[SOLVED] mid upgrade shutdown removes arch linux as boot option

boolightning · 2025-10-25 22:52:30

I mistakenly shutdown my pc whilst running pacman -Syu and whatever damage that caused resulted in arch linux no longer being a boot option.

I chrooted and ran sudo pacman -Syu, this did not solve the problem

I chrooted and ran pacman -S $(pacman -Qnq), this did not solve the problem.

How does one diagnose and repair their arch system? I would be more than happy to simply read any relevant articles. (can’t find any)

Thank you for your time.

edit
to be clear pacman -S $(pacman -Qnq) was successful, I am simply unable to boot. The only option is booting into the bios.

Last edited by boolightning (2025-10-29 04:50:41)

ewaller · 2025-10-25 23:24:10

What boot loader do you use?

boolightning · 2025-10-25 23:31:07

ewaller wrote:

What boot loader do you use?

How do I find out?

Scimmia · 2025-10-25 23:33:59

Well you installed it and configured it when you set the system up, right?

boolightning · 2025-10-25 23:42:14

Scimmia wrote:

Well you installed it and configured it when you set the system up, right?

I used archinstall and did not/do not remember which boot loader I chose/did not choose.

As far as I can tell it’s not grub. The boot directory contains initramfs files. Also vmlinuz-linux.

Scimmia · 2025-10-25 23:50:12

So you took a shortcut in order to remain ignorant of how your system is set up and now can't tell us vital information. Do you see the problem? At the very least, see the first warning at https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Archinstall

boolightning · 2025-10-25 23:53:45

I’m sincerely sorry, but I both was unable to understand some parts of the manual process and still wanted to use arch linux. As soon as I can I will switch to the normal setup process.

Last edited by boolightning (2025-10-26 00:01:34)

boolightning · 2025-10-25 23:57:58

I feel much of the useful information that could be learned from repairing my system would be lost by simply re-installing. If I do end up reinstalling however, I will attempt to do it manually.

boolightning · 2025-10-26 00:18:51

ewaller wrote:

What boot loader do you use?

systemd-boot

boolightning · 2025-10-27 18:40:01

this topic is related: 309783

Firstly, I would like to apologize for failing to mention that I used archinstall when setting up arch linux. I was careful to follow the Forum Rules and the Code of Conduct to the best of my ability, but it seems I unintentionally violated the “help vampire” rule. Please accept my apologies.

After reading through the wiki for a few hours I came to the conclusion that the issue with my bootloader might be solved by installing grub instead of systemd-boot. Upon attempting this I realized that since my issue was not with any of the packages in my main partition, it could be solved by repairing the boot partition.

I have had no luck troubleshooting the issue with the boot partition, and feel there is something fundamental I’m missing, perhaps due to using archinstall. What I am seeking is not the solution to my problem, but a method to solve the problem myself. I understand that this is an open ended request, but I do not have enough information to format it correctly.

If there is anything else I should know about posting in this forum that is not listed in the rules, please let me know.

Sincerely, an idiot.

Tiikerihai · 2025-10-27 19:42:25

I saw you say that you know how to chroot, so if you arch-chroot into your install with all the other relevant partitions mounted (that means both root and /boot obviously) then you can just install/reinstall your bootloader if that's where the issue is. You can also regenerate the initramfs if there's any reason to suspect it. I feel like I'm missing something here, because this seems like what you would have already tried.

Last edited by Tiikerihai (2025-10-27 19:43:30)

ahepp · 2025-10-27 21:11:27

Is this a UEFI or BIOS system?

When you say the power interruption "resulted in arch linux no longer being a boot option", I find that a bit ambiguous. Do you mean the option has disappeared from the system firmware (colloquially "BIOS")? Or that you no longer see a GRUB menu with this option?

Assuming the latter, do you see a bootloader menu (GRUB or systemd-boot) which does not contain the expected options? Or do you see no bootloader menu at all? A more thorough description of the system's behavior would be helpful.

I would be interested to see the contents of your /etc/fstab, and the output of "mount". Assuming this is a UEFI system, it would be worthwhile to verify the filesystem integrity of the EFI system partition with fsck, as well as the /boot partition if that is a separate filesystem. While you're at it, posting the results of "sudo ls -lh /boot" could be enlightening.

