Device not found, failed to mount on real root

rwb01 · 2024-09-25 04:49:33

Hi, decided to take the plunge into Arch but I can't seem to get off the ground. Have a crappy HP laptop I decided to dual boot, and while multiple Arch installations have gone just fine, I have yet to be able to boot up. Whether using archinstall or going through the install by hand, whether using systemd-boot or grub, I get the same result on boot:

ERROR: device 'UUID=(root partition UUID)' not found. Skipping fsck. 
mount: /new_root: can't find UUID=(root partition UUID).
ERROR: Failed to mount 'UUID=(root partition UUID)' on real root
You are now being dropped into an emergency shell.

The (root partition UUID) has of course changed each time I do a full reformat/reinstall, but it always matches the UUID for the proper partition as listed by blkid and in fstab.

Moving the 'block' hook earlier in mkinitcpio.conf and remaking initramfs has no effect. Changing UUID to PARTUUID or vice versa has no effect. Not using LVM.

So I'm thinking the problem might either be on the UEFI side or perhaps Windows 11 is doing something strange. Secure boot is off, as is Windows fast startup and hibernation.

Another issue may be my hard drive, which is a Samsung UFS 3.1 flash storage device. hdparm gives no readout on security/freezes, but given this is my first rodeo, I'm a bit hesitant to start messing around with that just yet.

I'm tempted to disable TPM and clear it; however, I'd really prefer not to screw up Windows before I have Arch reliably up and running (hell, I'd settle for up and running once to prove it's possible on this device).

Any direction would be appreciated.

kermit63 · 2024-09-25 07:31:56

Is your root partition encrypted?

It would also be very helpful for potential helpers if you can post actual output of fstab and lsblk, instead of just narratives. Take a look at this section of the wiki so you can post output from the arch-chroot environment.

Also post the hook line of mkinitcpio.conf and details of how you configured GRUB and systemd-boot.

rwb01 · 2024-09-26 02:58:36

Hey, thanks for the reply.

My root partition is not encrypted.

Here is my fstab:

# UUID=74ede49a-efce-409b-bbf1-ef97aa489ed6
/dev/sdb7           	/         	ext4      	rw,relatime,stripe=128	0 1

# UUID=52C4-5356
/dev/sdb5           	/boot/efi 	vfat      	rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro	0 2

# UUID=0ef5327d-a644-4928-beb0-f11b6881c784
/dev/sdb6           	none      	swap      	defaults  	0 0

And the output from lsblk -f (from outside chroot so you can see the whole system):

NAME   FSTYPE   FSVER LABEL            UUID                                 FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS
loop0  squashfs 4.0                                                               0   100% /run/archiso/airootfs
sda                                                                                        
└─sda1 vfat     FAT32 ARCH_202409      1EB3-9E7A                                           
sdb                                                                                        
├─sdb1 vfat     FAT32 SYSTEM           AE49-0AB8                                           
├─sdb2                                                                                     
├─sdb3 ntfs           Windows          F4944ABB944A7FDA                                    
├─sdb4 ntfs           Windows RE tools 4C16ED9516ED8076                                    
├─sdb5 vfat     FAT32                  52C4-5356                             510.6M     0% /mnt/boot/efi
├─sdb6 swap     1                      0ef5327d-a644-4928-beb0-f11b6881c784                [SWAP]
└─sdb7 ext4     1.0                    74ede49a-efce-409b-bbf1-ef97aa489ed6   30.5G     7% /mnt

UUID=74ede49a-efce-409b-bbf1-ef97aa489ed6 (i.e. sdb7) is what's failing to load as I mentioned in my first post.

Here's my hooks line from mkinitcpio.conf:

HOOKS=(base udev block autodetect microcode modconf kms keyboard keymap consolefont filesystems fsck)

My current iteration is running grub; my grub.cfg file is here. I'm not sure I'd recall the specifics of my earlier systemd-boot install. (Btw, thanks for the pastebin suggestion, what a handy tool!)

solskog · 2024-09-26 03:30:40

├─sdb5 vfat FAT32 52C4-5356 510.6M 0% /mnt/boot/efi

How come the EFI partition is empty?

rwb01 · 2024-09-26 04:07:52

It has very little on it, apparently. When I mount it and run df, it says 1% used. Seems to just be the system volume info and EFI directories, and one file: EFI/arch/grubx64.efi.

