SOLUTION BELOW
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!
My bad, I think in your case it’s in
/efi/loader/entries/something.confSince
/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!
[[email protected] ~]$ 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/initrdI’ve never used
machine-idwith systemd-boot, but everything appears to be corrent. Presumably,/bootcontains a directory named6.4.12-arch1-1, which contains fileslinuxandinitrd, correct?You could try rebuilding the initramfs with
mkinitcpio --allpresetswhile 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
linuxandinitrdfiles to/boot/./efi/loader/entries/test.confI 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.
Thank you for your time and patience!