Kernel won’t start: can’t even boot up

Bit of a beginner here, fyi. Was trying to run some code on my gpu using cuda, computer froze, forced a shutdown. On reboot I’m seeing

[FAILED] Failed to start Load Kernel Modules 

I’ve tried holding shift to go to grub menu, and going to “Advanced options for Manjaro Linux”. There are two options, same kernel version but one has -fa. Neither work.

Is there any way to install a new kernel without access to the OS?

Worst case scenario I don’t mind a hard reset. But how do I even go about doing that?

Yes, there is. However,

…a kernel module is not the kernel itself. IIRC it’s what’s called a driver in Windows.

To repair your issue, you’d have to do the same, or much the same, as for reinstalling the kernel:

  1. chroot into your system from a live USB;
  2. from there, sync the system again.

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 encironment:

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.


Then, from within the chroot environment, run a complete update to synchronize your system:

pamac upgrade && pamac upgrade --aur --devel || echo -e '\033[0;91mThere was an error upgrading the system. AUR packages not upgraded.\e[0m'

This will update your system and ONLY if that was successful update any AUR packages.

a Reminder: While use of the AUR is possible, it’s neither recommended nor supported.

I recommend pamac instead of pacman, especially for newcomers as pamac was developed by Manajaro (developers) for Manjaro and just takes care of more thing than pacman.

If there are any errors, report them here. If not, reboot see if it helped. If not, re-enter the chroot environment as described above, then providing this information from there:

sudo inxi --admin --verbosity=7 --filter --no-host --width

:bangbang: Tip: :bangbang:

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Thereby increasing legibility thus making it easier for those trying to provide assistance.

For more information, please see:


:bangbang::bangbang: Additionally

If your language isn’t English, please prepend any and all terminal commands with LC_ALL=C. For example:

LC_ALL=C bluetoothctl

This will just cause the terminal output to be in English, making it easier to understand and debug.

2 Likes

You most probably need to repair your filesystem.
In future never force power off or reset, but use what is explained in link below:

2 Likes

thanks, how do I repair the filesystem?

That depends on your filesystem it most likely is fsck see it’s manpage for usage…

@Mirdarthos thanks for the detailed answer.

I created a bootable manjaro USB and from the live environment, ran

manjaro-chroot-a

output:

ERROR: No linux partitions detected!

Why would it not detect it as a linux partition?

Output of lsblk is below:

NAME        MAJ:MIN RM    SIZE RO TYPE MOUNTPOINTS
loop0         7:0    0   29.9M  1 loop /run/miso/sfs/livefs
loop1         7:1    0  908.2M  1 loop /run/miso/sfs/mhwdfs
loop2         7:2    0    1.9G  1 loop /run/miso/sfs/desktopfs
loop3         7:3    0 1007.5M  1 loop /run/miso/sfs/rootfs
sda           8:0    1    7.5G  0 disk  
├─sda1        8:1    1    3.9G  0 part /run/miso/bootmnt
└─sda2        8:2    1      4M  0 part  
sdb           8:16   1      0B  0 disk  
sr0          11:0    1   1024M  0 rom   
nvme0n1     259:0    0  238.5G  0 disk  
├─nvme0n1p1 259:1    0    300M  0 part  
└─nvme0n1p2 259:2    0  238.2G  0 part

I’m pretty sure nvme0n1p2 is the filesystem that I apparently broke. Any ideas on how to get it up and running again?

UPDATE:

I ran

sudo fsck -f /dev/nvme0n1p2 

but still got the same error from manjaro-chroot -a that no linux partitions were found…

EDIT:

Output of sudo fdisk --list

Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 238.47 GiB, 256060514304 bytes, 500118192 sectors
Disk model: INTEL SSDPEKKF256G7L                     
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: B5A5C6BF-6631-2B47-94DC-33E2DAD569A3

Device          Start       End   Sectors   Size Type
/dev/nvme0n1p1   4096    618495    614400   300M EFI System
/dev/nvme0n1p2 618496 500103449 499484954 238.2G Linux filesystem


Disk /dev/sda: 7.5 GiB, 8053063680 bytes, 15728640 sectors
Disk model: UDisk            
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0x00000000

Device     Boot   Start     End Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sda1  *         64 8110379 8110316  3.9G  0 Empty
/dev/sda2       8110380 8118571    8192    4M ef EFI (FAT-12/16/32)


Disk /dev/loop0: 29.94 MiB, 31391744 bytes, 61312 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes


Disk /dev/loop1: 908.22 MiB, 952336384 bytes, 1860032 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes


