[SOLVED] Failed to mount /boot. (kernel versions differ?)

camleon · 2024-03-15 22:30:05

Hi all,
I have been using Archlinux for many years on a dual-boot system alongside with Windows, but recently I needed to redo the installation and ran into a problem, where I get the following error message at boot (of course after very carefully following the installation guide for the x-th time):

[FAILED] Failed to mount /boot
[DEPEND] Dependency failed for Local File Systems.
You are in emergency mode [...]

There was definitely no error when installing grub in my EFI partition.
After doing some research, I found out that my kernel versions differ between the "uname -a" and "pacman -Qi linux":

$ pacman -Qi linux | grep Version
Version     : 6.7.9.arch1-1
$ uname -a 
Linux archlinux 6.6.21-1-lts [...]

and that this may be the reason /boot cannot be mounted. How can that be? What does this mean? So bizzare!
I don't have an old kernel version in /var/cache/pacman/... to revert to, because obviously I just installed the system. I cannot mount /boot manually, because

unknown filesystem type 'vfat'

. I cannot connect to the internet or start the networkmanager service, because this seems to be impossible in emergency mode. `mkinitcpio -P` and `mkinitcpio -P linux` don't fix anything unfortunately. I am really stuck here..

Content of fstab:

# /dev/sda1
UUID=BLABLABLA                /          ext4                rw,realtime    0   1
# /dev/sdc5
UUID=BLA                         /boot        vfat                 rw,realtime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro        0    2
# /dev/sda2
UUID=BLABLABLA                none        swap               defaults     0   0

Windows is located on "/dev/sdc" and "/dev/sdc5" is the EFI partition (1GB)
Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

Last edited by camleon (2024-03-16 13:07:45)

Scimmia · 2024-03-15 23:01:25

Why would you check the 'linux' package when that's not the kernel you're using?

camleon · 2024-03-15 23:08:20

sorry, can you elaborate a bit? Should I check something else? I thought 6.7.9 was the kernel version I should be using. I am not saying that this linux version stuff is definitely the reason /boot cannot be mounted, but this conclusion comes up from time to time when researching the problem in other forums.

Last edited by camleon (2024-03-15 23:20:56)

seth · 2024-03-15 23:21:20

You're booting the LTS kernel?

In any event, you'll have to fix this offline (ie. from the install iso) since you cannot mount the boot partition.
Speaking of which:

# /dev/sdc5                  /boot        vfat                 rw,realtime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro        0    2

it seems commented in your fstab??
However

UUID=BLABLABLA

since this is apparently a transcript, it's not clear how accurate that is.

camleon · 2024-03-15 23:30:53

seth wrote:

You're booting the LTS kernel?
In any event, you'll have to fix this offline (ie. from the install iso) since you cannot mount the boot partition.
Speaking of which:
# /dev/sdc5                  /boot        vfat                 rw,realtime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro        0    2
it seems commented in your fstab??
However
UUID=BLABLABLA
since this is apparently a transcript, it's not clear how accurate that is.

Honestly I am confused as to what I should be booting. Since I installed 6.7.9 via pacstrap just now, I would expect that version to boot and I would expect "uname -a" to list it.

Yes, it is a transcript, and I just corrected it, thanks. The crucial info is not commented out.

I have already tried running pacman updates / mkinitcpio from the live iso (in arch-chroot), without luck.

Last edited by camleon (2024-03-15 23:33:14)

seth · 2024-03-15 23:36:13

pacman -Qs kernel

will tell you what kernel's you've installed, but according to "uname -a", you're booting the LTS kernel.
Edit: try to explicitly re-install the kernel from the chroot, make sure you "arch-chroot"'ed into the system and don't forget to mount the /boot partition.

From the recue target, what's

cat /proc/cmdline

?

Last edited by seth (2024-03-15 23:37:51)

camleon · 2024-03-15 23:44:05

seth wrote:

pacman -Qs kernel
will tell you what kernel's you've installed, but according to "uname -a", you're booting the LTS kernel.
Edit: try to explicitly re-install the kernel from the chroot, make sure you "arch-chroot"'ed into the system and don't forget to mount the /boot partition.
From the recue target, what's
cat /proc/cmdline
?