Last edited by ahepp (2025-10-27 23:07:30)

V1del · 2025-10-27 22:44:11

Please stick to the other thread and don't create disjoints of the same problems, it will scatter advice and make it harder to help you, merging this with the original topic

Instead of trying random stuff, get us information on your current status quo. Boot a archinstall disk, chroot into your install, make sure all the partitions are mounted like you think they are correct and post your

cat /etc/fstab
mount
ls -lR /boot
efibootmgr -v
bootctl status

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/List_o … n_services

Last edited by V1del (2025-10-27 22:47:39)

boolightning · 2025-10-28 04:17:42

Oh ok! I'll just stick to one post per problem then.

here is a list of the most recent things i've done in order:

I re-installed my bootloader with pacman

I sshed into my archinstall usb, and then chrooted in

I manually regenerated my initramfs with mkinitcpio -p linux

I checked and my system is UEFI based on the efi directory at /sys/firmware

To clarify the issue, when I start my computer systemd-boot displays only the option to boot into the firmware interface. I changed the boot order from the MSI firmware interface to allow me to use my archinstall usb. I believe my packages and other system files are intact and suspect the issue to be with the the root partition not being mounted for some reason. I am unaware of how to mount it at this time.

On a side note, how am I expected to format code or other forms of text?

Here is the output of cat /etc/fstab:
# Static information about the filesystems.
# See fstab(5) for details.

# <file system> <dir> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
# /dev/nvme0n1p2
UUID=92550ab7-f2e0-44b3-adb4-9ec29b7196ab / ext4 rw,relatime 0 1

# /dev/nvme0n1p1
UUID=8F8D-A516 /boot vfat rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro 0 2

The output of mount:
/dev/nvme0n1p2 on / type ext4 (rw,relatime)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
sys on /sys type sysfs (ro,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
efivarfs on /sys/firmware/efi/efivars type efivarfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
udev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,nosuid,relatime,size=16229844k,nr_inodes=4057461,mode=755,inode64)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000)
shm on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,inode64)
run on /run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,mode=755,inode64)
tmp on /tmp type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,inode64)
run on /etc/resolv.conf type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,mode=755,inode64)

The output of ls -lR /boot:
/boot:
total 360768
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Oct 25 19:20 grub
-rw------- 1 root root 208654654 Oct 27 21:54 initramfs-linux-fallback.img
-rw------- 1 root root 130939321 Oct 27 21:54 initramfs-linux.img
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 13286400 Aug 12 11:02 intel-ucode.img
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 16523455 Oct 25 17:23 vmlinuz-linux

/boot/grub:
total 0

The output of efibootmgr -v:
BootCurrent: 0005
Timeout: 0 seconds
BootOrder: 0005,0004,0000,0006
Boot0000* Linux Boot Manager HD(1,GPT,f57d2681-01be-4fa3-95dc-0a080634809b,0x800,0x200000)/\EFI\systemd\systemd-bootx64.efi
dp: 04 01 2a 00 01 00 00 00 00 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 20 00 00 00 00 00 81 26 7d f5 be 01 a3 4f 95 dc 0a 08 06 34 80 9b 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
Boot0004* UEFI OS HD(1,GPT,f57d2681-01be-4fa3-95dc-0a080634809b,0x800,0x200000)/\EFI\BOOT\BOOTX64.EFI0000424f
dp: 04 01 2a 00 01 00 00 00 00 08 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 20 00 00 00 00 00 81 26 7d f5 be 01 a3 4f 95 dc 0a 08 06 34 80 9b 02 02 / 04 04 30 00 5c 00 45 00 46 00 49 00 5c 00 42 00 4f 00 4f 00 54 00 5c 00 42 00 4f 00 4f 00 54 00 58 00 36 00 34 00 2e 00 45 00 46 00 49 00 00 00 / 7f ff 04 00
data: 00 00 42 4f
Boot0005* UEFI: VendorCoProductCode 2.00 PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x14,0x0)/USB(1,0)/CDROM(1,0x237720,0x5a040)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 02 18 00 01 00 00 00 20 77 23 00 00 00 00 00 40 a0 05 00 00 00 00 00 / 7f ff 04 00
data: 00 00 42 4f
Boot0006* UEFI: Generic Flash Disk 8.07, Partition 1 PciRoot(0x0)/Pci(0x14,0x0)/USB(2,0)/HD(1,MBR,0x49874e67,0x80,0x752ff80)0000424f
dp: 02 01 0c 00 d0 41 03 0a 00 00 00 00 / 01 01 06 00 00 14 / 03 05 06 00 02 00 / 04 01 2a 00 01 00 00 00 80 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 80 ff 52 07 00 00 00 00 67 4e 87 49 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 01 01 / 7f ff 04 00
data: 00 00 42 4f

The output of bootclt status:
Couldn't find EFI system partition. It is recommended to mount it to /boot/ or /efi/.
Alternatively, use --esp-path= to specify path to mount point.
System:
Not booted with EFI

After reviewing all of this it seems like I just need to mount my EFI partition. The grub boot entry is probably from when I tried to install grub to solve the issue.

