I am desperate. Linux is not booting

oiram15@lemmy.sdf.org to Linux@lemmy.ml – 98 points –

SOLUTION BELOW

The actual bug

I have never been in a more confusing situation regarding Linux.

I have a Dell XPS 15 9560, which had a dual boot Windows 10 / EndeavourOS setup. It was running fine for months. 10 days ago I updated Linux and after restart it couldn't boot anymore. It got stuck at "A start job is running for /dev/disk/by-uuid/..." (which is the root partition).

First, with the help of a friend of mine who is quite knowledgeable about Linux (he runs vanilla Arch, etc), we spent 5 hours trying to fix it but had no luck.

Then I decided to back up everything and do a fresh install. Aaaand the same error happened again on the first boot. Then I though "ok, probably some problem with Arch, lets try Fedora". Nope. Some similar error about not finding the root partition. (Here I must say that the kernel which was shipped with the ISO was working fine, but after updating to the latest one, it failed.) Here I thought "ok, then it might be a problem with the latest kernel, let's install EndeavourOS with the LTS kernel." Nope, LTS kernel also didn't boot. Then I tried Ubuntu and it worked, but that's not solving the problem. Then I decided to put another nvme drive in the laptop and try there. The same error again.

Now the greatest part: If I put the nvme drive into an external usb case, EndeavourOS installs, updates, boots without any problem, no sign of the error.

So now I don't know how to proceed... Maybe there is something wrong with the pcie port in my laptop, but except for the booting problem, windows is working, I can also mount and access every partition in the ssd through a live usb. So no other signs of problem with the port whatsoever.

I would be grateful for any advice as I've lost several days trying to solve this and I am out of ideas...

Solution: The last working kernels are from 11. August 2023 (both linux and linux-lts) linux-6.4.10.arch1-1 and linux-lts-6.1.45-1. You can download them from here: linux / linux-lts and install them with

sudo pacman -U the_path_to_the_package

Thank you all for the help!

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[root@EndeavourOS /]# blkid
/dev/nvme0n1p1: UUID="6903-7FA3" BLOCK_SIZE="512" TYPE="vfat" PARTUUID="86a0a714-815f-45db-ad0e-9eba16861903"
/dev/nvme0n1p2: LABEL="endeavouros" UUID="9ae3c50f-be08-4594-ac30-2d094375868d" BLOCK_SIZE="4096" TYPE="ext4" PARTLABEL="endeavouros" PARTUUID="9b52162c-a4bf-4e5e-8096-bb7f144c481a"
/dev/loop0: BLOCK_SIZE="1048576" TYPE="squashfs"
/dev/sda2: SEC_TYPE="msdos" LABEL_FATBOOT="ARCHISO_EFI" LABEL="ARCHISO_EFI" UUID="6121-B369" BLOCK_SIZE="512" TYPE="vfat" PARTUUID="1bdb3cc0-02"
/dev/sda1: BLOCK_SIZE="2048" UUID="2023-08-05-13-57-43-00" LABEL="EOS_202308" TYPE="iso9660" PARTUUID="1bdb3cc0-01"
[root@EndeavourOS /]# sudo cat /etc/fstab 
# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a device; this may
# be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices that works even if
# disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
#                      
UUID=6903-7FA3                            /efi           vfat    defaults,noatime 0 2
UUID=9ae3c50f-be08-4594-ac30-2d094375868d /              ext4    defaults,noatime 0 1
tmpfs                                     /tmp           tmpfs   defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0

Please use tripe backticks to create codeblocks - much easier to read. Like this:

```

some text

```

results in

some text

What are the kernel parameters? cat /proc/cmdline

EDIT actually that will show the live system config. Assuming you're using grub, what is the content of /etc/default/grub?

