Arch Linux

luisadriant

Member

Registered: 2019-11-03

Posts: 3

[SOLVED] Vmlinuz-linux not found after kernel update

Two days ago I did a system update (to Linux 5.3.8.1-1) and after a reboot I wasn't able to boot, getting an error loading vmlinuz-linux not found.
Then I booted arch from a USB and mounted the boot partition and didn't find the vmlinuz file, so I mounted the root an boot partitions, chrooted into it, perform a pacman -S Linux, it reinstalled it, but I see no vmlinuz file in boot partition.
Any ideas?

Last edited by luisadriant (2019-11-11 14:32:08)

WorMzy

Administrator

From: Scotland

Registered: 2010-06-16

Posts: 12,411

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Vmlinuz-linux not found after kernel update

The linux package no longer installs files to /boot, the file that it did (i.e. vmlinuz-linux) is copied to /boot by libalpm hooks. While chrooted, what does

pacman -Si mkinitcpio

return? (use a pastebin to upload the output if you need to)

---

Sakura:-
Mobo: MSI MAG X570S TORPEDO MAX // Processor: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X @4.9GHz // GFX: AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT // RAM: 32GB (4x 8GB) Corsair DDR4 (@ 3000MHz) // Storage: 1x 3TB HDD, 6x 1TB SSD, 2x 120GB SSD, 1x 275GB M2 SSD

Making lemonade from lemons since 2015.

luisadriant

Member

Registered: 2019-11-03

Posts: 3

Re: [SOLVED] Vmlinuz-linux not found after kernel update

The linux package no longer installs files to /boot, the file that it did (i.e. vmlinuz-linux) is copied to /boot by libalpm hooks. While chrooted, what does

pacman -Si mkinitcpio

return? (use a pastebin to upload the output if you need to)

Thanks for the reply.
This is the output:

Repository      : core
Name            : mkinitcpio
Version         : 27-1
Description     : Modular initramfs image creation utility
Architecture    : any
URL             : https://projects.archlinux.org/mkinitcpio.git/
Licenses        : GPL
Groups          : None
Provides        : initramfs
Depends On      : awk  mkinitcpio-busybox>=1.19.4-2  kmod  util-linux>=2.23  libarchive  coreutils  bash  findutils  grep  filesystem>=2011.10-1  gzip  systemd
Optional Deps   : xz: Use lzma or xz compression for the initramfs image
                  bzip2: Use bzip2 compression for the initramfs image
                  lzop: Use lzo compression for the initramfs image
                  lz4: Use lz4 compression for the initramfs image
                  mkinitcpio-nfs-utils: Support for root filesystem on NFS
Conflicts With  : None
Replaces        : None
Download Size   : 40.57 KiB
Installed Size  : 100.89 KiB
Packager        : Giancarlo Razzolini <grazzolini@archlinux.org>
Build Date      : Tue 29 Oct 2019 09:01:14 AM -05
Validated By    : MD5 Sum  SHA-256 Sum  Signature

ratcheer

Member

Registered: 2011-10-09

Posts: 912

Re: [SOLVED] Vmlinuz-linux not found after kernel update

Closely related question:

The exact same thing happened to me. It took most of my day, Saturday, to figure out what was wrong and fix it. I'm using the dracut method to create my initrd, so mkinitcpio does not run. So, do I need to manually copy and rename the vmlinuz file from /usr/lib/modules/<kver> for a kernel update, from now on?

fromagegb

Member

Registered: 2018-06-05

Posts: 10

Re: [SOLVED] Vmlinuz-linux not found after kernel update

I updated to 5.3.8-arch1-1 yesterday, have the same mkinitcpio as you, and the /boot files (including vmlinuz-linux) were created by it.  Haven't got a clue about libalpm hooks though, but my pacman log reports
pastebin
and that is the file timestamp, so I guess my 90-mkinitcpio-install.hook (wherever that is) worked OK.

WorMzy

Administrator

From: Scotland

Registered: 2010-06-16

Posts: 12,411

Website

Re: [SOLVED] Vmlinuz-linux not found after kernel update

I'm using the dracut [...] So, do I need to manually copy and rename the vmlinuz file from /usr/lib/modules/<kver> for a kernel update, from now on?

For the moment, yes/no.

You can write your own hook, or you can do things manually until Giancarlo writes one for the dracut package (thread starts here, and continues here).

For people using mkinitcpio and having trouble:

/usr/share/libalpm/hooks/90-mkinitcpio-install.hook runs whenever a kernel gets installed to /usr/lib/modules/*/vmlinuz by pacman. It calls /usr/share/libalpm/scripts/mkinitcpio-install, which installs the kernel to /boot for you. If this mechanism is broken on your system, check your pacman log and see if 90-mkinitcpio-install.hook was called at all following a kernel update, and what the output was.

---

Sakura:-
Mobo: MSI MAG X570S TORPEDO MAX // Processor: AMD Ryzen 9 5950X @4.9GHz // GFX: AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT // RAM: 32GB (4x 8GB) Corsair DDR4 (@ 3000MHz) // Storage: 1x 3TB HDD, 6x 1TB SSD, 2x 120GB SSD, 1x 275GB M2 SSD

Making lemonade from lemons since 2015.

ratcheer

Member

Registered: 2011-10-09

Posts: 912

Re: [SOLVED] Vmlinuz-linux not found after kernel update

Thanks, @WorMzy. I have been following that thread in the mail list, but I never really saw anyone say explicitly what has to be done, now.

As long as I know that I need to copy and rename the module after kernel updates, I'll be fine.

danielstaleiny

Member

Registered: 2017-02-24

Posts: 2

Re: [SOLVED] Vmlinuz-linux not found after kernel update

Had the same issue, since yesterday. I though it was caused by my system crashing in middle of update. I was unable to boot after that. How I fixed it.

mount /dev/X /mnt
mount /dev/Y /mnt/boot
arch-chroot
pacman -S linux 
pacman -S mkinitcpio

Last edited by danielstaleiny (2019-11-07 19:25:19)

luisadriant

Member

Registered: 2019-11-03

Posts: 3

Re: [SOLVED] Vmlinuz-linux not found after kernel update

A quick fix for me was downgrading the kernel, so I can use my laptop. Today I upgraded again to the latest linux version and encounter the same issue.
So I replaced the mkinitcpio-git package with mkinitcpio then pacman -S linux one more time and that did the trick.

marcvangend

Member

Registered: 2013-04-22

Posts: 21

Re: [SOLVED] Vmlinuz-linux not found after kernel update

Had the same issue, since yesterday. I though it was caused by my system crashing in middle of update. I was unable to boot after that. How I fixed it.

mount /dev/X /mnt
mount /dev/Y /mnt/boot
arch-chroot
pacman -S linux 
pacman -S mkinitcpio

Excellent, this was exactly what I needed today to solve a similar situation. However, for future reference, the third command should be:

arch-chroot /mnt

In case anyone is wondering (like I was) what the correct values are for /dev/X and /dev/Y: I figured it out using the `lsblk` command. It showed me that in my case "sdb" was the USB stick I was booting from, and "sda" was the main drive. It also showed me that my sda1 has a size of 259M, meaning it had to be the boot/EFI partition, and that sda2 has a size of 48G, making it the most likely candidate for the root partition (the 3rd and largest partition holds my user data). So for me the commands were `mount /dev/sda2 /mnt` and `mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot`. A quick `ls /mnt` and `ls /mnt/boot` confirmed that my guesses were right.

2ManyDogs

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2012-01-15

Posts: 4,645

Re: [SOLVED] Vmlinuz-linux not found after kernel update

Closing this old solved thread.