be ( with the appropriate PARTUUID ) ?

Yes, yes it should. I found that while trying to figure out why it won't boot now, but that didn't fix it. For some reason, it is now failing to open initramfs.

I tried remounting /, home & boot, arch-chrooting back into the new install then deleting /boot/loader/loader.conf, then running bootctl install again, but that had no effect.

edit: lol...in case anyone was wondering, yes, the correct filename matters. >.>

initramfs.img != initramfs-linux.img

Last edited by novemsol (2017-03-27 22:14:37)

novemsol · 2017-03-27 22:22:52

Looks like most of my boneheadedness is fixed, but I am not getting a normal boot yet. This is the offending bit from journalctl:
https://i.imgur.com/3ScEzVn.jpg

Last edited by jasonwryan (2017-03-27 23:25:28)

loqs · 2017-03-27 22:35:21

novemsol wrote:

I am not getting a normal boot yet.

Is the system able to boot to through to a login prompt?
If it is see https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=222409

novemsol · 2017-03-27 22:37:13

ok, so it looks like the install isn't able to find / by the UUID in fstab, so nothing is mounting correctly. Which is weird to me since genfstab built my fstab.

Would rebooting to the install media, remounting the partitions, then running genfstab be the way to fix this? It doesn't seem like that should have any effect to me.

loqs · 2017-03-27 22:41:26

No the issue will be /boot/loader/loader.conf the line

options    root=PARTUUID={PARTUUID} rw

Are you confusing PARTUUID and UUID?
You can check the entry is correct against the output from

# blkid

The fstab may also be wrong but it will not be used until after the root filesystem has been mounted.

novemsol · 2017-03-27 22:48:50

loqs wrote:

Is the system able to boot to through to a login prompt?
If it is see https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=222409

No, it boots to maintenance mode asking for root pw. I suspect that the ACPI error is a symptom, rather than a cause in my case.

novemsol · 2017-03-27 22:52:32

loqs wrote:

No the issue will be /boot/loader/loader.conf the line
options    root=PARTUUID={PARTUUID} rw
Are you confusing PARTUUID and UUID?
You can check the entry is correct against the output from
# blkid
The fstab may also be wrong but it will not be used until after the root filesystem has been mounted.

The entry I used in /boot/loader/entries/arch.conf is the output of

blkid -s PARTUUID -o value /dev/mmcblk0p3

The entry in fstab is different, and I assume that is the UUID, as my understanding of the -U option of genfstab causes fstab entries to be generated using the UUID.

https://i.imgur.com/DUQq3LJ.jpg

Last edited by jasonwryan (2017-03-27 23:25:14)

loqs · 2017-03-27 23:04:46

So the bootloader is fine now it is /etc/fstab entries that are causing the issue. Looks like fstab entries for swap /home and /boot are referencing unknown UUIDs.

novemsol · 2017-03-27 23:16:14

loqs wrote:

So the bootloader is fine now it is /etc/fstab entries that are causing the issue. Looks like fstab entries for swap /home and /boot are referencing unknown UUIDs.

Yeah...no idea what happened, but booting back to the install media, remounting the mount points, deleting the old fstab & generating a new fstab fixed it. Freaking weird.

Thanks very much to both of your for your help!

I picked up Arch specifically to be a learning experience, so this is actually not bad...although I think I need to not try stuff like this during a week I am trying to go w/out caffeine. Too many dumb errors that I should have caught.

jasonwryan · 2017-03-27 23:24:52

Read the Code of Conduct and only post thumbnails http://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Cod … s_and_code or, better yet, paste the actual text not oversized images of it...

Arch Linux

#1 2017-03-27 19:21:01

[Solved] Unable to boot into fresh install

#2 2017-03-27 19:46:39

Re: [Solved] Unable to boot into fresh install

#3 2017-03-27 20:10:23

Re: [Solved] Unable to boot into fresh install

#4 2017-03-27 20:20:15

Re: [Solved] Unable to boot into fresh install

#5 2017-03-27 20:27:26

Re: [Solved] Unable to boot into fresh install

#6 2017-03-27 21:09:56

Re: [Solved] Unable to boot into fresh install

#7 2017-03-27 22:03:23

Re: [Solved] Unable to boot into fresh install

#8 2017-03-27 22:22:52

Re: [Solved] Unable to boot into fresh install

#9 2017-03-27 22:35:21

Re: [Solved] Unable to boot into fresh install

#10 2017-03-27 22:37:13

Re: [Solved] Unable to boot into fresh install

#11 2017-03-27 22:41:26

Re: [Solved] Unable to boot into fresh install

#12 2017-03-27 22:48:50

Re: [Solved] Unable to boot into fresh install

#13 2017-03-27 22:52:32

Re: [Solved] Unable to boot into fresh install

#14 2017-03-27 23:04:46

Re: [Solved] Unable to boot into fresh install

#15 2017-03-27 23:16:14

Re: [Solved] Unable to boot into fresh install

#16 2017-03-27 23:24:52

Re: [Solved] Unable to boot into fresh install

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