Hello everybody! After 2 days of no error installation I’m here again, This time after complete installation I’m stuck at bootloader, After normal boot I’m prompted by grub menu to choose either Windows or Manjaro, I select Manjaro (XFCE) and then I see with black screen and a mouse for second, and this cycle repeats again. Previously I was unable to poweroff so I forced shut down by pressing the power button. Any help or support? I guess I should go on with advance options?
Yes, I’d do that.
You’ll get to choose a fallback kernel or a different one, if you have more than one installed.
Due to that, you could also have accrued some file system damage which can’t be fixed automatically - but you’d have seen some message alerting you to that fact.
So that is probably not it.
Gently shut down a frozen PC
to minimize the risk of file system corruption and data loss:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/keyboard_shortcuts#Kernel_(SysRq)
Yes I tried with different kernel (Fallback initramfs) and that thing also stuck in boot loop, so I tried Alt + Fn + Ctrl +1-6 and I did got into TTY mode but due to boot loop it was stuck. I pressed Shut Down button then, and it also took long , I pressed escape button got following error:
BTRFS Error (device sda5): bdev /dev/sda5 errs: wr 0, rd 0 , flush 0, corrupt 881126 , gen 0
Here somehow I got into TTY mode without getting stuck into boot loop, and following error:
btrfs_print_data_csum_error : 37014 callbacks suppressed
then rows of similar things and the above error I mentioned.
I cannot advise here - I’m next to ignorant when it comes to system issues which may be BTRFS related.
There is no hardware info here - perhaps in the other thread, but not here.
Boot up from the live USB, and without mounting your installed system, run a btrfs check
on it.
sudo btrfs check --backup --progress --mode lowmem /dev/sda5
Mind you that this process is going to take quite a bit of time, but you should see its progress on the screen.
Once the process has finished, do mount the filesystem, and then run a btrfs scrub
on it…
sudo btrfs scrub start -B /dev/sda5
I did btrfs check --repair
command before seeing this, and it repaired but that didn’t work, trying this will be different? or should I go with clean install again?
It could help, if it’s only a filesystem error. However, I suspect that your drive itself may be dying.
If it’s your drive itself, then that won’t do you any good.
drive? this is the first issue I’ve come up with my drive, and I did a lot of AUR installs, was trying to set something up so that might have caused this?
and should I choose ext4 over btrfs?
No it’s not. Your previous thread “Installation Error - Failure reading sector from 'hd1'” already showed problems with your HDD, and given the age of your machine, it’s not unlikely that the drive is starting to become unreliable.
No. Your filesystem is damaged, and this may just be filesystem damage — which is what those commands I gave you should remedy, if possible — but given how robust btrfs
is, and given your previous HDD problems, the probability of your problems being caused by your drive itself is becoming sufficiently convincing.
That’s a much more complicated question to answer than it seems.
First of and foremost, Manjaro is not a suitable distribution for just about everyone, regardless of how it has been promoted in the past. I’ve even written a short essay about it.
The above in mind, Manjaro has been promoted as a distribution suitable for absolute beginners with no knowledge and/or understanding of GNU/Linux whatsoever. It’s a fact, and the community has come to accept that this misguided profiling of our beloved distribution has brought a number of absolute newbies to this forum. As such, we try to help and educate them as best we can.
But, as of Manjaro 25.0.0 Zetar, it was decided to make btrfs
the default filesystem, which does not mean in any way, shape or form that one cannot opt for a different filesystem and/or a different partitioning layout at installation time. But unfortunately, newbies tend to stick to the defaults, and so now there are many newbies on this forum who’ve only recently installed Manjaro and who now have btrfs
as their filesystem.
So far so good, because btrfs
is a very modern yet tried-and-tested filesystem. It’s robust, and it’s powerful. And in my personal opinion, it’s more resilient than ext4
. But, just as with Manjaro itself, btrfs
requires periodic maintenance. It is not a filesystem for people who don’t know what they’re doing.
So, long story short, while I personally like btrfs
— and I am using it myself, with a setup far more complex than anyone else’s here, and which most people here don’t even understand, let alone that they would be doing it the same way as I did — and while there is also a logic as to why Manjaro 25 uses btrfs
by default — namely that btrfs
is also the filesystem for Manjaro Summit, the immutable branch — I think that, given the amount of complete newbies in this community, the move to btrfs
as the default filesystem may have been premature.
So, if you were to decide to reinstall, then I would advise you to choose ext4
and create separate partitions for /
and /home
, with a large enough swap partition alongside, given that your machine only has 4 GiB of RAM.
But then again, from where I’m sitting, looking at your previous thread and now this one, the matter is most likely academic — or at least, for remedying your current problem — because you’re almost certainly looking at a hardware failure, and no choice of a different filesystem is going to save you from the inevitable.
I’m sorry to be the harbinger of bad news, but I prefer being honest and transparent. I don’t like having to lie to people.
Yes the HDD has definitely got problems and because of GPT MBR issue I installed Manjaro onto my SATA SSD. Manjaro OS was pretty much kept untouched from HDD.
And installing onto SSD was done in first attempt.
and also 4 GiB of swap besides the storage for /
and /home
?
Well if it was onto my HDD then I would’ve thought the same and would’ve stick to windows but this might be because of me trying to force shutdown the PC.
Better make it 8 GiB of swap.

