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Hi,
I have this weird problem where my system (ASUS ROG laptop i9-13980hx / RTX 4060) won't boot at all past grub. What's worst is that I don't have any idea why this happened. Last thing I remembered doing was a system upgrade using pacman -Syu. I have this issue since 2 days ago and didn't manage to fix it.
Let me explain the behavior. This was the initial behavior (now it's slightly different):
1. Start the system normally and choose Arch in grub (I have dual boot with Windows)
2. GRUB displays the typical messages (Loading Linux linux... / Loading initial ramdisk...)
2.1. And here it gets interesting: I noticed that it takes a bit more time to transition to step 3., noticeably more, like 5-10 seconds.
3, I have my root partition encrypted, therefore it prompts me for my password. After entering the password, the typical messages are displayed (/dev/mapper/whatever: clean...) and it HANGS. You can't do anything, apart from forcefully shutting it down using the power button.
3.1. I have an external keyboard connected to an USB hub connected to a cooling pad; while typing the password, the lightning of the keyboard goes off for 1-2 seconds suddenly, and of course what you type is not registered. This happened to me 2-3 times while typing the password. It never happened before having this issue.
Now, I tried chrooting from an Arch Linux Live CD and rebuilt the initramfs which threw an error at some point (at autodetect hook - complaining about root partition not being mounted? if i remember correclty; i don't have the error message right now ). After that, it won't even get me to the password prompt, but open an emergency shell where I couldn't type anything using my laptop's keyboard.
ERROR: device '/dev/mapper/root' not found. Skipping fsck.
mount: /new_root: fsconfig system call failed: /dev/mapper/root: Can't lookup blockdev.
dmesg(1) may have more information after failed mount system call.
ERROR: Failed to mount '/dev/mapper/root' on real root
You are now being dropped into an emergency shell.
sh: can't access tty; job control turned off
[rootfs ™]# -Windows works just fine. I forgot to mention that I have two SSDs: 1 TB & 2 TB (SKHynix Platinum P41). The first one is only used on windows (C:/), and the second one has 1.2TB for Linux (the encrypted root) + boot, and the remaining ~800GB as a partition on Windows. In the worst case I suspect that maybe the second SSD could be faulty (I bought it from a guy on an online marketplace, it was new, 0GB written, but no warranty).
If I chroot into the decrypted root partition using a Debian 12 Live USB, it behaves strangely:
user@debian:~$ sudo mount --mkdir /dev/nvme0n1p3 /mnt/boot
user@debian:~$ sudo cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/nvme0n1p5 root
Enter passphrase for /dev/nvme0n1p5:
user@debian:~$ sudo mount /dev/mapper/root /mnt
user@debian:~$ sudo chroot /mnt
[root@debian /]# whoami
root
[root@debian /]# pacman
pacman: error while loading shared libraries: /usr/lib/libcurl.so.4: file too short
[root@debian /]# ls -l /usr/lib/libcurl.so.4
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 16 Jul 24 09:35 /usr/lib/libcurl.so.4 -> libcurl.so.4.8.0
[root@debian /]# ls -l /usr/lib/libcurl.so.4.8.0
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 0 Jul 24 09:35 /usr/lib/libcurl.so.4.8.0
[root@debian /]# file /usr/lib/libcurl.so.4.8.0
/usr/lib/libcurl.so.4.8.0: emptyI don't even have logs. I think the present logs are from the last successful boot looking at the date and their content (no significant errors in boot.log):
[root@debian log]# ls -l
total 4704
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 May 8 12:27 audit
-rw------- 1 root root 2719744 Jul 25 22:46 boot.log
-rw-rw---- 1 root utmp 3840 Jul 19 23:49 btmp
-rw-r----- 1 root root 5958 Jul 15 19:00 firewalld
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Apr 7 15:40 glusterfs
drwxr-sr-x+ 5 root systemd-journal 4096 May 8 16:17 journal
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root utmp 292292 Jul 22 21:25 lastlog
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 May 8 20:05 libvirt
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Apr 7 21:02 old
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 May 9 12:01 optimus-manager
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 950272 Jul 25 22:47 pacman.log
drwxr-xr-x 2 passim passim 4096 Jun 22 14:29 passim
drwx------ 2 root root 4096 May 8 12:27 private
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 May 16 22:40 samba
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 May 8 20:05 swtpm
-rw-rw-r-- 1 root utmp 872448 Jul 25 22:46 wtmp
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Jul 25 22:51 Xorg.0.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 43732 Jul 25 00:32 Xorg.0.log.old
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 27676 Jul 17 10:35 Xorg.1.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 61914 May 17 12:09 Xorg.2.log
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 57218 May 17 12:09 Xorg.2.log.old
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Jul 25 22:46 zdns
[root@debian log]# journalctl -b
[root@debian log]# I don't know what info to provide to you given the fact that I don't see any current logs. I will be glad to provide extra information as requested. Thank you!
Last edited by reloadedd (2024-07-27 14:35:02)
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I've managed to solve the issue by reinstalling all programs:)
I noticed that while chroot-ed I got multiple errors related to libs when running different programs, one example would be pacman. I then searched the errors and finally decided to reinstall everything. Works exactly as before (the issue).
Steps:
1. Boot using the Arch Linux Live USB, then mounted the /boot partition & decrypted + mounted the root partition. After that ran the following command -- from the live USB, not inside chroot:
pacman --sysroot /mnt -Syyu $(pacman --sysroot /mnt -Qnq) --overwrite '*'*I've also disabled signature checks because I was getting alot of them and couldn't continue. Chroot-ed into the root partition and then edited /etc/pacman.conf and set SigLevel = Never.
2. I've also rebuilt initramfs (tried two times, and the 2nd it worked without errors):
mkinitcpio -POffline
Windows works just fine.
so you dual-boot along with windows?
in that case: make sure to disable fast boot in windows - as how it works can lead to issues when dual booting
as for your described "solution": sounds like some issue during a regular update resulted in what's called a "partial update" - this is when the system is no longer in a consistent state because some stuff got updated while others not
although it seems you were able to get your system back in a working state - just force-overwrite everything doesn't sound good - it's like "my windows does something weird - lets install yet another instance just ontop of it" - although linux does handle package stuff quite more better than windows with its monolithic archtitecture
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