I feel stupid now, which means I'm close to fixing it haha

ahepp · 2025-10-28 06:57:58

You can format code with \[code\] and \[/code\]

I see an entry for /boot in /etc/fstab, but I don't see a filesystem mounted at /boot in your mount output. FAT filesystems are more easily corrupted than journaling filesystems like EXT4. If power was interrupted during a write, it could have corrupted the filesystem your bootloader is attempting to read from. The fact that you have a kernel and initramfs in a directory named /boot on your root filesystem is not surprising, since you regenerated those files with mkinitcpio.

There is a bit of a hole in this theory because it would seem your /boot (which I assume is also the EFI system partition, since it's vfat?) is intact enough for systemd-boot to be read off it by the firmware. And it also would seem that your fstab settings should have the /boot filesystem fsck'ed automatically. But that's my best theory, maybe someone else can make more of this data.

Can you run:

fsck /dev/nvme0n1p1

And report back whether that reveals corruption?

Tiikerihai · 2025-10-28 13:45:50

The easiest explanation is that he just forgot to or didn't know to mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 to /mnt/boot before chrooting so he has just been adding stuff to the empty /boot folder on his ext4 partition instead of doing anything with the actual boot partition. I don't know if that's true, but it looks like the case.

boolightning · 2025-10-28 17:10:35

I ran the command:

root@archiso ~ # fsck /dev/nvme0n1p1        
fsck from util-linux 2.41.1
fsck.fat 4.2 (2021-01-31)
There are differences between boot sector and its backup.
This is mostly harmless. Differences: (offset:original/backup)
  65:01/00
1) Copy original to backup
2) Copy backup to original
3) No action
[123?q]?

I'm not taking any action because I don't know what the right choice is.

I mounted the boot partition before mounting nvme0n1p1, and then chrooted. Yeah I assumed mounting it within chroot would have the same effect.

I re-installed systemd to auto generate the initcpio files again and rebooted. This did not solve the issue.

I feel like i'm missing something obvious

ahepp · 2025-10-28 18:11:06

boolightning wrote:

I mounted the boot partition before mounting nvme0n1p1, and then chrooted. Yeah I assumed mounting it within chroot would have the same effect.

I'm not sure I'm following here. /dev/nvme0n1p1 is the boot partition. Not trying to give you a hard time if this is just a typo, but I'm concerned you're not actually writing these files to the filesystem on the boot partition.

Yes, it should be possible to mount the filesystem on the boot partition to /boot once you're inside the chroot. But I don't understand why your root filesystem has a directory named /boot containing a kernel, intramfs, and bootloader. Those entities should be contained in a separate filesystem on your boot partition, which would generally be mounted at /boot.

Can you share the commands you're using to prepare the chroot, and then share the output of mount once you think the chroot is ready?

Can you also share the output of blkid?

seth · 2025-10-28 19:14:27

@boolightning there's no good way to say which fat table is the "better" one and the choice won't matter assuming you're gonna re-install the kernel afterwards anyway.

Please be exact about your actions and pay attention to the partition indexes.
Whether you mount the boot partition before or after the chroot doesn't matter except
a) it might fail after the chroot if you've not already loaded the vfat module
b) the mount target changes from /mnt/boot to /boot

I re-installed systemd to auto generate the initcpio files again

I don't think that re-installing systemd will regenerate the initramfs but you first and foremost will have to take care of the kernel anyway.

when I start my computer systemd-boot displays only the option to boot into the firmware interface

Sure that's not the UEFI?

The output of mount:

/dev/nvme0n1p2 on / type ext4 (rw,relatime)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
sys on /sys type sysfs (ro,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
efivarfs on /sys/firmware/efi/efivars type efivarfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
udev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,nosuid,relatime,size=16229844k,nr_inodes=4057461,mode=755,inode64)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000)
shm on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,inode64)
run on /run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,mode=755,inode64)
tmp on /tmp type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,inode64)
run on /etc/resolv.conf type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,mode=755,inode64)

The output of ls -lR /boot:

/boot:
total 360768
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root      4096 Oct 25 19:20 grub
-rw------- 1 root root 208654654 Oct 27 21:54 initramfs-linux-fallback.img
-rw------- 1 root root 130939321 Oct 27 21:54 initramfs-linux.img
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  13286400 Aug 12 11:02 intel-ucode.img
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root  16523455 Oct 25 17:23 vmlinuz-linux

You've somehow updated the kernel into the /boot mountpoint…

1. boot the install iso
2. run fsck on /dev/nvme0n1p1, fix the boot sector as you will
3.

mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt
mount /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt/boot
arch-chroot /mnt
pacman -S linux
exit # the chroot
systemctl reboot

4. profit?

boolightning · 2025-10-29 04:37:37

ok so after a series of unfortunate events which I do not entirely remember, I somehow broke my archinstall usb. I don't know how.
Anyway I re-wrote the .iso file to the thumb drive and started again.
I had some trouble sshing in, but now that I have i'm going to just paste in exactly what I do.

root@archiso ~ # mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt
root@archiso ~ # mount /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt/boot
root@archiso ~ # arch-chroot /mnt
chroot: failed to run command ‘/bin/bash’: No such file or directory
127 root@archiso ~ #

Hmmmmm. I don't really know.

