[SOLVED] Fresh Arch installation bootloops on black screen

bonkmaykr · 2022-12-22 23:47:00

Hello. I just attempted to install Arch on my main PC. It's had Ubuntu on it in the past and currently only has Windows installed. I've had experience with manually installing Arch at least a couple of times and this issue is brand new to me. When this first happened it actually reset my BIOS settings (will elaborate on that in a moment). Sorry if I've missed any existing threads as I was unable to find any that I'm sure matches this issue.

I am using the ISO from December 1st of this year. This is on a Dell Inspiron 3670.

I'll walk you through the steps I took just incase I did something wrong here:
- Set Windows & BIOS to ACHI mode instead of RAID because Linux was no longer detecting my M.2 drives
- Created 128GB EXT4 partition ahead of time at /dev/nvme0n1p5 using another live distro
- Booted the Arch USB
- Skipped internet setup, already using ethernet
- timedatectl
- Used gdisk to create a FAT32 partition at /dev/nvme0n1p6 to install GRUB to later on
- Mounted /dev/nvme0n1p5 to /mnt and /dev/nvme0n1p6 to /mnt/boot respectively
- Installed base linux linux-firmware man-db man-pages texinfo networkmanager nano nvidia
- Changed my mind on kernels and decided to install linux-zen without removing linux (is this bad?)
- genfstab
- Set time zone settings and locales
- Set hostname
- Regenerated initramfs
- set root password
- Installed grub efibootmgr
- Ran grub-install
- Enabled OS probing, installed os-prober
- Generated config. GRUB did not detect Windows during this phase for some reason.
- Restarted

After this GRUB loaded fine, but upon selecting Arch, "Loading Linux linux-zen..." appeared for a fraction of a second before the monitor went black (but did not turn off) and the computer locked up completely, with my keyboard and mouse shutting off. Attempting to force turn off the computer at this point would cause it to just turn back on and immediately go to a black screen without even loading the BIOS. I had to power cycle the system just to make it turn on properly again. When I did, the BIOS complained that no date and time was set and promptly reverted the time back to september of 2018, then set my SATA Operation back to RAID mode. I thought this was the issue somehow so I set it back to ACHI, however this did not fix the problem.

Windows still boots fine from SATA, Arch gets stuck here.

Last edited by bonkmaykr (2022-12-25 09:58:28)

cfr · 2022-12-23 00:53:56

bonkmaykr wrote:

- Created 128GB EXT4 partition ahead of time at /dev/nvme0n1p5 using another live distro

Doesn't matter, but why?

You disabled secure boot? I'm assuming this is a UEFI machine?

bonkmaykr wrote:

- Used gdisk to create a FAT32 partition at /dev/nvme0n1p6 to install GRUB to later on

This is a mistake. It is possible your firmware will tolerate it, but it may well not. The rule is one EFI partition per disk at most. Instead of creating a new ESP, mount your existing EFI partition (i.e. the one Windows uses).

bonkmaykr wrote:

- Changed my mind on kernels and decided to install linux-zen without removing linux (is this bad?)

No. That's fine. Though you will need to be careful with space if you have the overly small ESP Windows typically creates. (There are ways around this, if you want more kernels, but you will be limited unless/until you use such a workaround.)

bonkmaykr wrote:

- Generated config. GRUB did not detect Windows during this phase for some reason.

Check os-prober isn't disabled in grub's config files, but I don't know if it would look at a second ESP.

bonkmaykr wrote:

After this GRUB loaded fine, but upon selecting Arch, "Loading Linux linux-zen..." appeared for a fraction of a second before the monitor went black (but did not turn off) and the computer locked up completely, with my keyboard and mouse shutting off. Attempting to force turn off the computer at this point would cause it to just turn back on and immediately go to a black screen without even loading the BIOS. I had to power cycle the system just to make it turn on properly again. When I did, the BIOS complained that no date and time was set and promptly reverted the time back to september of 2018, then set my SATA Operation back to RAID mode. I thought this was the issue somehow so I set it back to ACHI, however this did not fix the problem.