Or /boot/loader/loaders/something.conf if you're on systemd-boot

I'm on systemd-boot. Where isn't a directory loaders under loader, but I found the parameters under /etc/kernel/cmdline:

nvme_load=YES nowatchdog rw root=UUID=9ae3c50f-be08-4594-ac30-2d094375868d

My bad, I think in your case it's in /efi/loader/entries/something.conf

Since / is not mounted, yet, bootloader will not be able to read anything under /etc/. Unless it's used to automatically populate the loader.conf.

Also check /efi/loader/loader.conf.

I found it!

[liveuser@eos-2023.08.05 ~]$ cat /mnt/efi/loader/entries/02ef85f9edc146d598502c1b296ff64a-6.4.12-arch1-1.conf 
# Boot Loader Specification type#1 entry
# File created by /etc/kernel/install.d/90-loaderentry.install (systemd 254.1-1-arch)
title      EndeavourOS
version    6.4.12-arch1-1
machine-id 02ef85f9edc146d598502c1b296ff64a
sort-key   endeavouros-6.4.12-arch1-1
options    nvme_load=YES nowatchdog rw root=UUID=9ae3c50f-be08-4594-ac30-2d094375868d systemd.machine_id=02ef85f9edc146d598502c1b296ff64a
linux      /02ef85f9edc146d598502c1b296ff64a/6.4.12-arch1-1/linux
initrd     /02ef85f9edc146d598502c1b296ff64a/6.4.12-arch1-1/initrd

I've never used machine-id with systemd-boot, but everything appears to be corrent. Presumably, /boot contains a directory named 6.4.12-arch1-1, which contains files linux and initrd, correct?

You could try rebuilding the initramfs with mkinitcpio --allpresets while chrooted.

they are under /02ef85f9edc146d598502c1b296ff64a/6.4.12-arch1-1/, but yes.

EndeavourOS is using dracut by default.

Edit: we tried rebuilding initramfs before, but it didn't help

OK, I see nothing wrong. Let's try building a new config that's as minimal as possible. Copy linux and initrd files to /boot/.

/efi/loader/entries/test.conf

title      Test
options    root=/dev/nvme0n1p2
linux      /linux
initrd     /initrd

I got another errors now

https://postimg.cc/Z9dyg1Vn

I think failure to change power states is a big issue, but this is out of my depth now. Sorry :(

It matches the observation with the external USB enclosure though. I think the ASPM / ACPI path would be the most promising.

If you know a last working and a first broken kernel version, maybe do a bisection.

[root@EndeavourOS /]# blkid
/dev/nvme0n1p1: UUID=“6903-7FA3” BLOCK_SIZE=“512” TYPE=“vfat” PARTUUID=“86a0a714-815f-45db-ad0e-9eba16861903” /dev/nvme0n1p2: LABEL=“endeavouros” UUID=“9ae3c50f-be08-4594-ac30-2d094375868d” BLOCK_SIZE=“4096” TYPE=“ext4” PARTLABEL=“endeavouros” PARTUUID=“9b52162c-a4bf-4e5e-8096-bb7f144c481a”
/dev/loop0: BLOCK_SIZE=“1048576” TYPE=“squashfs”
/dev/sda2: SEC_TYPE=“msdos” LABEL_FATBOOT=“ARCHISO_EFI” LABEL=“ARCHISO_EFI” UUID=“6121-B369” BLOCK_SIZE=“512” TYPE=“vfat” PARTUUID=“1bdb3cc0-02”
/dev/sda1: BLOCK_SIZE=“2048” UUID=“2023-08-05-13-57-43-00” LABEL=“EOS_202308” TYPE=“iso9660” PARTUUID=“1bdb3cc0-01”

[root@EndeavourOS /]# sudo cat /etc/fstab
/etc/fstab: static file system information.
Use ‘blkid’ to print the universally unique identifier for a device; this may
be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices that works even if
disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).

UUID=6903-7FA3 /efi vfat defaults,noatime 0 2
UUID=9ae3c50f-be08-4594-ac30-2d094375868d / ext4 defaults,noatime 0 1
tmpfs /tmp tmpfs defaults,noatime,mode=1777 0 0

I assume it should look like this