Ok, I see. So

 pacman -Qs kernel

lists a couple of packages and also this one (transcript again)

local/linux 6.7.9.arch1-1
    The Linux kernel and modules

and I just noticed that the first boot message, which appears for a split-second is something like "loading linux-lts", so there appears to be some kind of mismatch?

$ cat /proc/cmdline
BOOT_IMAGE=/vmlinuz-linux-lts root=UUID=<STUFF> rw loglevel=3 quiet

Ok, so is this the image that grub tries to boot?

camleon · 2024-03-15 23:45:24

ok, I will try reinstalling "linux" with mounted /boot!

Last edited by camleon (2024-03-15 23:50:23)

seth · 2024-03-15 23:48:22

You'll also have to "grub-mkconfig" (assuming that's your bootloader)

camleon · 2024-03-16 00:05:52

seth wrote:

You'll also have to "grub-mkconfig" (assuming that's your bootloader)

Yes, I am using GRUB. Ok, I just did the following from the live iso:

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
mount /dev/sdc5 /mnt/boot
arch-chroot /mnt
pacman -S linux base linux-firmware
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

So, pacman reinstalled these packages and ran mkinitcpio.
The grub-mkconfig command prints the following:

Generating grub configuration file
Found linux image: /boot/vmlinuz-linux-lts
Found initrd image: /boot/initramfs-linux-lts.img
Found fallback initrd image(s) in /boot: initramfs-linux-lts-fallback.img
Found linux image /boot/vmlinuz-linux
Found fallback initrd image(s) in /boot: initramfs-linux-fallback.img
Warning: os-prober will not be executed to detect other bootable partitions.
Systems on them will not be added to the GRUB configuration.
Check GRUB_DISABLE_OS_PROBER documentation entry.
Adding boot menu entry for UEFI Firmware Settings ...
done

After a reboot the problem persists. Did GRUB actually do anything here? I would guess not, because "cat proc/cmdline" gives me the same output

camleon · 2024-03-16 00:18:08

Aha! In the GRUB-menu I selected the non-lts version under the Advanced Options and this boots just fine. So I probably have to find a way to make this the default boot entry for "ArchLinux" and probably I should somehow remove the old LTS version that was left over from the previous setup.. I think my initial problem is therefore solved, thanks a lot for being so patient @seth!

seth · 2024-03-16 08:04:57

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GRUB/T … menu_entry but if you don't even have the lts kernel installed

pacman -Qs linux-lts

I'd rather clean up the /boot directory from LTS kernel and corresponding initramfs'.

camleon · 2024-03-16 13:08:21

Yes, agreed. Thanks again!

Arch Linux

#1 2024-03-15 22:30:05

[SOLVED] Failed to mount /boot. (kernel versions differ?)

#2 2024-03-15 23:01:25

Re: [SOLVED] Failed to mount /boot. (kernel versions differ?)

#3 2024-03-15 23:08:20

Re: [SOLVED] Failed to mount /boot. (kernel versions differ?)

#4 2024-03-15 23:21:20

Re: [SOLVED] Failed to mount /boot. (kernel versions differ?)

#5 2024-03-15 23:30:53

Re: [SOLVED] Failed to mount /boot. (kernel versions differ?)

#6 2024-03-15 23:36:13

Re: [SOLVED] Failed to mount /boot. (kernel versions differ?)

#7 2024-03-15 23:44:05

Re: [SOLVED] Failed to mount /boot. (kernel versions differ?)

#8 2024-03-15 23:45:24

Re: [SOLVED] Failed to mount /boot. (kernel versions differ?)

#9 2024-03-15 23:48:22

Re: [SOLVED] Failed to mount /boot. (kernel versions differ?)

#10 2024-03-16 00:05:52

Re: [SOLVED] Failed to mount /boot. (kernel versions differ?)

#11 2024-03-16 00:18:08

Re: [SOLVED] Failed to mount /boot. (kernel versions differ?)

#12 2024-03-16 08:04:57

Re: [SOLVED] Failed to mount /boot. (kernel versions differ?)

#13 2024-03-16 13:08:21

Re: [SOLVED] Failed to mount /boot. (kernel versions differ?)

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