As a temporary measure, you can try adding nomodeset to the kernel parameters (edit the command line in grub). (This isn't a solution but a temporary way to boot.)

What graphics do you have?

bonkmaykr · 2022-12-23 02:58:46

Thank you for the additional advice, I will keep it in mind for next time.

cfr wrote:

bonkmaykr wrote:
After this GRUB loaded fine, but upon selecting Arch, "Loading Linux linux-zen..." appeared for a fraction of a second before the monitor went black (but did not turn off) and the computer locked up completely, with my keyboard and mouse shutting off. Attempting to force turn off the computer at this point would cause it to just turn back on and immediately go to a black screen without even loading the BIOS. I had to power cycle the system just to make it turn on properly again. When I did, the BIOS complained that no date and time was set and promptly reverted the time back to september of 2018, then set my SATA Operation back to RAID mode. I thought this was the issue somehow so I set it back to ACHI, however this did not fix the problem.
As a temporary measure, you can try adding nomodeset to the kernel parameters (edit the command line in grub). (This isn't a solution but a temporary way to boot.)
What graphics do you have?

I have a GeForce GTX 1060 3GB.

nomodeset did not help, however, while attempting nomodeset at startup I noticed that something was very very wrong. There was no initrd command in the GRUB command list, and absolutely zero reference to the initramfs. I believe this might be my problem.

setparams 'Arch Linux'

load_video
set gfxpayload=keep
insmod gzio
insmod part_gpt
insmod fat
search --no-floppy --fs-uuid --set=root 7F1C-CFEF
echo 'Loading Linux linux-zen'
linux /vmlinuz-linux-zen root=/dev/nvme0n1p5 rw loglevel=3 quiet

I cross-referenced this with another computer that had a working Arch installation, and sure enough, it had this line at the end:

initrd /boot/initramfs-linux.img

I would add this line to the commands on the problem machine, but I do not know where initramfs is at the moment. I checked the ESP created during the Arch setup and no such file exists, only the two kernels I installed. It's possible it was never saved anywhere, but I don't recall seeing any error messages about it during setup.

cfr · 2022-12-23 03:17:43

Where are you mounting your ESP? The initramfs(es) and kernel(s) should be in the same place, but they need not be on your ESP. They might be on your root partition. This is unless you are using combined kernel images, rather than separate initramfs(es). You should know if you are doing that, though, and the files should have the .efi suffix.

Post the output of

lsblk -f

and the contents of /etc/fstab.

You probably need to mount the root partition, mount the ESP, reinstall your kernel package(s) and then regenerate grub's configuration.

Scimmia · 2022-12-23 03:19:13

Did you choose dracut or booster instead of mkinitcpio? They don't automatically build, you have to do it manually.

bonkmaykr · 2022-12-23 03:39:55

Scimmia wrote:

Did you choose dracut or booster instead of mkinitcpio? They don't automatically build, you have to do it manually.

I used mkinitcpio as instructed by the Arch Wiki

The ESP should be mounted at /boot/

lsblk output is as follows:

sda
-sda1
-sda2   ntfs   E2A4A0BFA4A09815
-sda3   ntfs   68FE939FFE93645A
sdb   iso9660   Joliet Extension   ARCH_202212   2012-12-01-11-52-20-00
-sdb1   iso9660   Joliet Extension   ARCH_202212   2012-12-01-11-52-20-00
-sdb2   vfat   FAT16   ARCHISO_EFI   5DCD-146B
sdc
-sdc1   ntfs   Western Digital 4TB USB 3.0   01D650B6281827F0
sr0   iso9660   AOE   1998-01-21-16-00-00-00
nvme0n1
-nvme0n1p1   vfat   FAT32   27E8-4271
-nvme0n1p2
-nvme0n1p3   ext4   1.0   044c0a78-8ce3-45ad-8c62-b3a00beb605d
-nvme0n1p4   ntfs   Auxiliary Storage   01D901276935DBF0
-nvme0n1p5   ext4   1.0   b9596bb7-fe88-4976-adf4-4ed1264025a7
-nvme0n1p1   vfat   FAT32   7F1C-CFEF

nvme0n1p5 is root, nvme0n1p6 is the ESP.
nvme0n1p1 belongs to Windows and points to sda2.

