I had my first “software update” issue since installing Manjaro in 2020.
I have a Manjaro/Win10 dual boot configuration, SSD/quad core machine.
It was partially my fault.
I “Cancelled” the update due to extremely slow server download rate.
Then I switched to “Canada” mirrors (from US) and resumed the upgrade.
All the transactions and triggers completed without errors.
But I did NOT get the standard message to “re-boot”.
When I DID re-boot I got the message:
“/boot/vmlinuzx-6.9-x86_64 not found”
So I followed the standard procedure for an “aborted” install.
Pamac returned “nothing to do”.
Re-booted again and got: “Failed to mount /boot/efi”
followed by a few other messages.
So at this point I perused the forums for this error.
I found and issued this command: (after booting from live flash again…)
pamac upgrade --force-refresh --enable-downgrade --overwrite “" --no-avr.
cmd returned : nothing to do…
Followed by this command:
pacmac reinstall linux69 --overwrite "”
This command worked.
And I got the notice to re-boot. So I did.
It booted directly into Manjaro !
(bypassed the boot menu)
So I shutdown and booted again.
Got the Manjaro boot menu but the Window boot loader option was missing.
So I issued: sudo update-grub.
That fixed it. Everything seems to work fine now.
My question is:
Did I miss a step after cancelling the upgrade ?
Are there ANY commands that I need to issue after “Cancelling” an upgrade
BEFORE switching mirrors ?
I manged to recover…but it took a bit research and some luck.
I am NOT well versed in pacmac / pamac command line options.
It looks like I “Cancelled” when it was downloading the latest linux69 kernel.
But why did the upgrade process complete without errors yet the system failed to boot ?
This is somewhat ambiguous.
If you have no kernel - you cannot boot.
however:
you said you followed whatever procedure
which means:
you did boot.
Was this from chroot?
(manjaro-chroot)
From there, the first action would NOT be what you said you did.
The first action would be to re-run the update and let it finish.
pacman-mirrors -f 5
pacman -Syyu
YES.
After booting from LIVE flash
I issued:
sudo su -
manjaro-chroot -a
(part of the standard failed install procedure…)
… but then the thing to do would be to re-run and finish the update …
The update process is as follows… 
-
The repository information is checked for whether it’s up to date, and if necessary, it is updated.
-
The packages are downloaded and package integrity is verified.
-
The kernel images and initcpios are deleted.
-
The packages are updated.
-
The kernel image or images is/are installed, the initcpios for them are created, and they are also installed.
-
The boot loader menu is updated.
Presumably you interrupted the process before the kernel and initcpio were updated.
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then I issued this cryptic command: (from the instructions)
[ -f /var/lib/pacman/db.lck ] && rm -f /var/lib/pacman/db.lck
followed by:
pacman-mirrors -f && pacman -Syyu
this returned: Nothing to do.
I cancelled when it was downloading linux69 (very slowly…)
from US mirror site.
Well, then there’s your answer. 
you could try to run the commands separately
the first line checks for a lock file and removes it if present - as it would prevent pacman from performing it’s job
the second line is two commands - the same as I wrote further up:
first refresh the list of mirrors
you could use pacman-mirrors -c Germany instead
to get better/different mirrors
then run the update
pacman -Syyu
If that all succeeded - you should be good
exit chroot and reboot
That was part of the problem…
It came back with…Nothing to do and when I re-booted (without live flash)
I got:
failed to mount /boot/efi
with some message about -d (the only key sequence that it responded to)
Also when I looked at the manjor advanced boot options
my Linux6 versions were gone !
So it looks like the “recovery” command I used:
pamac upgrade --force-refresh --enable-downgrade --overwrite “*” --no-avr
(this also came back with…nothing to do…)
should have been just:
pacman -Syyu
Yes - as this command simply runs the update (again).
btw:
pamac upgrade --force-refresh --enable-downgrade --overwrite “*” --no-avr
contains a typo, a syntax error
it should have thrown an error right away
... --no-avr
is incorrect
and:
why would you want to or need to overwrite anyhing?
I just found it on one of the forum posts when I searched on "failed to mount /boot/efi.
It looked a bit messy to me but if I recall it just returned: nothing to do…
At the time I wasn’t sure how much I hosed-up my system and was just attempting to recover elegantly instead of having to perform a complete re-install.
But it was the next command in that post that DID fix the missing kernel.
pacmac reinstall linux69 --overwrite “*”
except the original post read linux510
You could - in chroot - just (re)install any kernel you want
mhwd-kernel -l
will list what is available
mhwd-kernel -li
should list what is (supposed to be) installed
mhwd-kernel -i linux...
to choose one from the available to install
mhwd-kernel -h
shows a short summary of the options this command takes
Thanks that’s good information.
If that final command I issued failed then I really would have been “confused” and would have asked for technical help a couple of days ago.
I really didn’t want to deal with logs & screenshots etc.
I knew there was some “elegant” solution but had no clue on the command sequence and/or options.
I’m always interested in new “commands”.
Didn’t know about mhwd.
Thanks for your prompt replies and expertise.
I got to go now. thanks again.
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