Arch Linux

miomio

Member

Registered: 2016-01-17

Posts: 167

[Solved] Broke system after upgrade.

I am unable to fully boot into Arch after having performed a `pacman -Syu`. In order of events:

1. pacman -Syu <- Failed upon importing a GPG key
2. pacman-keys --refresh-keys
3. pacman -Syu <- amongst new software is kernel 4.17 (using 4.15)
4. reboot

Upon reboot the system is broken. I am prompted to enter the root p/w for maintenance. When I do that, I check /boot mount and it hasn't mounted despite being in fstab. When I try to manually mount that partition vfat isn't recognised.

5. I then shutdown system, plugged in LiveUSB and powered on. When in LiveUSB system I arch-chroot'ed. Then:

6. mkinitcpio -P Linux (successful)
7. Renamed *.img files in /boot/EFI/arch by appending _APRIL
8. mv all generated *.img files now at /boot from (6) to /boot/EFI/arch
9. mv pre-existing syslinux folder with time-stamp of 8 Aug to /boot/EFI/arch (also having renamed the older one at that location with _APRIL)

I thought this might correct the issue so rebooted, but now the system doesn't even recognise an OS on the hard drive. So have gone from being prompted for p/w to enter maintenance mode, to BIOS prompting PXE boot over IPv4 (if I remove the LiveUSB). Otherwise, interrupting the bootup to select the hard-drive just returns me to boot source selection menu.

I have uploaded a copy of the pacman log file here: https://pastebin.com/ma85JmHM

Any help greatly appreciated.

Last edited by miomio (2018-08-12 19:12:23)

loqs

Member

Registered: 2014-03-06

Posts: 17,310

Re: [Solved] Broke system after upgrade.

chroot in ensure when mounting the boot partition is also mounted.  Reinstall the kernel package.  Reinstall syslinux.

miomio

Member

Registered: 2016-01-17

Posts: 167

Re: [Solved] Broke system after upgrade.

chroot in ensure when mounting the boot partition is also mounted.  Reinstall the kernel package.  Reinstall syslinux.

(pacman -S) linux, linux-api-headers, linux-headers, syslinux?

loqs

Member

Registered: 2014-03-06

Posts: 17,310

Re: [Solved] Broke system after upgrade.

Just pacman -S linux should be enough.  Just needs to reinstall the kernel and initrd onto the system's /boot.  Then follow the steps from the syslinux wiki page to reinstall and configure the bootloader.
Edit:
`pacman -S linux` not `pacman -S`

Last edited by loqs (2018-08-12 16:55:41)

miomio

Member

Registered: 2016-01-17

Posts: 167

Re: [Solved] Broke system after upgrade.

OK that's done. I can see that the only file I'm missing from /boot/EFI/arch/syslinux is syslinux.efi file. The syslinux wiki article is sectioned for BIOS and UEFI boots. When I first set this laptop up I wanted to to have UEFI boot but I'm not sure as to what I ended up doing. I think I got to a point where "it works" and didn't touch it any further. This is probably why I have this trouble each time I update the kernel. But I'm also reluctant to start following any commands from the wiki article if all I need is to generate the syslinux.efi file and then retest bootup. How can I do that?

loqs

Member

Registered: 2014-03-06

Posts: 17,310

Re: [Solved] Broke system after upgrade.

Syslinux#Installation_on_UEFI second command from the first code block.

miomio

Member

Registered: 2016-01-17

Posts: 167

Re: [Solved] Broke system after upgrade.

That was it. Thanks for you help my laptop now boots to the newer kernel.

loqs

Member

Registered: 2014-03-06

Posts: 17,310

Re: [Solved] Broke system after upgrade.

Is /boot now mounted correctly?

miomio

Member

Registered: 2016-01-17

Posts: 167

Re: [Solved] Broke system after upgrade.

Is /boot now mounted correctly?

(Sorry for the long delay, just adding this in for completeness) Yes it was.