Output of cat /etc/fstab is:

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

# <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>

Attempting to regenerate the initramfs with mkinitcpio -P prints this message:

==> WARNING: Preset file '/etc/mkinitcpio.d/linux-zen.preset' is empty or does not contain any presets. 
==> WARNING: Preset file '/etc/mkinitcpio.d/linux.preset' is empty or does not contain any presets.

Last edited by bonkmaykr (2022-12-23 03:59:04)

cfr · 2022-12-23 04:17:17

bonkmaykr wrote:

-nvme0n1p1   vfat   FAT32   27E8-4271
-nvme0n1p1   vfat   FAT32   7F1C-CFEF

??

bonkmaykr wrote:

nvme0n1p5 is root, nvme0n1p6 is the ESP.
nvme0n1p1 belongs to Windows and points to sda2.

As I said, two ESPs on the same disk is likely a problem.

bonkmaykr wrote:

Output of cat /etc/fstab is:

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

# <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>

Please post the contents of fstab on your installed system - not the live ISO.

bonkmaykr wrote:

Attempting to regenerate the initramfs with mkinitcpio -P prints this message:

==> WARNING: Preset file '/etc/mkinitcpio.d/linux-zen.preset' is empty or does not contain any presets. 
==> WARNING: Preset file '/etc/mkinitcpio.d/linux.preset' is empty or does not contain any presets.

Did you do this without chrooting?

bonkmaykr · 2022-12-23 04:25:57

cfr wrote:

bonkmaykr wrote:

-nvme0n1p1   vfat   FAT32   27E8-4271
-nvme0n1p1   vfat   FAT32   7F1C-CFEF

??

This was a typo, sorry. I had to rewrite the output by hand because I can't copy paste any of it.

#/dev/nvme0n1p5
UUID=b9596bb7-fe88-4976-adf4-4ed1264025a7  /  ext4  rw,relatime  0 1

#/dev/nvme0n1p6
UUID=7F1C-CFEF  /boot  vfat  rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro  0 2

cfr wrote:

Did you do this without chrooting?

No. I ran arch-chroot /mnt before running mkinitcpio. The prompt is grey, not red.

cfr · 2022-12-23 04:55:24

bonkmaykr wrote:

This was a typo, sorry. I had to rewrite the output by hand because I can't copy paste any of it.

If you have an internet connection, you don't need to. See first link in my signature.

bonkmaykr wrote:

cfr wrote:
Did you do this without chrooting?
No. I ran arch-chroot /mnt before running mkinitcpio. The prompt is grey, not red.

Then something is wrong. The preset files should not be empty. Check what they contain i.e. /mnt/etc/mkinitcpio.d/linux.preset and the zen version or drop the /mnt, obviously, if you're in the chroot. I don't know exactly how this works, but, looking quickly at /usr/share/libalpm/scripts/mkinitcpio, those files should be created from standard templates if they haven't been customised. They could not exist and mkinitcpio would create them, but they shouldn't be empty.

bonkmaykr · 2022-12-23 06:34:21

The preset files were indeed empty. I copied them from a working computer, then regenerated everything. Arch now begins to load, but the screen freezes on Triggering uevents. This appeared to be an issue with the graphics driver. I added "nomodeset" to the end of the kernel arguments, and it finally booted, only to complain that /sbin/init was absent.

ERROR: Root device mounted successfully, but /sbin/init does not exist.
Bailing out, you are on your own. Good luck.

sh: can't access tty: job control turned off

Whatever I did wrong this time, all hell broke loose. I am not able to give any inputs with the keyboard either. I understand this is a separate problem and I've looked at a few different threads, however my root is set correctly. I heard that somehow the symlink between /sbin/init and systemd might not be set up right so I will look into that shortly. I just don't really know how so many things could go wrong, since I didn't deviate very far from the instructions that the wiki gave me.

