[SOLVED] My system was broken after interrupting a building process

insciwetrust · 2022-08-29 20:11:28

Hi,
I know it is bad practice, but I had to interrupt an AUR update that was taking hours by pressing Ctrl+C. Turning my PC back on, a "Welcome to GRUB!" text greeted me for less than a second, after which the computer crashed and rebooted to BIOS. Hereafter, I noticed a few odd things:
1) My CPU speed was set to 1 GHz, which is absolutely not its original speed.
2) Plugging in an Arch live USB resulted in the computer freezing (using different live USBs didn't make a difference).
3) Devices listed under boot priority had messed up names.

After multiple reboots, I was somehow able to see the proper names of bootable devices and boot to my Arch live USB. I was planning to chroot into my installation to see what messed it up and tinker with pacman to fix the problem, but I realised that there is a bigger problem: the main hard drive doesn't show up in the disk list (fdisk -l). Does this indicate a hardware problem?

Last edited by insciwetrust (2022-08-29 22:35:02)

Trilby · 2022-08-29 20:24:52

Please adjust your title to reflect the issue. If your description is accurate, you did not interrupt an update (e.g., pacman changing system files). You interrupted the build process of an AUR package which is completely harmless. However, if it was running for a long time, it was likely writing a fair bit to the disk, and that may have contributed to a disk issue if there were other underlying issues with that hardware. Is this an HDD or a SSD? How old?

insciwetrust wrote:

Does this indicate a hardware problem?

Not conclusively, but with the available data, yes that seems most likely. Interrupting the AUR package building is (almost certainly) a red-herring (hence the suggestion to change the thread title).

If / when the drive is recognized, run a smart test on it.

Last edited by Trilby (2022-08-29 20:25:30)

insciwetrust · 2022-08-29 21:34:00

Trilby wrote:

Please adjust your title to reflect the issue. If your description is accurate, you did not interrupt an update (e.g., pacman changing system files). You interrupted the build process of an AUR package which is completely harmless. However, if it was running for a long time, it was likely writing a fair bit to the disk, and that may have contributed to a disk issue if there were other underlying issues with that hardware. Is this an HDD or a SSD? How old?
insciwetrust wrote:
Does this indicate a hardware problem?
Not conclusively, but with the available data, yes that seems most likely. Interrupting the AUR package building is (almost certainly) a red-herring (hence the suggestion to change the thread title).
If / when the drive is recognized, run a smart test on it.

It's an SSD and about 2 years old, I don't think there is an underlying issue with it.

One interesting update: Windows live USB can recognise the disk, format it, and install Windows on it. Even after doing that, it is impossible to reinstall Linux on it, as Linux doesn't recognise the disk for some reason.

loqs · 2022-08-29 21:37:59

Please post the dmesg from Arch linux installation media which fails to detect the SSD. See the examples from pastebin to pipe the output directly to the pastebin.
What interface is used to connect the SSD to the system NVME/SCSI/SATA/USB/other?

Last edited by loqs (2022-08-29 21:38:41)

insciwetrust · 2022-08-29 22:07:32

loqs wrote:

Please post the dmesg from Arch linux installation media which fails to detect the SSD. See the examples from pastebin to pipe the output directly to the pastebin.
What interface is used to connect the SSD to the system NVME/SCSI/SATA/USB/other?

Here is the output of dmesg: https://sprunge.us/mCo1Sr

The interface is NVME.

loqs · 2022-08-29 22:11:28

[    4.458423] ahci 0000:00:17.0: version 3.0
[    4.458610] ahci 0000:00:17.0: Found 1 remapped NVMe devices.
[    4.458612] ahci 0000:00:17.0: Switch your BIOS from RAID to AHCI mode to use them.

Did you try doing this as the kernel suggested?

insciwetrust · 2022-08-29 22:34:14

loqs wrote:

[    4.458423] ahci 0000:00:17.0: version 3.0
[    4.458610] ahci 0000:00:17.0: Found 1 remapped NVMe devices.
[    4.458612] ahci 0000:00:17.0: Switch your BIOS from RAID to AHCI mode to use them.

Did you try doing this as the kernel suggested?

Cannot believe it was this simple. I ruined my setup by installing another OS before trying this. Thanks a lot, I'm marking it as solved.

Last edited by insciwetrust (2022-08-29 22:34:42)

Arch Linux

#1 2022-08-29 20:11:28

[SOLVED] My system was broken after interrupting a building process

#2 2022-08-29 20:24:52

Re: [SOLVED] My system was broken after interrupting a building process

#3 2022-08-29 21:34:00

Re: [SOLVED] My system was broken after interrupting a building process

#4 2022-08-29 21:37:59

Re: [SOLVED] My system was broken after interrupting a building process

#5 2022-08-29 22:07:32

Re: [SOLVED] My system was broken after interrupting a building process

#6 2022-08-29 22:11:28

Re: [SOLVED] My system was broken after interrupting a building process

#7 2022-08-29 22:34:14

Re: [SOLVED] My system was broken after interrupting a building process

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