Arch Linux

karcher

Member

Registered: 2018-01-09

Posts: 140

[SOLVED] Cannot boot into my Arch partition

Hi all,
yesterday night I updated Arch with yaourt -Suy as I do every day. During the update I saw an error saying something about the nvidia driver couldnt get installed because of my current kernel. I didnt pay attention to it since the update finished otherwise normally and I didnt have serious issues with updates since I installed Arch months ago. Today I tried to boot into Arch but the system hangs during boot. I tried both with the latest kernel as well with the LTS kernel without success. Now Im trying to chroot from another partition with Lubuntu following a guide I found here https://www.soimort.org/notes/170407/ but  when I run the command # chroot $TARGETDIR ln -s /proc/mounts /etc/mtab I get an error saying cannot find this file or directory. The problem is that Arch is installed on a btrfs partition and when I mount the root in /mnt/arch there are 4 folders in it: @, @pkg, @test and @temp. So the root is actually within the @ folder. Apparently something went wrong as I was trying to adapt the guide for my case. In any case my question is how can I chroot into my Arch from Lubuntu or if there is something else I can I do to recover Arch.
Plz help.

Last edited by karcher (2018-02-08 16:51:46)

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 29,523

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Cannot boot into my Arch partition

yesterday night I updated Arch with yaourt -Suy as I do every day.

So you didn't learn from previous experience?

During the update I saw an error saying something about the nvidia driver couldnt get installed because of my current kernel. I didnt pay attention to it...

Now you have a new experience that you should learn from.

Now Im trying to chroot from another partition with Lubuntu following a guide I found here https://www.soimort.org/notes/170407/

Make that two new mistakes to learn from.  Don't use unsupported guides.

Apparently something went wrong

That's to be expected when you persist in doing things wrong.

how can I chroot into my Arch from Lubuntu or if there is something else I can I do to recover Arch.

Follow the supported documentation in our wiki, e.g.:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Change_root

Also follow the guidelines on how to post (also in the wiki) and remove the "urgent" plea from your title.

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

karcher

Member

Registered: 2018-01-09

Posts: 140

Re: [SOLVED] Cannot boot into my Arch partition

@Trilby:
Thanks for the quick response!

So you didn't learn from previous experience?

I have removed archlinuxfr repo from pacman.conf and stopped using pamac-aur but I can't stop using yaourt because of the AUR.

Follow the supported documentation in our wiki, e.g.:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Change_root

I have tried again but the system couldn't boot normally except this time I got into an emergency mode. I did journalctl -xb like it was mentioned and I saw some errors about ZFS, Unit sys-subsystem-net-devices and strangely enough about ext4 (unknown filesystem type ext4). So the boot partition as well as some other partitions with ext4 couldn't get mounted. I've spent some hours to solve these problems and finally tried to restore a btrfs snapshot taken with snapper a few minutes before I initiate the update. It took only some minutes and was successful. Now my system works again! The only thing that worries me now is what I'm going to do with the updates since they will probably break my system again.

loqs

Member

Registered: 2014-03-06

Posts: 17,327

Re: [SOLVED] Cannot boot into my Arch partition

I have removed archlinuxfr repo from pacman.conf and stopped using pamac-aur but I can't stop using yaourt because of the AUR.

Also from the previous thread https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 3#p1760043.

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 29,523

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Cannot boot into my Arch partition

Thanks for the quick response!

You're welcome.  Please return the favor with appropriate prompt attention to the directions you are provided with, such as this one:

Also follow the guidelines on how to post (also in the wiki) and remove the "urgent" plea from your title.

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I have removed archlinuxfr repo from pacman.conf and stopped using pamac-aur but I can't stop using yaourt because of the AUR.

As noted above, and in a previous thread, this does not follow.  There are two problems with this: first, yaourt is absolutely not necessary to use the AUR properly (frequently it makes it hard or impossible to use the AUR properly, but this is rather tangential).  More importantly, the AUR and the repos are separate things: even if you do stick with using yaourt for the AUR that absolutely does not mean you must use yaourt to do your normal system upgrades: use pacman.

I did journalctl -xb like it was mentioned and I saw some errors about ZFS, Unit sys-subsystem-net-devices and strangely enough about ext4 (unknown filesystem type ext4).

If you want help with any of that, we're going to need a lot more than that.

It took only some minutes and was successful. Now my system works again!

Great.  Then when you edit your title to remove "urgent" you can replace it with "[SOLVED]".  To avoid the same problem in the future, learn from all the problems that have been highlighted in this thread:

1) Use pacman to update your system
2) Pay attention to pacman output.  If you get error messages you don't understand, seek help here by posting the exact verbatim error messages.  Doing so before you try to reboot so it can be fixed and avoid a similar problem in the future would be best.

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