Back to list

Mini My linux doesn't boot anymore or bad kernel upgrade ?

symptoms: cannot boot, cannot find initramfs.

I have no clue on how it happened. Maybe the upgrade process was interupted or I failed to reboot after a kernel upgrade and did (several) other kernel upgrades... I'll never know, but it can be fixed!

Let's fix the damn laptop. This worked on an Archlinux installation.

Prepare USB boot disk

If not already at hand

1. Have a USB key at hand
2. Download linux ISO
3. "Burn" the ISO on the key (e.g. gnome disk restore feature)

Rebuild the boot files

Boot from the USB disk, at the prompt:

mount /dev/whatever /mnt   # / (root)
mount /dev/else /mnt/boot  # /boot

All needed partitions must be mounted before the next step. Usually there is one (/), two (/ and /boot) or three (/ and /boot and /boot/efi)

Then chroot,

arch-chroot /mnt

Hoping that the packages are up to date and that the problem is not related to a package problem, continue by rebuilding the cpio and grub configuration.

mkinitcpio -p linux # or linux-lts or linux-zen
grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

Cross fingers

Quit the chroot (Ctrl-D) and reboot.