[SOLVED] Arch won't boot Failed to mount /boot/efi,

Noki · 2022-01-18 19:53:10

Hi All, not sure how this happened but I cannot boot Arch on my desktop with an issue I've not encountered before.

Failed to start Load Kernel Modules
Failed to start /boot/efi
Dependency Failed for Local File System

It gives me the option to login as root or ctrl+d to continue.

I login as root and browse the file system, everything in root and home seem intact. But my boot/efi directory seems to be empty, as stated in the error.

I then booted the Arch Flash Drive and did the normal process of mount my 3 partitions / /home & /boot/efi as I did when I installed a few weeks ago.

Then I logged in using arch-chroot and found that that partition had contents and seemed to be correct, a bunch of efi files from various installs including my Windows 10 stuff. I reinstalled grub and generated a new config anyway as that usually resolves this type of boot issue and rebooted. Same error.

Back in the emergency mode login as root I typed:

ls -l /dev/disk/by-uuid

and the result shows all my partitions EXCEPT for my efi partition, the same one I just mounted using the live flash drive. Why would this be missing, and does anyone know how I can fix this? not true sorry

My boot param in grub is using the UUID to find the partition ans is point to the partition containing /

Any suggestions appreciated.

Thanks Noki

EDIT Corrected an error, I mis-read all the long UUID numbers.

Last edited by Noki (2022-06-17 19:07:47)

Noki · 2022-01-18 19:57:50

Checking fstab and all the partitions in there are present and correct and correspond to the correct UUIDs

Noki · 2022-01-18 20:17:03

I noticed the /boot partition become duplicated in my fstab so I deleted the newer entry at the bottom. Now I can't even get into emergency mode, it fails to get passed the error Failed to start Load Kernetl Modules.

I am totally stuck, I don't get what's wrong, all the params seem to be there, it's up to date and booting from a Live USB Drive it mounts and loads all the files it should, they are all there and working. I am totally stuck.

I don't want to have to do a full re-install, I had to do that for Windows 10 last week after it randomly died and refused to recover itself. At least with this I could still run commands and stuff.

I'll keep reading what I can on the wiki and whatever google throws up but I've tried everything I know so far and nothing worked. Help greatly appreciated.

Noki · 2022-01-18 20:38:22

I walked away for 20 mins, booted the live disk and re-installed the kernel and redid grub-mkconfig, this time when I rebooted it decided to work!

I am now logged into Arch on the desktop as I should have been two hours ago, no wiser as to why this happened or how doing the same thing over and over again suddenly fixed it.

Will investigate and post here (in case I need it myself again in future).

Last edited by Noki (2022-01-18 20:39:14)

Noki · 2022-01-22 11:17:05

Nope, it is happening again today! Other than software updates to Arch I've done nothing to cause this. Does anyone have any idea what what make this happen?

Currently all I get is failed to load kernel modules, no option to enter emergency mode. Then after a while it shows wait for network start failed and then it fails to mount all my network mount points in fstab. But never loads.

Head_on_a_Stick · 2022-01-22 13:15:31

If you want help with this problem then you need to stop posting vague descriptions and start posting actual configuration files, error messages and journal content. See also https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=57855

And please use the edit button where appropriate instead of bumping the thread. See also https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Genera … es#Bumping

Noki · 2022-01-29 11:04:25

Sorry for vague posts. But nothing I looked up was helpful and was hoping for some inspiration from someone. This error is happening now every few days, probably after certain updates.

Today it is not booting at all and reinstalling grub and configuring again is not working (as it has done since I started this thread).

https://imgur.com/a/SSfwGpM shows some errors but I've not been able to find anything helpful online (so far).

Sorry my head is not in it due to some personal problems. I just need to get my computer to boot and after reading many forums posts and wiki entries I am still stuck. Would appreciate even the slightest nudge in the right direction if someone if will to lend me some help!

Thanks,
Noki

Head_on_a_Stick · 2022-01-29 20:06:32

Are you sure the drive isn't dying? What does smartctl(8) say about it?

Noki wrote:

Sorry my head is not in it due to some personal problems

No need to apologise. I am in a similar situation myself.

seth · 2022-01-29 22:09:34

I then booted the Arch Flash Drive and did the normal process of mount my 3 partitions / /home & /boot/efi as I did when I installed a few weeks ago.

90% chance that you're booting an old kernel - compare "uname -a" in the root shell to the installed kernel

Edit: the photo says that you're on the older 5.16.2 instead of 5.16.3 and a whole host of modules can't be loaded.
So I'm raising that to a blazing 101% (with 1% variance) - you forgot to mount the /boot partition.
Boot the iso, mount root and /boot partition, arch-chroot and re-install the kernel.

Last edited by seth (2022-01-29 22:13:33)

Noki · 2022-06-12 23:49:44

Sorry for the long delay, vagueness etc, I've had some time to deal with this for a while and here is why I am confused.

Cause:

Installing updates via pacman that include the kernel (or something requiring grub to be updated) break boot sequence.

The temp fix

To fix this I boot the Arch flash drive, then mount /(root fs) and /boot and /home from the appropriate partitions (shown in my fstab below) and arch-chroot /mnt before running two commands to fix it:
pacman -Syu base linux
then run:
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Exit and reboot, system boots now as it should on the updated kernel.

https://imgur.com/a/XuKhUPf Show the above output I just did a few minutes ago.

Why no work from main os?

So why this doesn't automatically work I cannot figure out, when I run the pacman -Syu command it outputs exactly as I would expect, as above.

