You are not logged in.
Hello gentlemen,
I'm having a problem on my hp 8220 laptop. I returned to my arch install after some time, and did a Pacman -Syu. I failed to pay attention to the sheer size of the update and available space on my drive which resultet in alot of errors, which i didn't really catch before i read the log. (The update was 800+ Mb, so i left it alone for a while).
First of all, i've read the FAQ as well as a few related posts on the forums which have helped me in the right direction, but i still haven't been able to get it working.
Second of all. I don't have all the relevant logs at hand, but i will supply them if they're deemed necessary. Here's the error message when i try to boot. I have verified that Grub bootloader is configured correctly. Others fixed the below problem by naming their devices properly, but this does not work for me, read on to see why. Also, fallback kernels all had same result.
ERROR: Failed to parse block device name for '/dev/sda7' unknown
ERROR: root fs cannot be detected. Try using the rootfstype= kernel parameter.
Waiting for devices to settle...done.
Root device '/dev/sda7' doesn't exist, attempting to create it
ERROR: Failed to pars block device name for '/dev/sda7'
ERROR: Unable to create/detect root device '/dev/sda7'
Dropping recovery shell... type 'exit' to reboot
NOTE: klibc contains no 'ls' binary, use 'echo *' instead
If device '/dev/sda7' gets created while you are here, try adding 'rootdelay=8' or higher to the kernel command-lineMy theory is that mkinitcpio has been screwed up during the failed update. The command mkinitcpio -p kernel26 exits with an error on line 264 after a while of succesfully adding files to the kernel image. I've verified that mkinitcpio.conf looks the way its supposed to. After inspection of /sbin/mkinitcpio it seems like several lines are missing at the end of the script. The error message above appears right after bootstrapping of the filesystems from mkinitcpio which is highly suspicious.
I managed to mount all my drives and chroot in, getting network up etc. I tried reinstalling an older kernel, but it fails because it needs a specific version of mkinitcpio. Again, another piece of evidence that points to it being the culprit. I tried removing the package in order to reinstall it, but to no avail.
Sorry if i'm not being too specific, i'm fairly new to handling kernels and such. I followed the panic entry in the wiki to try and update the kernel to a previous version which didn't have any effect. Can someone be specific as to how to revert a kernel after a failedupdate, how to restore an older kernel (is the fallback generated when the new kernel is compiled? or do you have to do that manually?)
In any case, i'm at a bit of a loss here. I can't seem to revert my kernel or uninstall mkinitcpio to try and restore /sbin/mkinitcpio (which seems to be the bad guy). I can mount everything find as stated in my /etc/fstab, so i'm sure that Grub is configured correctly.
Any thoughts?
Last edited by zrrbite (2008-07-07 19:56:14)
Offline
Have you cleared up any space yet? mkinitcpio creates a kernel image which is going to need some space on your hdd that could be why its failing. Can you boot into a live cd, chroot onto your full partition, clear up some space and run pacman -Syu again? If you already had a lot of packages in your pacman cache you could clear up some space by getting rid of all if it and downloading your packages again "pacman -Scc". When i've accidentally filled up my disk before i got all sorts of weird errors.
Offline
Thanks for pointing that out, i almost forgot. I did clean the pacman cache completely and freed up some space. Both the kernel and fallback are met with "/sbin/mkinitcpio: line 264 syntax error: unexpected end of file ==> FAIL" when trying to parse Filesystem hooks. This is the excact same thing that happens during boot.
When doing a pacman -Syu now, any package that is elligible for an update gives off an error during install : "file x exists in filesystem. Errors occured, no packages were updated.". I've never gotten this before.
Last edited by zrrbite (2008-07-07 21:14:02)
Offline
hmm, interesting pacman error. I just got that recently when i borked my pacman and caused it to lose track of all my packages. You can force it to install using "pacman -Syuf". In my case i had to run a script called "pacfix" (which you'll find in community contributions) which listed all the packages i've ever installed (including deleted ones unfortunatly) and i used that list to "pacman -Sf" everything it came up with. Can't be sure how much of that is applicable to you but i guess it's a start.
My guess is that there's syntax errors comming from mkinitcpio because some funky stuff happened to some files when they were trying to upgrade and forcing the pacman installs would fix this. But thats only based on my similar experience, your results may vary. Goodluck!
Offline
Thanks for your insight, Czar. I agree, it does seem like both bootstrapping and kernel compilation fails because of mkinitcpio. I'm sure i can find a comparison somewhere. First of i'll i'll try to force the installs which is the most likely solution.
UPDATE:
Forcing reinstall of mkinitcpio fixed the previous boot error. Kernel / fallback now generate correctly without errors. Inspecting /sbin/mkinitcpio the script was now complete. I'm experiencing some oddities with pacman still tho. When updating/removing packages, pacman trails the update with a ton of errors "/usr/lib/libxxxx is empty. Not checked". Studying the pacman log tho, the updates/removals are performed correctly.
Now i'm getting another error.
"Kernel Panic - not syncing. /init not found". Maybe this post should be moved to kernel section, and renamed. I've double checked that my mkinitcpio.conf is the same as it was wit previous kernels (which has always worked). I'm not sure how to proceed.
Last edited by zrrbite (2008-07-08 09:07:23)
Offline
I feel like since this was caused from packages becoming corupt re downloading offending packages should fix it. I wish someone else could bring some insite into that new pacman error, i've never had it myself. Try reinstalling the kernel26 package and see if that won't solve the problem. In fact maybe you should check your pacman logs and redownload any important system packages. Thats the only thing that I can think to do. goodluck tho.
Offline
I did try reinstalling important system packages. But i think i'll have to do as you did, use pacfix and painstakingly force installation of every package. Thanks. : )
Offline