Can't boot "you need to load the kernel first"

General system Kernel, boot, graphics & hardware
1

SOS: Cannot boot my system. Bootloader displays two errors: 1. “file /boot/vmlinuz-linux not found” and 2. you need to load the kernel first.

This happened after a power outage in the middle of Discover’s update process, which included a linux firmware update.

What should I do?

2

https://endeavouros.com/docs/system-rescue/rescue-non-booting-system-with-arch-chroot/

Once you are into the chroot you could probably just do a pacman -Syu to run the update through completely this time.

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3

Thanks. Still trying to find /boot/efi following tje instructions in the link.

Will get back later. Still getting power issues. COVID19 maybe.

4

Followed steps in the linked article, then ran pacman -Syu, but got failed to update core, extra, community, multilib, endeavoros; and failed to synchronize all databases.

Do I need to reinstall eos all over again?

5

try running
pacman -Syy
first then
pacman -Syu

It may not help, but it also could help. There is only one way to find out, plus pacman -Syy will not hurt anything.

Pudge

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6

Still returning “failed to synchronize all databases” I’ll read up on this issue.

BTW my system is MBR. This seems to be why I can’t find an efi directory. Following the arch-wiki artilcle on chroot, since my system is MBR, I only mounted “/dev/sda6 /mnt” and ran pacman there (my system is dual boot with Win10, that’s why I have sda6).

On second thought, the solution seems to be on which directory to run pacman: /mnt, /boot, or /mnt/boot?

7

what is the contents of the file /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist
perhaps it got corrupted during the failed update.
It should look like this snippet :
################################################################################
################# Arch Linux mirrorlist generated by Reflector #################
################################################################################
# With: reflector -c US --protocol https --age 8 --sort rate --number 10
# When: 2020-04-29 04:09:41 UTC
# From: https://www.archlinux.org/mirrors/status/json/
# Retrieved: 2020-04-29 04:09:04 UTC
# Last Check: 2020-04-29 03:44:39 UTC

## United States

Server = https://archmirror1.octyl.net/$repo/os/$arch

## United States

Server = https://mirror.sfo12.us.leaseweb.net/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch

## United States

Server = https://mirrors.sonic.net/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch

## United States

Server = https://mirror.lty.me/archlinux/$repo/os/$arch

8

Also from the chroot, see if you can ping the outside world, eg ping google.com, because if the network is down then you won’t be able to synchronize the databases.

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9

Also ping 172.217.2.14
which is the IP address of Google. If ping Google.com fails but ping 172.217.2.12 works then you have DNS server problems.

Pudge

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10

Thanks, @onyxnz and @Pudge, for your guidance. Ping works fine.

Unfortunately, my laptop was affected by the recent power outages and is quite unusable at the moment. So, I shall be silent here for some while while I shop around or revive my hardware. :slightly_frowning_face:

11

OK: Through arch-chroot on usb installer, my system is now back and fully updated. The issue has thus been solved, though I am not sure if this is really the solution:

I mounted /dev/sdXn /boot (not /dev/sdXn /mnt), “arch-chroot”-ed there, and ran “pacman -Syy” and “pacman -Syu.”

So, I guess the solution is in mounting to /boot and not to /mnt. I think this is because my /boot directory is in the root folder and not in /mnt.

I am not sure about this as THE solution, because I have been uber dazed until now with reading up on this and related topics and with dealing with a problematic hardware and power. But my system is back and healthy, and I hope this report helps other noobs like me who might run into the same issue.

Thanksm @onyxnz and @Pudge.

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