Arch Linux

Efka

Member

From: Klaipeda

Registered: 2014-04-27

Posts: 107

Website

Restoring Arch after failed boot

Hi, dont know if its the right place and never had this issue but ...
Few days ago did sudo pacman -Syy and sudo pacman -Syu
Wont boot ! boots to grubs shell ... i was running btrfs with time shift and snapshot before update so now i want to use it but cant boot to boot loader at all.
I was running ltx kernel +btrfs root + home + zfs ( non root, non boot ) so had to keep lts kernel and nvidia in ignore pkg list.
Best way to  deal with it ?
use arch-chroot ? or try to use grub shell ? if grub shell - any pointers to what i have to do ?
If i use arch-chroot and i have btrfs - do i need to mount my partition, create subvol, umount and mount with btrfs command ?
I would just delete my partition and re-install but i have some files i need so i have to restore it and most important part - Find out what caused my system to boot to grub shell instead of bootloader etc.

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seth

Member

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 58,658

Re: Restoring Arch after failed boot

did sudo pacman -Syy

"man pacman", read what the second "y" does, then stop doing that until the extremely rare case when you actually want to.
It's an awesome way to shred your package database and also puts undue burden onto the mirrors.

Boot the iso, mount the partitions/volumes (including the boot partition) into their normal locations under /mnt, arch-chroot into the system and reinstall grub. Not only the package but also grub-install (+ in doubt grub-mkconfig, but better safe the old grub.cfg before replacing it)

Wont boot ! boots to grubs shell … but cant boot to boot loader at all.

Err, the grub shell is the bootloader. You don't have a fancy menu and preconfigured boot entries, but you technically could boot from there.
Did anything change and you're not not even reaching the grub shell?

Find out what caused my system to boot to grub shell instead of bootloader etc.

It's increasingly unlikely but you might have hit https://archlinux.org/news/grub-bootloa … ibilities/
Another thing that goes frequently wrong is grub-customizer and friends.

Your pacman log might provide a hint.

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