/etc/fstab

# Static information about the filesystems.
# See fstab(5) for details.

# <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
# /dev/nvme0n1p5
UUID=39b62a5d-00d6-4381-802e-1b484b1dea32       /               ext4            rw,relatime     0 1

# /dev/nvme1n1p1
UUID=5d93e239-fd79-46f4-92f5-6300d918512b       /home           ext4            rw,relatime     0 2

# /dev/nvme0n1p1
#UUID=594A-699B         /boot           vfat            rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro   0 2

As root

I have even tried su root and running the above commands that fixes it from a flash drive but this fails. Next boot is broken with the same kernel error. My user is sudo so I don't see why it would change but worth a try.

Output from main os

su root
Password: 
[root@BlockBuster noki]# pacman -Syu base linux
:: Synchronising package databases...
 core is up to date
 extra is up to date
 community is up to date
 multilib is up to date
warning: base-2-2 is up to date -- reinstalling
warning: linux-5.18.3.arch1-1 is up to date -- reinstalling
:: Starting full system upgrade...
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...

Packages (2) base-2-2  linux-5.18.3.arch1-1

Total Installed Size:  174.85 MiB
Net Upgrade Size:        0.00 MiB

:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] y
(2/2) checking keys in keyring                                                                                                     [###############################################################################] 100%
(2/2) checking package integrity                                                                                                   [###############################################################################] 100%
(2/2) loading package files                                                                                                        [###############################################################################] 100%
(2/2) checking for file conflicts                                                                                                  [###############################################################################] 100%
(2/2) checking available disk space                                                                                                [###############################################################################] 100%
:: Processing package changes...
(1/2) reinstalling base                                                                                                            [###############################################################################] 100%
(2/2) reinstalling linux                                                                                                           [###############################################################################] 100%
:: Running post-transaction hooks...
(1/3) Arming ConditionNeedsUpdate...
(2/3) Updating module dependencies...
(3/3) Updating linux initcpios...
==> Building image from preset: /etc/mkinitcpio.d/linux.preset: 'default'
  -> -k /boot/vmlinuz-linux -c /etc/mkinitcpio.conf -g /boot/initramfs-linux.img
==> Starting build: 5.18.3-arch1-1
  -> Running build hook: [base]
  -> Running build hook: [udev]
  -> Running build hook: [autodetect]
  -> Running build hook: [modconf]
  -> Running build hook: [block]
==> WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: xhci_pci
  -> Running build hook: [filesystems]
  -> Running build hook: [keyboard]
  -> Running build hook: [fsck]
==> Generating module dependencies
==> Creating zstd-compressed initcpio image: /boot/initramfs-linux.img
==> Image generation successful
==> Building image from preset: /etc/mkinitcpio.d/linux.preset: 'fallback'
  -> -k /boot/vmlinuz-linux -c /etc/mkinitcpio.conf -g /boot/initramfs-linux-fallback.img -S autodetect
==> Starting build: 5.18.3-arch1-1
  -> Running build hook: [base]
  -> Running build hook: [udev]
  -> Running build hook: [modconf]
  -> Running build hook: [block]
==> WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: bfa
==> WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: wd719x
==> WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: aic94xx
==> WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: qla2xxx
==> WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: qed
==> WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: qla1280
==> WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: xhci_pci
  -> Running build hook: [filesystems]
  -> Running build hook: [keyboard]
  -> Running build hook: [fsck]
==> Generating module dependencies
==> Creating zstd-compressed initcpio image: /boot/initramfs-linux-fallback.img
==> Image generation successful
[root@BlockBuster noki]# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg 
Generating grub configuration file ...
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-linux
Found initrd image: /boot/amd-ucode.img /boot/initramfs-linux.img
Found fallback initrd image(s) in /boot:  amd-ucode.img initramfs-linux-fallback.img
Warning: os-prober will be executed to detect other bootable partitions.
Its output will be used to detect bootable binaries on them and create new boot entries.
grub-probe: error: cannot find a GRUB drive for /dev/sde1.  Check your device.map.
Found Windows Boot Manager on /dev/nvme0n1p1@/efi/Microsoft/Boot/bootmgfw.efi
Adding boot menu entry for UEFI Firmware Settings ...
done

Hmmm

If I am able to boot it, everything is appropriately mounted, I have permission to do the commands and they show no obvious error, why does this fail. What on Earth did I break?

I don't know what the error grub-probe: error: cannot find a GRUB drive for /dev/sde1. Check your device.map. is but it shows on both so is not the culprit. It's the flash drive I installed arch from, nm.

Hope the context provided helps.

PS the personal troubles we're my mum in the hospital, she is much better now

Last edited by Noki (2022-06-12 23:53:00)

seth · 2022-06-13 05:54:36

To fix this I boot the Arch flash drive, then mount /(root fs) and /boot and /home from the appropriate partitions (shown in my fstab below)

# Static information about the filesystems.
# See fstab(5) for details.
# <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
# /dev/nvme0n1p5
UUID=39b62a5d-00d6-4381-802e-1b484b1dea32 / ext4 rw,relatime 0 1
# /dev/nvme1n1p1
UUID=5d93e239-fd79-46f4-92f5-6300d918512b /home ext4 rw,relatime 0 2
# /dev/nvme0n1p1
#UUID=594A-699B /boot vfat rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro 0 2

Edit: the bold didn't really stick out…

Last edited by seth (2022-06-13 05:56:23)

Noki · 2022-06-13 17:17:06

Ugh, blind as a bat. Will see if that works on the next update. Thanks!

Arch Linux

#1 2022-01-18 19:53:10