Oh wait I missed a step.

root@archiso ~ # fsck /dev/nvme0n1p1
fsck from util-linux 2.41.2
fsck.fat 4.2 (2021-01-31)
There are differences between boot sector and its backup.
This is mostly harmless. Differences: (offset:original/backup)
  65:01/00
1) Copy original to backup
2) Copy backup to original
3) No action
[123?q]? 2

*** Filesystem was changed ***
The changes have not yet been written, you can still choose to leave the
filesystem unmodified:
1) Write changes
2) Leave filesystem unchanged
[12?q]? 1
/dev/nvme0n1p1: 21 files, 3323/261628 clusters
1 root@archiso ~ # mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt
root@archiso ~ # mount /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt/boot
root@archiso ~ # arch-chroot /mnt              
chroot: failed to run command ‘/bin/bash’: No such file or directory
127 root@archiso ~ #

Well I'm fairly certain that eliminates one problem, but I don't know why the directory is missing. This is probably stupid but i'm just going to create it.

127 root@archiso ~ # mkdir /bin/bash
mkdir: cannot create directory ‘/bin/bash’: File exists
1 root@archiso ~ #

If it exists why can't it be used? Is this because I created a boot folder in my root filesystem?
Well I can't chroot anymore, I seem to have broken that.

At this point I should probably not do anything else until I've figured out what the remaining issues are, as I feel like i'm kicking a dead horse. Any ideas?
Again I have next to zero knowledge about troubleshooting so any information there would really be helpful.

Actually I should list what I know how to do so it's apparent how little I know.

Commands I know how to use:

pacman
 -Syu
 -Q
 -Rcns

sudo

cd
 ..

rm
 -r

nano

shutdown
 -now
 -0:00

reboot

exit

mkdir

chroot

ping

and that's pretty much it.

edit:
OH WAIT THE THINGS ARE SWAPPED
nvme0n1p1 and p2 are swapped and that's why I could not chroot! I was trying to mount them to the wrong places! Hahaha
Ok i'm going to re-install linux and reboot, i'll edit this again with how that goes

edit 2:
ok that worked! my system actually booted! thanks so much everybody! i'm marking this as solved now.

Last edited by boolightning (2025-10-29 04:49:51)

Arch Linux

#1 2025-10-25 22:52:30

[SOLVED] mid upgrade shutdown removes arch linux as boot option

#2 2025-10-25 23:24:10

Re: [SOLVED] mid upgrade shutdown removes arch linux as boot option

#3 2025-10-25 23:31:07

Re: [SOLVED] mid upgrade shutdown removes arch linux as boot option

#4 2025-10-25 23:33:59

Re: [SOLVED] mid upgrade shutdown removes arch linux as boot option

#5 2025-10-25 23:42:14

Re: [SOLVED] mid upgrade shutdown removes arch linux as boot option

#6 2025-10-25 23:50:12

Re: [SOLVED] mid upgrade shutdown removes arch linux as boot option

#7 2025-10-25 23:53:45

Re: [SOLVED] mid upgrade shutdown removes arch linux as boot option

#8 2025-10-25 23:57:58

Re: [SOLVED] mid upgrade shutdown removes arch linux as boot option

#9 2025-10-26 00:18:51

Re: [SOLVED] mid upgrade shutdown removes arch linux as boot option

#10 2025-10-27 18:40:01

Re: [SOLVED] mid upgrade shutdown removes arch linux as boot option

#11 2025-10-27 19:42:25

Re: [SOLVED] mid upgrade shutdown removes arch linux as boot option

#12 2025-10-27 21:11:27

Re: [SOLVED] mid upgrade shutdown removes arch linux as boot option

#13 2025-10-27 22:44:11

Re: [SOLVED] mid upgrade shutdown removes arch linux as boot option

#14 2025-10-28 04:17:42

Re: [SOLVED] mid upgrade shutdown removes arch linux as boot option

#15 2025-10-28 06:57:58

Re: [SOLVED] mid upgrade shutdown removes arch linux as boot option

#16 2025-10-28 13:45:50

Re: [SOLVED] mid upgrade shutdown removes arch linux as boot option

#17 2025-10-28 17:10:35

Re: [SOLVED] mid upgrade shutdown removes arch linux as boot option

#18 2025-10-28 18:11:06

Re: [SOLVED] mid upgrade shutdown removes arch linux as boot option

#19 2025-10-28 19:14:27

Re: [SOLVED] mid upgrade shutdown removes arch linux as boot option

#20 2025-10-29 04:37:37

Re: [SOLVED] mid upgrade shutdown removes arch linux as boot option

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