This is strange. On my system there are two dracut versions installed. Please see the attached screenshot for more details. One is 106-1 and the other is 107-1.
I doubt they are both installed. That seems to be a display issue with Octopi.
Run pacman -Q dracut, I suspect you will only see it installed once.
Yellow = indicator of package that newer version is installed of the same package
Green = actually installed version
You have enabled the Installed date column, when it’s empty, that means it’s not installed.
But as dalto also mentioned, you can clarify this to yourself via yay -Q dracut or you can further inspect it via yay -Qi dracut or yay -Qii dracut and you’ll see identical fields there also (version, install date, build date etc all good stuff..)
When I run this command, pacman tells me dracut is not installed.
But I’m sure I see it doing stuff whenever I do a system upgrade. Any idea what’s going on?
Slightly concerned as I do have the lts kernel installed, although only as a backup option in case linux fails.
Thanks!
What does command
grep "ed dracut" /var/log/pacman.log
show?
Please share the output of pacman -Q | grep -E "dracut|mkinitcpio|kernel|grub"
It returns nothing
grub 2:2.12.r283.ga4da71da-1
mkinitcpio 39.2-3
mkinitcpio-busybox 1.36.1-1
mkinitcpio-nfs-utils 0.3-8
mkinitcpio-openswap 0.1.0-3
I should maybe add that I use rEFInd, even though GRUB is still installed
Was your install from a very long time ago? We only switched to dracut a few years ago so if it was older than that, you can still be on mkinitcpio.
I guess that must be it. This install dates from about 2022, I would say. Guess I must have missed the instructions about switching to dracut? Although as I say, I always see the dracut scripts running on upgrade. Maybe they aren’t doing anything? Once this problem is resolved, I’ll look into it. Thanks!
Switching isn’t a requirement. You can leave your system the way it is unless you have a reason to switch.
Are you sure, you don’t have dracut or any of the related packages installed so there should not be anything dracut related running on update.
No, I’m 100% wrong. I just ran an system update and read the post-transaction hooks more carefully. It’s clearly using mkinitcpio. 
Never mind, as you were and thanks again.
I ran the command pacman -Q dracut and it says 107-1. I am using LTS kernel 6.12.28-1-lts. I do not see the message error “failed to mount /sysroot”.
$ pacman -Q | \grep -E "dracut|mkinitcpio|kernel|grub"
dracut 107-1
eos-dracut 1.5-1
grub 2:2.12.r292.g73d1c959-1
grub-hook 2.1-1
mkinitcpio-nfs-utils 0.3-8
$
$ pacman -Q dracut
dracut 107-1
Yep. dracut 106-1 is not shown when I run the command pacman -Q dracut or yay -Q dracut. And running the latest LTS kernel, i.e. 6.12.28-1-lts, does not seem to result in the error, “failed to mount /sysroot”
Also I checked in the directory, /etc/dracut.conf.d. There are two configuration text files there and none of them have add_drivers+=" ext4 " in them.
As discussed in the original post, multiple things need to happen for that to occur:
- You need to be running both LTS and another kernel
- You need to be running dracut 107
- You need to boot into the other kernel and take some action that would cause the LTS initrd to be rebuilt
- You then need to boot into the LTS kernel
If you are only using the LTS kernel, even if there are other kernels installed, the issue will not occur
Unified kernel handles also differrent. Dont have it with my uki´s
It shouldn’t be any different with UKI’s, you probably just haven’t hit the proper scenario.
Wil check this evening…what scenario is..
I would guess that either you haven’t rebuilt the UKI from a kernel with the different module settings or you aren’t use hostonly & hostonly sloppy.
Wil check this evening sofar i know is dracut uki generation also dont use kernel-install for that. Try to rebuild the efi uki file and look…