I’ve freshly installed Manjaro on my new PC back in February of this year but my HOOKS line in /etc/mkinitcpio.conf still uses the double quotes. It looks like this:
HOOKS="base udev autodetect modconf block keyboard keymap consolefont plymouth resume filesystems fsck"
Haven’t touched this config file even once but can’t find any .pacnew files either. That’s why I’m a little bit confused. Is February 2023 considered ‘ages ago’ or why is my mkinitcpio.conf still using the old format?
For a rolling release, yes, February could be considered ages ago – mkinitcpio.conf should be using the new format, however on my system also, I can confirm it isn’t; and I’ve seen no pacnew file relating to it. It looks like this one has fallen between the proverbial cracks.
After updating and rebooting the system, I entered my password and a circle appeared spinning indefinitely… Opening a console and using “top”, a process called “startplasma-x11” was using huge amounts of RAM and almost 100% of the CPU.
I needed to boot manjaro from a pen-drive, and using “TimeShift” I was able to restore the system to a previous state.
I recall seeing HOOKS=(...) syntax about 3 years ago with Manjaro 20.2 Nibia release.
Funny enough, I have one VM installed around Feb this year, and it still uses HOOKS="..." syntax.
I checked further and mkinitcpio.conf.pacnew from the previous [Stable Update] 2023-11-13 has the correct syntax.
e.g.
Proverbial cracks indeed 
@CyberOto this is just the example, below is actually the old syntax, and there isn’t really a pacnew file AFAIK.
I installed in June 23 and it was definitely wit “”
The last time I had a mkinitcpio.conf.pacnew file to merge was Dec 2022
Arch has released mkinitcpio 33 with some structural changes
There is a pacnew for
/etc/mkinitcpio.conf. Make sure you review it. If you make any changes, don’t forget to runsudo mkinitcpio -Pafterward.
There is no mention of mkinitcpio update in [Stable Update] 2022-12-06 announcement that included mkinitcpio 33-1
…not if you ask manjaro / calamares developers, still shipping default installations with it today (i really do not know who is to blame, but if it is calamares and it causes such problems, have you considered ditching it or forking it or patching it???)
I have no idea. I guess it may be a regression — well, sort of, because for now it still works — because the transition to using ellipses happened somewhere in 2020, and I distinctly remember that there was a .pacnew involved — it also introduced a few other changes.
The calamares developers live in their own world. I’ve interacted with them on Telegram and pointed out several bugs to them, and they asked me to leave their channel because I wasn’t one of them. I kid you not. 
So maybe that’s why the double-quotes syntax has returned, just as the nonsensical noatime mount option for the swap device.
Those are either way all people of whom none have ever seen a UNIX machine from up close. They all grew up on MS-Windows, gaming consoles and smartphones.
Erik politely asked users that were not actively participating to leave the channel. The choice was up to you. 
He sent me the same PM, by the way.
Maybe it is time for the manjaro developers to take action and code/fork/find another installer, because right now, they lose control of their own distro. It does not matter what you put in the ISO if something else lands on the hard drive on install. And stuff like /etc/fstab and /etc/mkinitcpio.conf seems pretty critical to be ignored. I wonder what other surprises are there and what will be the next discovery…
You’re making absolutely no sense. What do you think Calamares is doing? It’s just a graphical installer. All settings are determined by default packages and settings in the ISO profiles.
I didn’t say that he wasn’t polite, but the reason he gave me was not that I wasn’t active in there. He explicitly stated that the channel was only for calamares developers.
Well, that was the point of the PMs. Someone invited us and later Erik decided to focus the channel in that regard. There was no offense toward anyone he asked to leave.
I just checked and wanted to add this for completeness. I’ve installed Manjaro from the .iso file:
manjaro-gnome-22.0.3-230213-linux61.iso.
My mkinitcpio.conf file is a strange mix of double quotes and parantheses:
MODULES=""
…
BINARIES=()
…
FILES=""
…
HOOKS="base udev …"
The rest is all commented out including the “Compression” section below the HOOKS. I also checked again with sudo find / -name "mkinitcpio.conf.pacnew" but nothing is found.
After following this discussion I’m still not 100% sure if I’ll run into any problems with this update or if I have to do something about the outdated .conf file but as far as I understand the update should be running fine because of the existing ‘base’ hook.
You will be fine for the update. Yep, that is how it really is - a mix of both.
But thank you about the example, i guess that saves me the trouble of installing fresh in VM just to prove a point.
