[Arch] Wont boot / Stuck in loop cant login

[xxxxxx.xxxxxx]

Hi guys,

Ive been using arch for approx 6 months as a primary system (total linux experience starts from the early mandrake and slackware days), i love everything about it: the rolling release and bleeding edge software and i cant forget the package management! However it seems like i have perhaps broke something.

I run arch on both my desktop and eeePC 701 (which im writing on just now), my desktop runs xfce4.10 with SLiM login. I use dwm on my eeepc (repo version not abs).

I decided to run DWM on my desktop because quite frankly i think it is a great window manager. I followed the wiki to install via abs and then recompiled after i changed the "tabs" names to 'www' 'mail' 'term' and 'misc' - I recompiled using the instructions on the wiki, killed dmw and restarted to confirm changes and all was well.

This is where the newbish ways started and this is where i think i have killed my system. As root i issued 'reboot' and it sat for approx 10 mins at which point i think it must of hung up. I ctrl+C and it cancelled the command fine, tried issuing 'reboot' again and same thing happened, hung up. With a lack of patience i have hit the hardware reset button on my tower and upon forced reboot I am met with this:

Failed to mount debug file system
Failed to mount POSIX message queue file system
Failed to mount huge pages file system
Failed to mount configuration file system
Failed to mount temporary directory

<loop>
Welcome to emergancy mode! after logging in , type "journalctl -xb" to view system logs, "systemctl reboot" to reboot, "systemctl default" to try again to boot into default mode"

systemd-remount-fs[310]: failed to execute /bin/mount: no such file or direcotry.
systemd-remount-fs[301]: /bin/mount for / exited with exit status 1.

Welcome to emergancy mode! after logging in , type "journalctl -xb" to view system logs, "systemctl reboot" to reboot, "systemctl default" to try again to boot into default mode"

systemd-fsck[343]: fsck failed with error code 8
systemd-remount-fs[...]: /bin/mount for / exited with exit status 1.
systemd-random-seed[...]: Failed to write new random seed file: Bad file descriptor
</loop>

It loops like this continually, i don't actually get to the login prompt. I have tried booting from a bootable arch usb drive, i can mount my / , /home points fine and my data is there. I have tried chrooting (mounting / to /mnt/arch and running pacman -Syy && pacman -Syu which gives an error and does not install the upgrade. I have tried pacman -S udev / linux and also tried the mkinitcpio -p linux command.

I don't want to loose my data, and would prefer to avoid reinstalling arch. Can anyone add a little insight into this problem as what i find via archlinux wiki and google doesnt seem to be helping or resolving the issue at least - perhaps im not looking at in the right area ofcourse.

Thanks in advance,

-Sean

EDIT

The error given during the chrooted pacman -Syu is as follows:

error: could not open file: /etc/mtab: No such file or directory
error: could not determine filesystem mount points
error: failed to commit transaction (unexpected error)
Errors occured, no packages were upgraded

Edited June 7, 2013 by sean.ferguson

[Yorak]

Have you tried to append "single" to the end of the Syslinux or GRUB boot file? Should let you log right in to root.

[xxxxxx.xxxxxx]

this is all related to the archlinux change in filesystem. I have followed the instruction on arch page, but still doesnt get anywhere. Ended up booting from install media, chrooting and fixing the install that way via pacman.

Something does seem a miss with this change however, something to look out for if you havent upgraded with pacman Syu recently. *facepalm*

[n_K]

this is all related to the archlinux change in filesystem. I have followed the instruction on arch page, but still doesnt get anywhere. Ended up booting from install media, chrooting and fixing the install that way via pacman.

Something does seem a miss with this change however, something to look out for if you havent upgraded with pacman Syu recently. *facepalm*

Get used to it, you'll have that happen a few times a year with arch.

[xxxxxx.xxxxxx]

n_K - the problem is more than likely human error on my part. Doing the upgrade on my eeePC701 running arch was a breeze after ensuring I was aware of all the changes. The total time fixing things from the arch-chroot environment was no longer than 20 mins, not all that bad really.

