"ERROR: failed to mount UUID=... on real root" after shutting down during system update

Support System Updates
1

Hello there,
As the latest update was being installed, plasma just died on me, and I stupidly shutdown nowed the laptop while the update was still running.

After I did that I got an error like the following one:

Loading Linux linux
error: file '/boot/vmlinuz-linux' not found.
Loading inital ramdisk ...
error: you need to load the kernel first.

Press any key to continue...

So after doing some research I booted from a live USB and manjaro-chroot -aed into the filesystem and completed the update.

After doing that and rebooting I started to get the following error:

mount: /new_root: unknown filesystem type 'ext4'.
    dmesg(1) may have more information after failed mount system call.
ERROR: Failed to mount 'UUID=the-uuid-which-i-can't-be-bothered-to-type-out' on real root
You are now being dropped into an emergency shell.
sh: can't access tty; job control turned off
[rootfs ~]#

IMG_20240527_145304_781~2
IMG_20240527_145304_781~21920×1187 146 KB

This is the first time I face such an issue, and I literally have no idea about how to go about debugging this issue, I’d really appreciate any help on how to fix this issue, thanks in advance.

Edit: I have two disks in my laptop, one for my home directory and one for my system root, both are in ext4 format.

Edit 2: This is the output of update-grub:

...
ERROR: mkdir /var/lock/dmraid
Adding boot menu entry for UEFI Firmware Settings ...
Root filesystem isn't btrfs
If you don't think an error has occurred, please file a bug report...

IMG_20240527_152230_415
IMG_20240527_152230_4153264×2448 502 KB

2

Hi @YoungFellow,

That means your kernel is missing. You probably interrupted the update process right then, when it was updating the kernel, so now it’s missing.

I recommend you chroot into your system and reinstall the kernel.

How to chroot

  1. Ensure you’ve got a relatively new ISO or at least one with a still supported LTS kernel.

  2. Write/copy/dd the ISO to a USB thumb drive.

  3. When done, boot with the above mentioned USB thumb drive into the live environment.

  4. Once booted, open a terminal and enter the following command to enter the chroot environment:

manjaro-chroot -a
  1. If you have more than one Linux installation, select the correct one to use from the list provided.

When done, you should now be in the chroot environment.

But, be careful, as you’re now in an actual root environment on your computer, so any changes you make will persist after a restart.

From within the chroot environment, install a kernel:

mhwd-kernel --install linux61

This will install version 6.1, which is the current SLTS version.

If it was successful, exit the chroot environment,

exit

…and reboot.

Hope this helps!

1 Like
3

Thanks for your swift response @Mirdarthos l, but for some reason everytime I run the command:

I get the following error:

error: no targets specified (use -h for options)

However after checking the command’s help the command seems fine…

Edit: I don’t think that this is the issue, because as I mentioned in the post I completed the installation and the error that you quoted stopped showing up, and the error that shows up on boot is the following error:

Furthermore, when running mhwd-kernel -li it shows linux515 and linux66.

4

Ah, I missed that.

So there is probably a non-chroot way to do this, I’d be surprised if there wasn’t, but boot into the chroot environment as before, and please provide the output of:

cat /etc/default/grub
5

It turns out that the issue was corrupted Kendall installations even though package excited successfully, so I removed all newly installed kernels and rebooted and all was good.

Thank you @Mirdarthos for your time. Thanks.

1 Like
6

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