Arch Linux

surlogics

Member

Registered: 2013-08-15

Posts: 5

Could not upgrade kernel from 5.8.12-arch1-1 to 5.9.1-arch1-1

Hi all,
I tried to upgraded Arch from 5.8.12-arch1-1 to 5.9.1-arch1-1 with

pacman -Syu

and

pacman -S linux

, and reboot to find myself in emergency mode. The system could not mount /boot/efi, as vfat32 is not recognized.

uname -r

is 5.8.12-arch1-1 so the kernel is the old one.

Then I changed my pacman mirrors to a specific date (2020/09/30) and downgrade to 5.8.12-arch1-1 (including linux, linux-headers and a few packages) then I successfully reboot to the system (despite some errors in NetworkManager).

I tried to update again and reboot but still find myself in emergency mode. After I perform

downgrade linux

, the system revived.

I got some errors when upgrade or downgrade:

==> WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: wd719x
==> WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: aic94xx
==> WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: xhci_pci

I checked the wiki (https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Mk … odule_XXXX), and searched for these modules. It seems that I do not own any of these hardware ( seems like PCI-SCSI card, etc).

Is there anything that I could to do to help diagnose the problem? Thank you.

Last edited by surlogics (2020-10-26 08:03:36)

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 77,697

Re: Could not upgrade kernel from 5.8.12-arch1-1 to 5.9.1-arch1-1

The journal from the failed boot.
The symptoms sound like you forgot to mount the boot partition and boot an old kernel, not matching the installed modules.

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surlogics

Member

Registered: 2013-08-15

Posts: 5

Re: Could not upgrade kernel from 5.8.12-arch1-1 to 5.9.1-arch1-1

Thank you for your timely reply,

I checked lsblk when I perform pacman -Syu and /boot/efi was successfully mounted at that time.

I also update my grub with update-grub and got no error.

journalctl tell me that the system halted when trying to mount /boot/efi:

Unknown filesystem type 'vfat'

So I googled and find that the mismatch of kernel may be the issue. uname -r tell me that I am running on 5.8.12-arch1-1, which is the old one.

Any approach that could I fix this? Thanks!

Last edited by surlogics (2020-10-26 08:18:52)

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 77,697

Re: Could not upgrade kernel from 5.8.12-arch1-1 to 5.9.1-arch1-1

Check the bootloader config on which device you're actually booting from, if there're kernels and iniramsfs' in the unmounted /boot path, you might be booting from the root device.
nb. that after the downgrade, the kernel is oc. supposed to be 5.8.12, the question is what it was when you thought you'd be booting 5.9.1

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How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc

surlogics

Member

Registered: 2013-08-15

Posts: 5

Re: Could not upgrade kernel from 5.8.12-arch1-1 to 5.9.1-arch1-1

Thank you seth, I refreshed /boot/efi path with 

mkinitcpio -p linux

, and the /boot partition should be the new 5.9.1 kernel.
Probably the root partition is not refreshed, as uname -r give me the old kernel (at that time /boot/efi was not mounted, due to the unrecognized vfat issue).
Probably completely format the /boot/efi and reinstall kernel and grub would solve that, I would check to make sure I successfully later.