Yesterday 25.6.2026 I reinstalled Manjaro as 1st OS into efi multiboot laptop with manual partitioning: I made 3 partitions: sda1 fat32 /boot/efi, sda2 ext4 /root and sda3 ex4 /home with luks passphrase. Post-installation update installed kernel 6.18.33-1. Manjaro booted normally, i.e. asking /home luks passphrase only once, not twice as earlier. I rebooted Manjaro 3 times with same successful result, i.e. luks was asked to give on once. I was very pleased for this and send feedback with thanks Manjaro Team for enabling this.
Today 26.6.2026 I received new update of 914,2 MiB size with 262 packages including among others new kernel 6.18.36-1. After reboot Manjaro asks to give /home passphrase 2 times → opens into emergency mode → asks for Crtl-D → asks to to give /home partition passphrase once more (3rd time) → boots to normal user mode.
There has been no changes to how the installer works.
But there has been changes to how mkinitcpio-openswap hook is configured but that is a long time ago.
When you are doing manual partitioning during installation, some scenarios is likely to require manual configuration.
As I understand the issue you have
efi based system
unecnrypted root
encrypted home
Is that correct?
My initial reaction is why would you choose that combination?
I mean - just because you can partition like you did, does not mean that you should or that it is supported by the installer - hence the manual implying know what one is doing.
You may be able to work around it by adding the home partition in /etc/crypttab.
Another option is to remove the encryption from the /home partition and then use systemd-homed to manage the user’s home folder which exist below /home mountpoint.
@linux-aarhus Thank you very much for your reply and advises.
Your question about this combination: My goal is to keep Manjaro as the 1st OS in this multiboot efi laptop and boot other OS’s from the grub menu of Manjaro. Swap partition is common for all installed OS’s. Background: When I encrypted /root partition for Manjaro in laptop, I had to reinstall Manjaro every time after installation of other Linux OS’s into this same hard drive in order to keep Manjaro as 1st OS. In my multiboot desktop PC’s this issue is not a problem at all.
I’ll try to reinstall Manjaro to this laptop as you suggested tomorrow at latest and report my results.
If you keep this layout for now, I would check the simple bits before reinstalling: verify /etc/crypttab has only one entry for the home LUKS UUID, then rebuild initramfs after any edit with sudo mkinitcpio -P. A duplicated UUID between crypttab/fstab and an old initramfs can easily look like ‘asked once in initramfs, once by systemd, then again after emergency’. I would also avoid shared swap with hibernation, as mentioned.
@linux-aarhus Thank you for your kind reply and attachment !
About my swap solution: I don’t use hibernate. I’ve used swapfile’s in efi laptop singe boot installations and efi desktop multiboot installations whenever it is enabled by OS.
With efi ‘multiboot’ laptop I mean Manjaro + several other Linuxes.
Re. your attachment: I’ve used the method described in section ’ Calamares EFI system encryption guide’. However, it has led me to situations, which I would like to avoid: after installing a new OS or replacing Linux B to Linux C in the partitions of the Linux B, I have to reinstall Manjaro (= Linux A) again in order to continue to use Manjaro grub menu for booting Manjaro and all other OS’s.
@linux-aarhus Thank you for your kind reply and attachment.
About swap: I don’t use hibernate. I’ve used swapfile’s in efi laptop singe boot installations and efi desktop multiboot installations whenever it is enabled by OS.
With efi ‘multiboot’ laptop I mean Manjaro + several other Linuxes and - perhaps - Windows on the same or different drives.
Re. your attachment: I’ve used the method described in section ’ Calamares EFI system encryption guide’. It works fine in my efi desktop PC’s.
However, in efi laptop it has led me to situations, which I would like to avoid: after installing a new OS or replacing Linux B to Linux C in the partitions of the Linux B, I have to reinstall Manjaro (= Linux A) again in order to continue to use Manjaro grub menu for booting Manjaro and all other OS’s.