Reading up on this....

Last edited by rwb01 (2024-09-26 04:15:36)

kermit63 · 2024-09-26 05:12:50

Don't worry about it. It's probably just a round-off thing. My grubx64.efi is only 136k and since /dev/sdb5 is 512mb, it might register as 0&.

I don't see anything blatantly wrong from a cursory look. Unfortunately I have a lot of errands to do today so I can't check in more detail.

Just wondering, is this a result of archinstall or manual installation?

solskog · 2024-09-26 05:13:55

Then where is your "EFI/Microsoft/" boot loader located? I have dual boot and mine look like this:

# ls /efi/EFI/
Boot grub-efi Microsoft

rwb01 · 2024-09-26 05:23:14

This is a manual install.

I gave Linux its own EFI partition; Windows EFI is sdb1. Didn't realize this wasn't necessary the first time I partitioned, but it doesn't seem to mess anything up.

solskog · 2024-09-26 05:44:24

rwb01 wrote:

I gave Linux its own EFI partition; Windows EFI is sdb1. Didn't realize this wasn't necessary the first time I partitioned, but it doesn't seem to mess anything up.

From my understanding and from the doc

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dual_boot_with_Windows#UEFI_systems wrote:

The boot loader needs to support chainloading other EFI applications to dual boot Windows and Linux. An additional EFI system partition should not be created, as it may prevent Windows from booting.

What if you boot into archlinux install iso and rerun

# grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot/efi --bootloader-id=grub-efi
# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Also from outside chroot

# genfstab -U /mnt >>/mnt/etc/fstab

Last edited by solskog (2024-09-26 06:26:50)

kermit63 · 2024-09-26 11:02:58

Some observations:

1, Some motherboards can't handle multiple EFI partitions. However, since you can access the GRUB screen, your computer can probably handle it. You may want to clean this up later on and just integrate arch into the Windows EFI partition. As you can see, the .efi file don't take much space.

2. Your /etc/fstab entries are using /dev/sdb? instead of UUIDs. This is what @solskog is trying to clean up by passing the -U argument to genfstab. After generating /etc/fstab, please check manually if there are duplicate entries and edit accordingly, if necessary. /dev/sda and /dev/sdb have a tendency to switch places during boot, while UUIDs are constant and thus more dependable.

Just for completeness sake, please also post the output of efibootmgr -v.

rwb01 · 2024-09-28 02:28:13

Hi, thanks for the suggestions and explanations. Did the grub reinstall as directed and regenerated fstab. There were three new entries (swapping the sdb into comments and UUID out), so I manually took out the old entries. It now reads:

# /dev/sdb7
UUID=74ede49a-efce-409b-bbf1-ef97aa489ed6	/         	ext4      	rw,relatime,stripe=128	0 1

# /dev/sdb5
UUID=52C4-5356      	/boot/efi 	vfat      	rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro	0 2

# /dev/sdb6
UUID=0ef5327d-a644-4928-beb0-f11b6881c784	none      	swap      	defaults  	0 0

The operation also added another line to the output of efibootmgr -v:

BootCurrent: 0004
Timeout: 0 seconds
BootOrder: 0006,0005,0003,0000,0001,0002,0004
Boot0000* Linux Boot Manager	HD(5,GPT,68842433-a5a2-4b21-a411-1b0de7320be4,0x9d02800,0x100000)/\EFI\systemd\systemd-bootx64.efi
      dp: 04 01 2a 00 05 00 00 00 00 28 d0 09 00 00 00 00 00 00 10 00 00 00 00 00 33 24 84 68 a2 a5 21 4b a4 11 1b 0d e7 32 0b e4 02 02 / 04 04 46 00 5c 00 45 00 46 00 49 00 5c 00 73 00 79 00 73 00 74 00 65 00 6d 00 64 00 5c 00 73 00 79 00 73 00 74 00 65 00 6d 00 64 00 2d 00 62 00 6f 00 6f 00 74 00 78 00 36 00 34 00 2e 00 65 00 66 00 69 00 00 00 / 7f ff 04 00
Boot0001* Windows Boot Manager	HD(1,GPT,5f30d7a8-f219-45c6-9be3-28a991c2d5ab,0x100,0x10400)/\EFI\Microsoft\Boot\bootmgfw.efi57494e444f5753000100000088000000780000004200430044004f0042004a004500430054003d007b00390064006500610038003600320063002d0035006300640064002d0034006500370030002d0061006300630031002d006600330032006200330034003400640034003700390035007d000000dff80100000010000000040000007fff0400
      dp: 04 01 2a 00 01 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 04 01 00 00 00 00 00 a8 d7 30 5f 19 f2 c6 45 9b e3 28 a9 91 c2 d5 ab 02 02 / 04 04 46 00 5c 00 45 00 46 00 49 00 5c 00 4d 00 69 00 63 00 72 00 6f 00 73 00 6f 00 66 00 74 00 5c 00 42 00 6f 00 6f 00 74 00 5c 00 62 00 6f 00 6f 00 74 00 6d 00 67 00 66 00 77 00 2e 00 65 00 66 00 69 00 00 00 / 7f ff 04 00
    data: 57 49 4e 44 4f 57 53 00 01 00 00 00 88 00 00 00 78 00 00 00 42 00 43 00 44 00 4f 00 42 00 4a 00 45 00 43 00 54 00 3d 00 7b 00 39 00 64 00 65 00 61 00 38 00 36 00 32 00 63 00 2d 00 35 00 63 00 64 00 64 00 2d 00 34 00 65 00 37 00 30 00 2d 00 61 00 63 00 63 00 31 00 2d 00 66 00 33 00 32 00 62 00 33 00 34 00 34 00 64 00 34 00 37 00 39 00 35 00 7d 00 00 00 df f8 01 00 00 00 10 00 00 00 04 00 00 00 7f ff 04 00
Boot0002* Internal Hard Disk	PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x12,0x7)/UFS(0,0x00)/HD(1,GPT,5f30d7a8-f219-45c6-9be3-28a991c2d5ab,0x100,0x10400)0000424f
      dp: 02 01 0c 00 d0 41 03 0a 00 00 00 00 / 01 01 06 00 07 12 / 03 19 06 00 00 00 / 04 01 2a 00 01 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 04 01 00 00 00 00 00 a8 d7 30 5f 19 f2 c6 45 9b e3 28 a9 91 c2 d5 ab 02 02 / 7f ff 04 00
    data: 00 00 42 4f
Boot0003* grub_uefi	HD(5,GPT,68842433-a5a2-4b21-a411-1b0de7320be4,0x13a0500,0x20000)/\EFI\grub_uefi\grubx64.efi
      dp: 04 01 2a 00 05 00 00 00 00 05 3a 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 00 00 33 24 84 68 a2 a5 21 4b a4 11 1b 0d e7 32 0b e4 02 02 / 04 04 3a 00 5c 00 45 00 46 00 49 00 5c 00 67 00 72 00 75 00 62 00 5f 00 75 00 65 00 66 00 69 00 5c 00 67 00 72 00 75 00 62 00 78 00 36 00 34 00 2e 00 65 00 66 00 69 00 00 00 / 7f ff 04 00
Boot0004* USB Drive (UEFI) - PNY USB 2.0 FD PMAP	PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x14,0x0)/USB(1,0)/HD(1,GPT,1d4dd882-949b-4a2a-b7cf-a8f13d235c69,0x800,0x39d0fc0)0000424f
      dp: 02 01 0c 00 d0 41 03 0a 00 00 00 00 / 01 01 06 00 00 14 / 03 05 06 00 01 00 / 04 01 2a 00 01 00 00 00 00 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 c0 0f 9d 03 00 00 00 00 82 d8 4d 1d 9b 94 2a 4a b7 cf a8 f1 3d 23 5c 69 02 02 / 7f ff 04 00
    data: 00 00 42 4f
Boot0005* arch	HD(5,GPT,68842433-a5a2-4b21-a411-1b0de7320be4,0x13a0500,0x20000)/\EFI\arch\grubx64.efi
      dp: 04 01 2a 00 05 00 00 00 00 05 3a 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 00 00 33 24 84 68 a2 a5 21 4b a4 11 1b 0d e7 32 0b e4 02 02 / 04 04 30 00 5c 00 45 00 46 00 49 00 5c 00 61 00 72 00 63 00 68 00 5c 00 67 00 72 00 75 00 62 00 78 00 36 00 34 00 2e 00 65 00 66 00 69 00 00 00 / 7f ff 04 00
Boot0006* grub-efi	HD(5,GPT,68842433-a5a2-4b21-a411-1b0de7320be4,0x13a0500,0x20000)/\EFI\grub-efi\grubx64.efi
      dp: 04 01 2a 00 05 00 00 00 00 05 3a 01 00 00 00 00 00 00 02 00 00 00 00 00 33 24 84 68 a2 a5 21 4b a4 11 1b 0d e7 32 0b e4 02 02 / 04 04 38 00 5c 00 45 00 46 00 49 00 5c 00 67 00 72 00 75 00 62 00 2d 00 65 00 66 00 69 00 5c 00 67 00 72 00 75 00 62 00 78 00 36 00 34 00 2e 00 65 00 66 00 69 00 00 00 / 7f ff 04 00