Disk /dev/loop2: 1.89 GiB, 2032803840 bytes, 3970320 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes


Disk /dev/loop3: 1007.52 MiB, 1056456704 bytes, 2063392 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes

EDIT 2:

output of lsblk --all --fs

NAME        FSTYPE      FSVER            LABEL            UUID                                 FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS
loop0       squashfs    4.0                                                                          0   100% /run/miso/sfs/livefs
loop1       squashfs    4.0                                                                          0   100% /run/miso/sfs/mhwdfs
loop2       squashfs    4.0                                                                          0   100% /run/miso/sfs/desktopfs
loop3       squashfs    4.0                                                                          0   100% /run/miso/sfs/rootfs
sda         iso9660     Joliet Extension MANJARO_KDE_2202 2023-02-03-04-22-42-00                               
├─sda1      iso9660     Joliet Extension MANJARO_KDE_2202 2023-02-03-04-22-42-00                     0   100% /run/miso/bootmnt
└─sda2      vfat        FAT12            MISO_EFI         562D-9CF6                                            
sdb                                                                                                            
sr0                                                                                                            
nvme0n1                                                                                                        
├─nvme0n1p1 vfat        FAT32            NO_LABEL         6443-8150                                            
└─nvme0n1p2 crypto_LUKS 1                                 5ed9ccf2-ea2e-4a7f-9324-f8516489d388  

Please provide the output of:

sudo fdisk --list

Try this instead:

lsblk --all --fs

That command should show what type of filesystem is inside the partitions.

@Mirdarthos see above

1 Like

There’s something there…lets see what we can learn from the output @TriMoon requested.

or

parted --list

@TriMoon see above

@Mirdarthos see above

Welp, that’s it. I know absolutely nothing about LUKS/encryption, so I’m out.

Good luck, though.

I opened the partition using instructions here, then ran fsck on it.

I wouldn’t expect the encryption to be related to the kernel module error or manjaro-chroot error, no?

It would. AFAIK there’s a special type of instructions for chroot with encryption. But as I mentioned, I know absolutely nothing about it, so the possibility that I’m wrong does exist.

I got manjaro-chroot to work using instructions here. I ran the command you first posted above as a solution. I’ll see if it fixed the module error.

@Mirdarthos, after running this command, I get to this point

Resolving dependencies...
Checking inter-conflicts...

To build (20):
 anaconda                       2022.10-1              (2022.05-1)             AUR
 atom                           1.61.0beta0-3          (1.61.0beta0-2)         AUR
 ceph-libs                      17.2.5-5               (15.2.17-1)             AUR
 metis                          5.1.0.p11-1            (5.1.0.p10-2)           AUR
 coin-or-ipopt                  3.14.11-1              (3.14.10-1)             AUR
 gn-m85                         0.1792.7d7e8dee-1                              AUR
 python2                        2.7.18-8               (2.7.18-5)              AUR
 electron9                      9.4.4-6                (9.4.4-5)               AUR
 voro++                         0.4.6-2                                        AUR
 gmsh                           4.11.1-1               (4.11.0-1)              AUR
 gnome-icon-theme               3.12.0-7               (3.12.0-6)              AUR
 google-chrome                  110.0.5481.77-1        (109.0.5414.74-1)       AUR
 scotch                         7.0.3-1                (7.0.1-1)               AUR
 mmg                            5.7.1-1                (5.6.0-2)               AUR
 python-conda-package-handling  1.8.1-1                (1.7.3-2)               AUR
 python-conda                   4.14.0-1               (4.12.0-2)              AUR
 python-ezdxf                   1.0.1b1-1              (0.17.2-1)              AUR
 python-multimethod             1.9.1-1                (1.9-1)                 AUR
 qpdfview                       0.5.0-1                (0.4.18-2)              AUR
 yay-git                        11.3.1.r92.gc40e949-1  (11.1.2.r4.ged62496-1)  AUR


Edit build files : [e]  
Apply transaction ? [e/y/N]

Typing y yields:

Cloning anaconda build files...
System has not been booted with systemd as init system (PID 1). Can't operate.
Failed to connect to bus: Host is down
Error: Failed to build anaconda
There was an error upgrading the system. AUR packages not upgraded.

What happens when you do just:

pamac upgrade

no errors, but when I go back and try to log in again, I just get a filepath /dev/mapper.... and a blinking cursor. Previously, this is where the kernel module error would show up. The error is no longer here, but nothing is happening…

perhaps I should admit defeat

Sometimes it is quicker.

As long as you learned something.