Today I removed Manjaro installation from this multiboot efi laptop and replaced it - as a test - with Arch Linux installation (from the script) as the 1st OS with the same kind of combination of 3 partitions and with only /home partition encrypted. The result after several post-install reboots: Arch Linux asks for luks passphrase of /home only once and boots OK after it. After editing OS_PROBER in grub file and updating grub.cfg the grub menu of Arch Linux shows and boots all other Linux OS’s in the 1st drive which (OS’s) have the same kind of combination of 3 partitions and only /home partition encrypted as well as Windows installation on 2nd drive. The similar results I’ve received also with CachyOS. I’ll keep my fingers crossed this installation will prevail.
Therefore, I would like to ask your team to check what creates the difference in this topic between Manjaro vs. Arch Linux/CachyOS. I do understand it is very small group of users which might be interested in using multiboot efi laptop installations. I use it for testing and advising purposes.
The scenario you describe is beyond a normal usecase.
How you decide to use your system - that is your freedom.
As for investigating why your specific use case behaves differently - that is your job.
I have since many, many years come to terms with the fact that multi booting different operating systems is a complete waste of time as it often presents new challenges that needs to be adressed.
If I really need to investigate a Linux distribution that caught my interest, I will do so using a virtual environment - I would never do it on systems I rely on in my daily use.
As for your specific issue - you should definitely inspect the /etc/crypttab to be sure the system knows it must be unlocked at boot time.
Why is 3 OS in multiboot required?
And on more than one PC…
I can understand dual booting to windows for some requirements, but you are doing multiboot to different linux based OS…
If having separated workspaces is the goal, you can do multiple users on same OS.
If really need different OS, for like different Desktop Environments, the best option : as suggested above you can use VMs…
Or you could look into having separate SSDs for each OS… If it feasible to (not really required for linux based OS but is better to) quickly disconnect the one not in use at boot (more work but at least software based environments are completely separate)
Please verify your Manjaro system’s configuration files.
I am fairly certain this is a local configuration issue.
Your configuration files for your Manjaro system should look somewhat similar to this example from a test installation. Your uuids and file-systems may differ but you should get the picture.
# /etc/crypttab: mappings for encrypted partitions.
#
# Each mapped device will be created in /dev/mapper, so your /etc/fstab
# should use the /dev/mapper/<name> paths for encrypted devices.
#
# See crypttab(5) for the supported syntax.
#
# NOTE: You need not list your root (/) partition here, but it must be set up
# beforehand by the initramfs (/etc/mkinitcpio.conf). The same applies
# to encrypted swap, which should be set up with mkinitcpio-openswap
# for resume support.
#
# <name> <device> <password> <options>
luks-045cdc63-6069-4551-8980-1ad79e84bf5c UUID=045cdc63-6069-4551-8980-1ad79e84bf5c none
# /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).
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
UUID=B6FB-B170 /boot/efi vfat defaults,umask=0077 0 2
UUID=f4ac491e-da68-4189-82eb-93b5330f40eb / ext4 defaults 0 1
/dev/mapper/luks-045cdc63-6069-4551-8980-1ad79e84bf5c /home btrfs defaults,compress=zstd:1 0 0
Another thing to keep in mind is the grub version.
Manjaro provides it’s own version of the grub bootloader. That version is not guaranteed to be the same as Arch Linux.
The configuration file /etc/grub/grub.cfgMUST match the grub EFI stub reading the configuration.
It has been seen that grub fails to load when grubx64.efi and bootx64.efi is not binary identical.
So if your multi-boot system’s efi firmware points to /EFI/boot/bootx64.efi and you install a third or fourth system where the grub installtaion replaces the /EFI/boot/bootx64.efi with a version different than the Manjaro version - then you will get issues with booting your Manjaro system because the efi loader tries to launch a different version than it is configured for.
@linux-aarhus Thank you very much for your testing and explanation of the consequences and possible problems involved with efi installations.
For avoiding those problems I you indicated I’ll reinstall my system again. Additional Linuxes (C, D, …etc) I’ll install on external USB’s for demonstrating to possible new Linux users. In order to avoid esp problems I’ll use this instruction: Install Ubuntu Linux on an External USB Drive.
I mark this question as solved - at least from my point of view.
why would you choose that combination?