Lets not blame Calamares then, let us just say the fact is, between the ISO and the installed OS some config files magically change filling with deprecated stuff. I am sure @Yochanan can explain it better.
p.s. i also wondered why EVERY compression method is commented out…and somehow still gzip image is generated.
I confirm that the error is only generated for kernel 5.15 and not for 6.1. Also not related to the consolefont warning message.
In my case, despite the 5.1 kernel error, my system boots fine with this kernel and of course with 6.1.
(10/17) Updating linux initcpios...
==> Building image from preset: /etc/mkinitcpio.d/linux515.preset: 'default'
==> Using default configuration file: '/etc/mkinitcpio.conf'
-> -k /boot/vmlinuz-5.15-x86_64 -g /boot/initramfs-5.15-x86_64.img --microcode /boot/amd-ucode.img --microcode /boot/intel-ucode.img
==> Starting build: '5.15.138-1-MANJARO'
-> Running build hook: [base]
-> Running build hook: [udev]
-> Running build hook: [autodetect]
-> Running build hook: [modconf]
-> Running build hook: [kms]
-> Running build hook: [keyboard]
-> Running build hook: [keymap]
-> Running build hook: [consolefont]
-> Running build hook: [filesystems]
-> Running build hook: [fsck]
==> Generating module dependencies
==> Creating gzip-compressed initcpio image: '/boot/initramfs-5.15-x86_64.img'
==> WARNING: errors were encountered during the build. The image may not be complete.
==> Building image from preset: /etc/mkinitcpio.d/linux515.preset: 'fallback'
==> Using default configuration file: '/etc/mkinitcpio.conf'
-> -k /boot/vmlinuz-5.15-x86_64 -g /boot/initramfs-5.15-x86_64-fallback.img -S autodetect --microcode /boot/amd-ucode.img --microcode /boot/intel-ucode.img
==> Starting build: '5.15.138-1-MANJARO'
-> Running build hook: [base]
-> Running build hook: [udev]
-> Running build hook: [modconf]
-> Running build hook: [kms]
==> WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: 'ast'
-> Running build hook: [keyboard]
-> Running build hook: [keymap]
-> Running build hook: [consolefont]
-> Running build hook: [filesystems]
-> Running build hook: [fsck]
==> Generating module dependencies
==> Creating gzip-compressed initcpio image: '/boot/initramfs-5.15-x86_64-fallback.img'
==> WARNING: errors were encountered during the build. The image may not be complete.
==> Building image from preset: /etc/mkinitcpio.d/linux61.preset: 'default'
==> Using default configuration file: '/etc/mkinitcpio.conf'
-> -k /boot/vmlinuz-6.1-x86_64 -g /boot/initramfs-6.1-x86_64.img --microcode /boot/amd-ucode.img --microcode /boot/intel-ucode.img
==> Starting build: '6.1.62-1-MANJARO'
-> Running build hook: [base]
-> Running build hook: [udev]
-> Running build hook: [autodetect]
-> Running build hook: [modconf]
-> Running build hook: [kms]
-> Running build hook: [keyboard]
==> WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: 'xhci_pci'
-> Running build hook: [keymap]
-> Running build hook: [consolefont]
-> Running build hook: [filesystems]
-> Running build hook: [fsck]
==> Generating module dependencies
==> Creating gzip-compressed initcpio image: '/boot/initramfs-6.1-x86_64.img'
==> Image generation successful
==> Building image from preset: /etc/mkinitcpio.d/linux61.preset: 'fallback'
==> Using default configuration file: '/etc/mkinitcpio.conf'
-> -k /boot/vmlinuz-6.1-x86_64 -g /boot/initramfs-6.1-x86_64-fallback.img -S autodetect --microcode /boot/amd-ucode.img --microcode /boot/intel-ucode.img
==> Starting build: '6.1.62-1-MANJARO'
-> Running build hook: [base]
-> Running build hook: [udev]
-> Running build hook: [modconf]
-> Running build hook: [kms]
==> WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: 'ast'
-> Running build hook: [keyboard]
==> WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: 'xhci_pci'
-> Running build hook: [keymap]
-> Running build hook: [consolefont]
-> Running build hook: [filesystems]
-> Running build hook: [fsck]
==> Generating module dependencies
==> Creating gzip-compressed initcpio image: '/boot/initramfs-6.1-x86_64-fallback.img'
==> Image generation successful
error: la orden no se ejecutó correctamente
Hi @r0nin
I suggest You to install linux66 as it it is the last LTS kernel and remove linux515 with pacman -Run linux515
Wish You well