Yes, I know BSOD is a Windows thing. But in this case it’s a Linux thing. Or a hardware thing?
Anyway, I installed Manjaro-KDE on a brand new Mini PC. I used the manjaro-kde-25.0.0-250414-linux612.iso. The computer is a Kamrui E3B “Mini Gaming PC.” The machine came with Windows 11 preinstalled; I set up the SSD with default-sized EFI, root, and swap partitions. blowing away Windows in the process.
After completing the installation and connecting to the internet via WiFi, I attempted to update the system from the command line (pacman -Syu). During the update process, the screen went blank. I made multiple attempts to wake up the desktop with key presses and mouse clicks, but the screen remained blank. After a few minutes, I decided to turn off the power (is there anything else I could have or should have done?).
When I restarted, the machine started booting, but then went to a kernel panic. Since then, I have made multiple attempts to reboot, but every time I get the POST screen, and then immediately the kernel panic dump reappears (see photo).
It doesn’t make any difference which USB devices I have plugged in; I can’t boot from either the installed system or the installation media; I can’t bring up the BIOS setup or the boot menu.
Any idea what has happened, and if there’s anything I can do about it?
The screenshot tells you that the system is not able to mount the root file system. I assume it was installed with BTRFS by default. Try to reinstall and use EXT4.
Thanks, but perhaps I wasn’t entirely clear. This is not a failure to mount. This is a failure to do anything beyond the POST screen. The screen shown in the photo appears immediately after the POST screen, without the boot process having started at all. And as far as I can tell, it is not a new kernel panic - it appears to be a frozen replica of the first kernel panic. I say that because there is no stream of error messages preceding this - just this static block of text, which appears instantly. And I haven’t gone through it line by line, but it appears to be identical each time.
And, as I stated above, I can’t get into the BIOS setup or the boot menu, and I can’t boot from the USB drive that I used to install the system.
As was suggested, try starting your install from scratch and this time, choose EXT4 as your filesystem, instead of BTRFS. You will likely need to shutdown the machine fully before the next install rather than just rebooting.
On the chance that it might be relevant, did you check your downloaded ISO for consistency?
Also, were you trying to install to a USB disk?
Regards.
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And how would I do that, when I can’t boot from the installation medium?
OK, thanks.
OK, I wasn’t clear about this, but I have tried that multiple times. I’ve powered off, disconnected the power supply and monitor, and removed all USB devices (keyboard, mouse, wifi dongle, and installation medium) before starting over, several times.
I did verify the checksum. I didn’t verify the signature of the checksum.
Yes. Forcing a hard shutdown (or reset) is never a safe option. Instead, REISUB/REISUO would have been a better option.
From a closer look at your general description, it seems that forcing a shutdown may have been the culprit in this case.
From the information you’ve provided, the previous assessment seems accurate, and a fresh install is likely the best way forward.
Why you apparently can no longer boot the USB installer I can’t say with any certainty, but my guess would be the USB subsystem isn’t yet able to initialise because of whatever damage has been done.
However, if you happen to have a DVD drive installed, perhaps you can write the ISO to DVD, and that might still boot.
Beyond that, I have nothing more to suggest at this time.
Also, once again: the screen shown in the photo is, as far as I can tell, not a live series of errors, but a static screenful of the messages captured from the initial kernel panic, which is for some unknown reason being redisplayed over and over.
Could I be wrong? Of course, that’s always possible, but I’ve explained why I think this.
I appreciate the suggestion. I suppose I should have known this - I’ve been using Linux a fairly long time.
Just to be clear, the tutorial says:
So, if I understand correctly, this would seem to require advance preparation. It wouldn’t be practical to follow the above step in a GUI environment when the screen has gone blank, right?
So in order to use REISUB, I would have had to anticipate a freeze and execute the above before anything else on a freshly installed system?
It is possible to recover from this - if you don’t restart your system - instead attempt to switch to the real console - commonly referred to as TTY.
This is done using CtrlAltF<num> combination. Depending on environment tty1, tty2 and tty7 may be occupied - making something in between the logical choice e.g. F4 or F5.
From there you can attempt to rerun the sync command (it may be required to manually remove the /var/lib/pacman/db.lck file)
sudo pacman -Syu
Please refer the following topics for hints and advises on the topic of safely syncing your system.
