Arch Linux

costacurta

Member

Registered: 2025-05-21

Posts: 7

freeze and grub error

Hello there!

I was using my pc as always, a bunch  of apps open and all of sudden the machine froze. Nothing worked. Reboot it and  was straight to grub rescue page. Shutdown and turned on the computer and it went direct to Windows.

Than I had to liveboot via usb and remake grub configs... by the way, this video is a life saver and has a step by step how to fix grub: https://youtu.be/dF5qzXQGCR8?si=cCKAaB__VAPLVSbf

Now everything is back again. It was the second time it happened to me. The first time was when I upgrade from windows 10 to 11, and sure enough it was windows fault. Now I´d like to understand what might have happened.
So my questions is, where in the system can I search for log files or other stuff to investigate what might have happened?

And just yesterday  run a pacman -Syu

this is my fetch:

ostacurta@archauero
                 .o+`                    --------------------
                `ooo/                    OS: Arch Linux x86_64
               `+oooo:                   Host: B550M AORUS ELITE (-CF)
              `+oooooo:                  Kernel: Linux 6.16.4-arch1-1
              -+oooooo+:                 Uptime: 46 mins
            `/:-:++oooo+:                Packages: 1564 (pacman), 5 (nix-user), 53 (flatpak)
           `/++++/+++++++:               Shell: bash 5.3.3
          `/++++++++++++++:              Display (DELL U2422H): 1920x1080 @ 60 Hz in 24" [External]
         `/+++ooooooooooooo/`            DE: KDE Plasma 6.4.4
        ./ooosssso++osssssso+`           WM: KWin (Wayland)
       .oossssso-````/ossssss+`          WM Theme: Breeze
      -osssssso.      :ssssssso.         Theme: Breeze (Classic) [Qt], Breeze [GTK2/3]
     :osssssss/        osssso+++.        Icons: breeze [Qt], breeze [GTK2/3/4]
    /ossssssss/        +ssssooo/-        Font: Noto Sans (10pt) [Qt], Noto Sans (10pt) [GTK2/3/4]
  `/ossssso+/:-        -:/+osssso+-      Cursor: breeze (24px)
`+sso+:-`                 `.-/+oso:     Terminal: kitty 0.42.2
`++:.                           `-/+/    Terminal Font: NotoSansMono-Regular (11pt)
.`                                 `/    CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5700G (16) @ 4.67 GHz
                                         GPU: AMD Radeon Vega Series / Radeon Vega Mobile Series [Integrated]
                                         Memory: 3.46 GiB / 14.99 GiB (23%)
                                         Swap: 0 B / 4.00 GiB (0%)
                                         Disk (/): 162.40 GiB / 391.67 GiB (41%) - ext4
                                         Local IP (enp3s0): 192.168.68.115/22
                                         Locale: pt_BR.UTF-8

teckk

Member

Registered: 2013-02-21

Posts: 579

Re: freeze and grub error

And just yesterday run a pacman -Syu

First time that you rebooted since the update?
Is this a UEFI machine?

https://archlinux.org/news/grub-bootloa … ibilities/

costacurta

Member

Registered: 2025-05-21

Posts: 7

Re: freeze and grub error

Hello,

I'm not sure about which update you refer to, but if it was the update the day before the crash, than no, i didn't reboot the system. (should I?)

and yes, its an UEFI machine

R.

And just yesterday run a pacman -Syu

First time that you rebooted since the update?
Is this a UEFI machine?

https://archlinux.org/news/grub-bootloa … ibilities/

Head_on_a_Stick

Member

From: The Wirral

Registered: 2014-02-20

Posts: 9,003

Website

Re: freeze and grub error

I was using my pc as always, a bunch  of apps open and all of sudden the machine froze. Nothing worked. Reboot it and  was straight to grub rescue page

If you performed a hard reset then any mounted filesystems may be subject to corruption if a non-COW filesystem is used. A "grub rescue>" prompt indicates that GRUB cannot find the modules stored under /boot/grub/, so they must have been damaged.

Shutdown and turned on the computer and it went direct to Windows.

Sounds like the NVRAM boot entry for Arch was either removed or recognised as non-functional (perhaps grubx64.efi was missing from the EFI system partition).

this video is a life saver and has a step by step how to fix grub

Please don't recommend YouTube videos here, they are usually error-ridden and become rapidly outdated. Refer to https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GRUB instead and follow the same procedure you used when first installing Arch.

where in the system can I search for log files or other stuff to investigate what might have happened?

You can use the systemd journal, see the relevant ArchWiki page for further details.

If you experience frequent lockups make sure the relevant CPU microcode is installed and loaded and perhaps also consider switching to a COW filesytem such as btrfs or bcachefs. Enabling SysRq might also be useful for clean shutdowns in the event of future freezes: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Keyboa … el_(SysRq)

---

Jin, Jîyan, Azadî

costacurta

Member

Registered: 2025-05-21

Posts: 7

Re: freeze and grub error

Sounds like the NVRAM boot entry for Arch was either removed or recognised as non-functional (perhaps grubx64.efi was missing from the EFI system partition).

ok thanks

Please don't recommend YouTube videos here, they are usually error-ridden and become rapidly outdated. Refer to https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/GRUB instead and follow the same procedure you used when first installing Arch.

ok, sorry... still learning the etiquette aroung here,  but i searched the troubleshoot section of the grub wiki entry and could not find nothing that would help me understand the problem and fix it.. with that video I was able to get back on track in less then 30 minutes of search and following instructions...

there is the 7.4.3 section that states :
---
Drop to rescue shell

If GRUB loads but drops into the rescue shell with no errors, it can be due to one of these two reasons:

    It may be because of a missing or misplaced grub.cfg. This will happen if GRUB UEFI was installed with --boot-directory and grub.cfg is missing,
    It also happens if the boot partition, which is hardcoded into the grubx64.efi file, has changed.
----

but its not clear to a beginner what to do after that...

You can use the systemd journal, see the relevant ArchWiki page for further details.

If you experience frequent lockups make sure the relevant CPU microcode is installed and loaded and perhaps also consider switching to a COW filesytem such as btrfs or bcachefs. Enabling SysRq might also be useful for clean shutdowns in the event of future freezes: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Keyboa … el_(SysRq)

ok, thanks again for the help

cloverskull

Member

Registered: 2018-09-30

Posts: 277

Re: freeze and grub error

If you performed a hard reset then any mounted filesystems may be subject to corruption if a non-COW filesystem is used.

@HoaS - interesting. So you're saying btrfs, for example, can survive hard reboots? I typically use ext4 simply because...I've used it forever. But I'm curious about COW and its benefits.

Head_on_a_Stick

Member

From: The Wirral

Registered: 2014-02-20

Posts: 9,003

Website

Re: freeze and grub error

For CoW filesystems hard resets will result in data loss rather than corruption.

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Jin, Jîyan, Azadî