Last edited by bonkmaykr (2022-12-23 06:49:23)

cfr · 2022-12-23 16:36:06

Remove quiet from the kernel command line so you get more information about what's happening. Inspect the kernel command line prior to letting it boot. What is it now?

bonkmaykr · 2022-12-23 23:36:01

cfr wrote:

Remove quiet from the kernel command line so you get more information about what's happening. Inspect the kernel command line prior to letting it boot. What is it now?

I removed quiet earlier while trying to fix Triggering uevents.

linux /vmlinuz-linux-zen root=/dev/nvme0n1p5 rw loglevel=3 ibt=off nomodeset

Complete output:

::running early hook [udev]
Starting systemd-udevd version 252.4-2-arch
:: running hook [udev]
:: Triggering uevents...
:: running hook [keymap]
:: Loading keymap...done.
:: performing fsck on '/dev/nvme0n1p5'
/dev/nvme0n1p5: recovering journal
/dev/nvme0n1p5: clean, 64446/8388608 files, 1070749/33554432 blocks
:: mounting '/dev/nvme0n1p5' on real root
:: running cleanup hook [udev]
ERROR: Root device mounted successfully, but /sbin/init does not exist.
Bailing out, you are on your own. Good luck.

sh: can't access tty: job control turned off
[rootfs ]#

cfr · 2022-12-24 01:46:20

So does the file system in nvme0n1p5 have /sbin/init? If so, what does

stat <path to mounted system>/sbin/init

give? For example, if you've mounted the partition at /mnt in the live environment, what does

stat /mnt/sbin/init

give?

Does the installed system have systemd-sysvcompat installed? It should because it is part of the base group, but, then, you should have /sbin/init ....

bonkmaykr · 2022-12-25 05:04:00

cfr wrote:

So does the file system in nvme0n1p5 have /sbin/init? If so, what does
stat <path to mounted system>/sbin/init
give? For example, if you've mounted the partition at /mnt in the live environment, what does
stat /mnt/sbin/init
give?
Does the installed system have systemd-sysvcompat installed? It should because it is part of the base group, but, then, you should have /sbin/init ....

I installed the base package during setup, however, systemd-sysvcompat was not on the system. I have installed it now.

cat /sbin/init spits out a bunch of gibberish (binary being read as text), so there is something there. I only checked n this after installing the missing systemd package however so I could be wrong before.

Doing this fixed Arch and allowed me to boot. Thanks for the help <3 I'll let you know if anything else comes up but otherwise I suppose this thread is solved. Just curious, would me using the December 1st ISO cause these problems? I heard from someone else that this image didn't install properly for them either.

Arch Linux

#1 2022-12-22 23:47:00

[SOLVED] Fresh Arch installation bootloops on black screen

#2 2022-12-23 00:53:56

Re: [SOLVED] Fresh Arch installation bootloops on black screen

#3 2022-12-23 02:58:46

Re: [SOLVED] Fresh Arch installation bootloops on black screen

#4 2022-12-23 03:17:43

Re: [SOLVED] Fresh Arch installation bootloops on black screen

#5 2022-12-23 03:19:13

Re: [SOLVED] Fresh Arch installation bootloops on black screen

#6 2022-12-23 03:39:55

Re: [SOLVED] Fresh Arch installation bootloops on black screen

#7 2022-12-23 04:17:17

Re: [SOLVED] Fresh Arch installation bootloops on black screen

#8 2022-12-23 04:25:57

Re: [SOLVED] Fresh Arch installation bootloops on black screen

#9 2022-12-23 04:55:24

Re: [SOLVED] Fresh Arch installation bootloops on black screen

#10 2022-12-23 06:34:21

Re: [SOLVED] Fresh Arch installation bootloops on black screen

#11 2022-12-23 16:36:06

Re: [SOLVED] Fresh Arch installation bootloops on black screen

#12 2022-12-23 23:36:01

Re: [SOLVED] Fresh Arch installation bootloops on black screen

#13 2022-12-24 01:46:20

Re: [SOLVED] Fresh Arch installation bootloops on black screen

#14 2022-12-25 05:04:00

Re: [SOLVED] Fresh Arch installation bootloops on black screen

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