Botched Kernel Upgrade (or I might be missing something obvious)

Californian · 2020-09-06 23:09:14

Apologies if this should actually be in newbie corner, but this feels appropriate considering I'm not a complete newbie and I've tried what I think are all the obvious initial routes.

I'm having issues starting my X server, so I dug around a bit and I think the issue is with a kernel upgrade I recently performed (by running `pacman -Syyu`). `uname -r` reports `5.8.5-arch1-1`; `pacman -Q linux` reports `5.8.7-arch1-1`. (I can boot and run things in tty2, in case that wasn't obvious).

I've never had to perform manual steps to upgrade the kernel before, but this is my first upgrade after switching to `systemd-boot`, so I suspect that's the issue (at least partially).

I looked at `dmesg` and one obvious problem is that it `Failed to start Load Kernel Modules`.

`bootctl update`/`install` both complain that `/efi` isn't mounted, which is accurate. I'm pretty sure that's what I was using, but there's a tiny possibility it was actually `/boot/efi` (though the former directory exists and the latter does not, so very doubtful, just trying to give as much info as possible).

I tried to manually mount `/efi`, but get `unknown filesystem type 'vfat'`. This is particularly odd because I installed whatever package was necessary for vfat recently to do some sdcard stuff.

Another potentially useful tidbit is that I skipped fallback image generation because my windows-dual-booted efi partition is only 150MB and didn't have room for it.

Any ideas/any other info I can provide?

Thanks in advance.

Last edited by Californian (2020-09-06 23:10:25)

Scimmia · 2020-09-06 23:13:57

The kernel and initramfs need to be on the ESP. Why are you mounting it to /efi? Are you bind mounting something from there to /boot, or how are you intending on getting the kernel/initramfs onto it?

The mount error isn't odd at all, it requires the vfat module which isn't available since you're booting an old kernel. Downgrade the kernel package so that you can fix things.

Last edited by Scimmia (2020-09-06 23:19:49)

Californian · 2020-09-06 23:32:46

Well that was an obvious first step I missed, maybe this should be in newbie corner lol. I successfully downgraded, everything is working fine.

That makes sense re: the vfat error.

Why am I mounting to /efi....well honestly I tried to figure out best practices for this but the two options here https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/EF … _partition weren't clear to me, even after asking people on matrix chat about which was preferable and I was having such issues with the whole too-small-partition that when it finally worked I didn't bother revisiting the choice. Should I mount to `/boot`? If so, is there a good resource describing the more fundamental aspects of how that all works so I can (a) understand why that's a better choice and (b) know how to actually switch it without breaking things (especially windows because, while I anticipate using it very rarely, I know it's finicky with its boot partition)?

So now that I'm downgraded, I assume `bootctl update` is how I fix this, and I should run that (and maybe install that pacman hook I seem to have forgot about) on future upgrades?

Scimmia · 2020-09-06 23:43:02

bootctl will not fix anything. The issue is that the kernel isn't on the ESP, you need to get it there.

Re-read the wiki article you linked to. It gives you a lot of options. If you have *specific* questions about it, ask.

WorMzy · 2020-09-07 00:15:06

Mod note: Moving to NC.

Arch Linux

#1 2020-09-06 23:09:14

Botched Kernel Upgrade (or I might be missing something obvious)

#2 2020-09-06 23:13:57

Re: Botched Kernel Upgrade (or I might be missing something obvious)

#3 2020-09-06 23:32:46

Re: Botched Kernel Upgrade (or I might be missing something obvious)

#4 2020-09-06 23:43:02

Re: Botched Kernel Upgrade (or I might be missing something obvious)

#5 2020-09-07 00:15:06

Re: Botched Kernel Upgrade (or I might be missing something obvious)

Board footer