Unfortunately I'm still getting the same message when I attempt to boot.

kermit63 · 2024-09-28 08:40:26

Going back to your original post:

Samsung UFS 3.1 flash storage device.

I'm not familiar with this type of storage. Can this be construed as some sort of removable storage? This is a long shot, but if it is, then adding --removable to the grub-install command might help.

----

Your initial attempt at systemd-boot (entry 0 from efibootmgr output) would not have worked since your /boot is inside the root partition. Although this has no impact whatsoever on your problems with GRUB.

----

You can use the efibootmgr -b command to remove outdated entries from the UEFI boot menu. From what I can tell, entries 0, 3 and 5 were the result of previous attempts at installing bootloaders and are no longer useful. To remove entry 0 for example you can do:

efibootmgr -b 0 -B

I'm running out of ideas, maybe someone more knowledgeable can chime in.

rwb01 · 2024-09-29 01:25:49

Tried adding --removable, but it didn't change anything. Thanks for the heads up on my systemd-boot install. That was my first installation, using archinstall, so I very well could have fucked something up there. I may try a new manual install with systemd-boot to see if I can make any progress.

Thanks again for the help, feel like I'm getting the true intro experience and learning a lot.

Arch Linux

#1 2024-09-25 04:49:33

Device not found, failed to mount on real root

#2 2024-09-25 07:31:56

Re: Device not found, failed to mount on real root

#3 2024-09-26 02:58:36

Re: Device not found, failed to mount on real root

#4 2024-09-26 03:30:40

Re: Device not found, failed to mount on real root

#5 2024-09-26 04:07:52

Re: Device not found, failed to mount on real root

#6 2024-09-26 05:12:50

Re: Device not found, failed to mount on real root

#7 2024-09-26 05:13:55

Re: Device not found, failed to mount on real root

#8 2024-09-26 05:23:14

Re: Device not found, failed to mount on real root

#9 2024-09-26 05:44:24

Re: Device not found, failed to mount on real root

#10 2024-09-26 11:02:58

Re: Device not found, failed to mount on real root

#11 2024-09-28 02:28:13

Re: Device not found, failed to mount on real root

#12 2024-09-28 08:40:26

Re: Device not found, failed to mount on real root

#13 2024-09-29 01:25:49

Re: Device not found, failed to mount on real root

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