Source
r/archlinux•
_Nexor

Computer shutdown during upgrade - now missing kernel

SUPPORT | SOLVED

Hi. I was just finishing an update and my power went out. Now I tried booting into the system and it says it's missing the kernel. It's been ages since I had any problem in arch that forced me to mess with anything on the kernel level. I found a few posts about this problem but each one has it's own set of commands that lead to the solution.

I gotta say I'm pretty lost. I do have a live USB arch. The first thing I tried doing was use arch-chroot but it's not found, which is weird because I'm almost completely sure it should be in the live usb. So I tried installing it with pacman and found that pacman itself wasn't found inside the live usb boot as well, so...

I'm rusty. Can anyone lend a hand?

Posted Mar 26, 2022, 7:15 PM UTC

3118
hearthreddit•

This is all that it should take:

1)Boot with the live iso
2)Connect to the internet
3)Mount your root partition
4)Use arch-chroot into the mounted root partition (/mnt if you mounted there)
5)Install the kernel

But you mentioned that arch-chroot couldn't be found, are you sure there was not a typo or something?
Unless your USB stick went bad i don't have an explanation for that, you don't need to install anything.

27
_NexorOP•

I'm positive it's not a typo. I'm not sure how to pass the arch-chroot part. I'm afraid I'm gonna have to flash a new USB like the answer below mentioned, but it's also been ages since I don't do that, I was hoping that to be a last resort.

EDIT: Here's what I get when I try booting into the live USB http://ibb.co/T8HPNWj

6
hearthreddit•

Well, let's say that your root is on /dev/sda1 (check with lsblk).

Then it would be(after connecting to the internet):

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt  
arch-chroot /mnt

As the other poster said running mkinitcpio -P might be enough, but i think that command runs anyway when installing a kernel so if you just pacman -S linux (if that's the kernel you are using) it should be fine.

6
_NexorOP•

lsblk is also not found. I edited the answer above to show the output I get when I boot into the live USB

3
hearthreddit•

Yeah that's the emergency shell.. not sure why it would happen when booting with the USB though, that's why all those commands are not working.

I don't know if there's something you can do from here or if you just need to burn the ISO again.

8
TheMooseyOne•

Almost certain that's an issue with the image, dd it again and it should work

2
[deleted]•

[deleted]

1
OJFord•

I'm no expert and haven't had to deal with this, but I imagine it lost power while recreating the image, and so it's missing or perhaps partially written (corrupt)?

I would look at the install guide or wiki page on mkinitcpio, and recreate it from the live USB (or flash a new one if you're having problems with it).

4
_NexorOP•

Thanks for your response. I will take a further look in the mkinitcpio page.

1