[+Majesticmerc MVC]

this is all related to the archlinux change in filesystem. I have followed the instruction on arch page, but still doesnt get anywhere. Ended up booting from install media, chrooting and fixing the install that way via pacman.

Something does seem a miss with this change however, something to look out for if you havent upgraded with pacman Syu recently. *facepalm*

Yeah I've suffered with this update on both my laptop and my desktop (the systemd change only bit me in the arse on my desktop). Arch core upgrades are a bit of a pain in the arse when they happen. Since they're a "rolling release" distro, the idea should be that regular "pacman -Syu" runs should just work, but alas, this is rarely the case. This is less prominent on other distros because the core upgrades usually come in one single giant upgrade, whereas this isn't the case for Arch.

Anyway, I can't say I've encountered your problem, but I'll help where I can...

Hi guys,

Ive been using arch for approx 6 months as a primary system (total linux experience starts from the early mandrake and slackware days), i love everything about it: the rolling release and bleeding edge software and i cant forget the package management! However it seems like i have perhaps broke something.

As you said, this is the filesystem upgrade. They've merged all of /bin, /sbin and /usr/sbin into the /usr/bin directory, and it looks like something went awry for you. (In my case, I had to upgrade my bootloader, which was about as much fun as it sounds).

Failed to mount debug file system
Failed to mount POSIX message queue file system
Failed to mount huge pages file system
Failed to mount configuration file system
Failed to mount temporary directory

<loop>
Welcome to emergancy mode! after logging in , type "journalctl -xb" to view system logs, "systemctl reboot" to reboot, "systemctl default" to try again to boot into default mode"

systemd-remount-fs[310]: failed to execute /bin/mount: no such file or direcotry.
systemd-remount-fs[301]: /bin/mount for / exited with exit status 1.

Welcome to emergancy mode! after logging in , type "journalctl -xb" to view system logs, "systemctl reboot" to reboot, "systemctl default" to try again to boot into default mode"

systemd-fsck[343]: fsck failed with error code 8
systemd-remount-fs[...]: /bin/mount for / exited with exit status 1.
systemd-random-seed[...]: Failed to write new random seed file: Bad file descriptor
</loop>

It loops like this continually, i don't actually get to the login prompt.

Did you --force the upgrade, or ignore dependency checks? Sounds like the filesystem upgrade may been forced through without doing everything else first, although I think pacman still wouldn't allow it in this case, even if forced.

The upgrade should have been run as...

pacman -Syu --ignore filesystem,bash
pacman -S bash
pacman -Su

Now this command trio is somewhat risky IMO, as failure at any step could be catastrophic, but that's what I ran, and this is how I did it for my laptop, and it broke with an unrelated error :p. If you forced the filesystem change, you might have a problem and you'll probably need to reinstall the core utilities (this sounds likely anyway if mount couldn't be found). You might get lucky if you just do pacman -Su from the install media.

I have tried booting from a bootable arch usb drive, i can mount my / , /home points fine and my data is there. I have tried chrooting (mounting / to /mnt/arch and running pacman -Syy && pacman -Syu which gives an error and does not install the upgrade. I have tried pacman -S udev / linux and also tried the mkinitcpio -p linux command.

I don't want to loose my data, and would prefer to avoid reinstalling arch. Can anyone add a little insight into this problem as what i find via archlinux wiki and google doesnt seem to be helping or resolving the issue at least - perhaps im not looking at in the right area ofcourse.

Thanks in advance,

-Sean

EDIT

The error given during the chrooted pacman -Syu is as follows:

error: could not open file: /etc/mtab: No such file or directory
error: could not determine filesystem mount points
error: failed to commit transaction (unexpected error)
Errors occured, no packages were upgraded

The errors your seeing is because you haven't quite mounted everything, although they don't mention this on the Arch site as far as I could see. When mounting your file systems, you need to do a couple of extra mounts...

# Mount the filesystems as you have been doing into /mnt/arch...
# ... then...
mount --bind /dev /mnt/arch/dev
mount --bind /proc /mnt/arch/proc
mount --bind /run /mnt/arch/run
mount --bind /sys /mnt/arch/sys

Then, assuming your networking is up and running, you can chmod and pacman should work fine.

Hope this helps :)