this might be because of me trying to force shutdown the PC.
In that case, run the commands that I gave you a few posts up. They may fix your issue.

Better make it 8 GiB of swap.
Yeah lately I’ve seen OS becoming a bit laggy. I’d also get extra RAM that would also help.

In that case, run the commands that I gave you a few posts up. They may fix your issue.
Yes before clear installation, I’ll try these, I’ll update here on that. Thanks.

drive? this is the first issue I’ve come up with my drive
Drives all fail at some point. You hope they last a long time, but they don’t last forever.

Yes the HDD has definitely got problems and because of GPT MBR issue I installed Manjaro onto my SATA SSD. Manjaro OS was pretty much kept untouched from HDD.
And installing onto SSD was done in first attempt.
It doesn’t have to be the drive itself. Various components in a PC must work together flawlessly for storage on the drive to function properly. For example, data is first collected in the RAM and then written in blocks. Therefore, an error in the RAM also leads to file system corruption.

and should I choose ext4 over btrfs?
Well, you wouldn’t have gotten this error message with ext4. Not because ext4 couldn’t be corrupted, but because ext4 might not have noticed.
Btrfs creates checksums when writing to the file system and raises an alarm when it detects a mismatch during reading. In such a case, however, Btrfs isn’t the culprit. Btrfs is merely the bearer of bad news.
As the saying goes, don’t shoot the messenger.
I suggest you think about it and investigate what is wrong with your PC (I am thinking of the hardware, not the software).

Drives all fail at some point. You hope they last a long time, but they don’t last forever.
Scientific research has shown that the greatest cause of failure in consumer electronics is the expiry of the warranty.

In that case, run the commands that I gave you a few posts up. They may fix your issue.
The scrub command’s response:
Error Summary csum=50
corrected 0
uncorrectable 50
unverified 0
Error: there are 1 uncorrectable errors
I guess I might need to ReInstall again, and no more downloads from AUR directly.

It doesn’t have to be the drive itself. Various components in a PC must work together flawlessly for storage on the drive to function properly. For example, data is first collected in the RAM and then written in blocks. Therefore, an error in the RAM also leads to file system corruption.
So this might be the issue, the laptop I used was manufactured in 2014. Although Older laptops are robust but yes the hardware might be the problem especially RAM.

I suggest you think about it and investigate what is wrong with your PC (I am thinking of the hardware, not the software).
Well If I go as per the scientific research cited by @Aragorn then the drive has 3 more years, and that would be enough for this machine.
The only way to properly rule out a hardware issue such as a defective HDD/SSD is via substitution. Do you have another drive to test with? Doesn’t matter what type, as long as it’s a known-good one.

Do you have another drive to test with? Doesn’t matter what type, as long as it’s a known-good one.
Actually no, but in this Installation I’ve made 6 GiB of linux-swap, last time it got stuck in between while I was running multiple programs as mentioned above when I had to Force Shut down. Hopefully this time I won’t have to force shutdown as I forgot to change the file system from btrfs
to ext4
.