ArchLabs Linux

Booting to emergency shell after updates and cannot type

#1

Alright. I got my live USB plugged in and booted to it.

Here’s what happens when I restarted after updates–

IMG_1271
IMG_1271.JPG3240×2160 2.93 MB

Peeping the forum, I see a few similar cases. Possibly my grub config is messed up? Doc just put me on some new meds, SSRI, and I’m a bit cloudy and not really trusting myself to tackle this alone.

So, this machine has OSX and AL, but I never use OSX. In fact, whatever happened during my initial install a year ago OSX is not seen by grub. If I need to boot to OSX, I’ve just used the option key on the macbook. Thus, I probably brought this issue on myself.

Any ideas or help would be appreciated.

#2

Alright, this is fdisk output–

Disk /dev/sdb: 465.8 GiB, 500107862016 bytes, 976773168 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: CDBF8695-78CE-4106-A02D-5763C3A73BB7

Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/sdb1 40 409639 409600 200M EFI System
/dev/sdb2 409640 976510983 976101344 465.5G Apple HFS/HFS+

Disk /dev/sda: 238.5 GiB, 256060514304 bytes, 500118192 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 71103835-0B1A-4F80-BDD8-99546385727A

Device Start End Sectors Size Type
/dev/sda1 40 409639 409600 200M EFI System
/dev/sda2 409640 110462647 110053008 52.5G Apple Core storage
/dev/sda3 110462648 111732183 1269536 619.9M Apple boot
/dev/sda4 111732736 500117503 388384768 185.2G Linux filesystem

Disk /dev/sdc: 3.7 GiB, 4004511744 bytes, 7821312 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x01cfe6b7

Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sdc1 * 0 1992703 1992704 973M 0 Empty
/dev/sdc2 164 131235 131072 64M ef EFI (FAT-12/16/32)

Disk /dev/loop0: 862.1 MiB, 903974912 bytes, 1765576 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

#3

The UUID is correct in the grub cfg. As I read this forum and others, I am wondering if boot wasn’t mounted during the updates? Not sure how that happened. There were like 240 updates (I can’t believe I let it get that bad.) 200 went through and then it errored out. I did pacman -Syu again and it finished fine and I continued to use the laptop. Today I opened it up and the screen was glitched. I thought this thing had finally died. Powered it off and back on to find the error above.

I’m reading about chroot and arch-chroot now, but not feeling confident I have these chops.

#4

Can you remember what the error was?

Do you have /boot mounted to the EFI system partition? Check from the live image by using

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
find /mnt -name vmlinuz*

If it’s there then you can try

umount /mnt
mount /dev/sda4 /mnt
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot
arch-chroot /mnt /bin/bash

Then run pacman -Syu linux from the chroot, exit and reboot.

2 Likes
#5

Doing this resulted in “no matches found: vmlinuz*”
:disappointed:
The command mounted my partitions with unexpected results. My partitions are named and both show up file manager, with the addition of “199 GB Volume.” The Mac partition and this “199 GB Volume” are mounted, but the linux partition is not. All the data that I would expect to be on the linux partition is in the 199 GB Volume. If I look in finder at this volume I can see vmlinuz-linux. The location is “/run/media/liveuser/fa39614d-9163-4e79-8257-419236748747/boot/”

Is that helpful.

Geez. Thanks for responding @Head_on_a_Stick

#6

Yes, it is :slight_smile:

Looks like /boot is part of the root partition so you should be able to

mount /dev/sda4 /mnt
arch-chroot /mnt /bin/bash
pacman -Syu linux
mkinitcpio -p linux
exit
reboot

I don’t know why your initramfs wasn’t built correctly in the original update but that should fix it.

Off topic for this thread but SSRIs are now superseded in favour of SNRIs, which have a similar efficacy but a better side-effect profile.

1 Like
#7

That did it. Responding via my install and not the live disk. Woo!

THANKS SO MUCH!

Yes, I was on a SNRI for a year, but it really shut me down emotionally. I could have lost an arm and been like, “Would you look at that? huh.” It took almost 6 more months to ween off. Doc is trying the old school SSRI now, but it will take me a month to probably balance out. It was the same with the SNRI. I’m just foggy. And, using it as an excuse for my linux ignorance. :upside_down_face:

1 Like
#8

Top job @Head_on_a_Stick .

1 Like
#9

You ll get better soon mate, not easy I bet, but you ll get there @sikkdays .

Unless I understood badly.

#10

Excellent news, glad I could help.

I couldn’t tolerate SNRIs myself and I had to use tricyclics instead, the dry mouth was awful but they did stabalise me somewhat.