Arch Linux

kaidddd

Member

Registered: 2016-01-09

Posts: 10

[SOLVED] Warning message "Unable to resume from device " on boot

Hello,

I've been using EFI boot stub (https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/EFI_boot_stub) to boot my laptop for a while and everything worked fine.
But recently after an upgrade I noticed a warning message when booting that says:

"Unable to resume from device '/dev/nvme0n1p2' (259:2) offset 0, continuing boot process."

Then the system can boot normally. The hibernation function also works fine. And when the system boots from hibernation, this message disappears. I thought it was a new feature introduced by the upgrade but when I downgraded the linux kernel, the message still exists.

My efi boot command is:
Boot0000* Arch Linux    HD(1,GPT,d1d5eebb-1a25-420c-aa57-db7912efed8d,0x800,0x100000)/\vmlinuz-linuxroot=/dev/nvme0n1p3 rw quiet splash initrd=\intel-ucode.img initrd=\initramfs-linux.img resume=/dev/nvme0n1p2

Is there a way to turn this warning message off and let the system boot quietly as before?

Thanks for the help!

Last edited by kaidddd (2025-09-27 15:55:22)

twig

Member

Registered: 2025-09-25

Posts: 1

Re: [SOLVED] Warning message "Unable to resume from device " on boot

Hello!

So, I honestly have no clue why you were not seeing this warning before the update, we should see the list of all updated packages, but I can help with the warning itself.

When using systemd, which is your case, the systemd-hibernate-resume service is started at every boot to wake up the device from hibernation. To do this, it needs to know where the memory image is. According to the man page:

The resume device node is either passed directly through arguments, or automatically acquired from kernel command line options and/or HibernateLocation EFI variable.

In your case, you have set the resume kernel parameter in your boot entry, which forces systemd to try to wake up the system because it has no idea if the system is hibernated or simply shut down. If the system isn't hibernated, the wake-up call fails. Systemd throws the warning you see and continues with the normal boot. You can see it here in the hibernate-resume.c systemd file:

r = write_resume_config(st.st_rdev, arg_info.offset, arg_info.device);
        log_full_errno(r < 0 || arg_info.efi ? LOG_WARNING : LOG_INFO,
                       r < 0 ? r : SYNTHETIC_ERRNO(ENOENT),
                       "Unable to resume from device '%s' (" DEVNUM_FORMAT_STR ") offset %" PRIu64 ", continuing boot process.",
                       arg_info.device, DEVNUM_FORMAT_VAL(st.st_rdev), arg_info.offset);

So the warning is completely harmless and you can safely ignore it, but if you want to get rid of it you can follow the Arch Wiki:

When the system is running on UEFI, systemd-sleep(8) will automatically pick a suitable swap space to hibernate into, and the information of the used swap space is stored in HibernateLocation EFI variable. Upon next boot, systemd-hibernate-resume(8) reads the location off the EFI variable and the system resumes. This means the following steps are not necessary unless the system is using legacy BIOS or you want to choose a different swap space from the automatically-selected one.

So, starting from systemd v255 (#27247), when you hibernate your system, systemd writes the HibernateLocation EFI variable (sleep.c systemd file):

if (SLEEP_OPERATION_IS_HIBERNATION(operation)) {
                ...
                r = write_efi_hibernate_location(&hibernation_device, !resume_set);

This might be already done by your system, but your resume kernel parameter has a higher priority over the EFI variable. You can try to remove the kernel parameter and the warning should disappear. This works because systemd will skip the hibernation resume process if the EFI variable is not found (sleep.c):

r = acquire_hibernate_info(&arg_info);
        if (r == -ENODEV) {
                log_info_errno(r, "No resume device found, exiting.");
                return 0;
        }

I hope this was helpful and let me know if something is not clear!

Last edited by twig (2025-09-25 21:31:41)

kaidddd

Member

Registered: 2016-01-09

Posts: 10

Re: [SOLVED] Warning message "Unable to resume from device " on boot

Thanks for the detailed explanation. That is exactly the information I want