Kernel completely removed after recent update- Nvidia DKMS to blame?

[banaarceus]

Hi all! So my steam games were behaving weird, which I posted about on here and one suggested fix was to install nvidia-dkms. I updated my PC today and it acted weird around the nvidia dkms files including saying “removing kernel”, and then when I rebooted to complete the update, my kernels are all gone. Wiped.

I’ve lost absolutely everything. I’m currently trying to load debian to see if there’s any files left to access for a backup. Has anybody had the same issue, what was your fix and generally what should I do from here?

Thanks!

[dalto]

If we can see your pacman log we could perhaps give you a better idea of what happened.

That being said, it shouldn’t be hard to fix. Just enter an arch-chroot as described in the wiki and reinstall your kernels.

[dalto]

Did you read the article I linked that describes what to do, step by step?

It you hit any specific issues following the instructions, stop and post the errors here.

[banaarceus]

I did but I didn’t scroll enough at first because I’m really bad at thinking right now. I’m in chroot. How do I reinstall my kernel, there’s no instructions on that, and I don’t know how to do that

[dalto]

pacman -Syu linux linux-headers

Make sure there are no errors when you run that command.

[banaarceus]

what happens when there are errors?

[dalto]

Post the errors here so we can see what they are.

[banaarceus]

It had an error and did the DKMS thing again.

DKMS thing:

Error:

idk why it says there’s no space on the device. There should be, it’s 2TB and 1.5 are free…

[dalto]

Can you share the output of df -h and find /efi

[banaarceus]

df -h

find /efi

[dalto]

OK, I understand what happened now.

When you installed nvidia-dkms that made your initrams much larger. The initramfs for two kernels no longer fit in your 500MB EFI partition.

For now, try this to get you up and running:

pacman -R linux-lts linux-lts-headers
pacman -S linux linux-headers

After you reboot and are back in your system, we can discuss your options for more long-term fixes.

[banaarceus]

“fatal library error, lookup self”

[dalto]

You need to share the whole output, not just the error

[banaarceus]

Sorry, not much else out of the norm seemed to happen in the output. Here’s pics of the full output:

[dalto]

That error can be ignored. That is just because you are in a chroot.

Try rebooting

[banaarceus]

SHE LIVES. THANK YOU SO MUCH OMG. Seriously thanks for tolerating my stress induced dumbness and lack of skill, I really need to go hunting for courses on this, I’m new to endeavor (and having nvidia).

It’d be cool if this debacle also fixed steam but I’m not holding my breath

[banaarceus]

Hey I know we’ve finished this but new updates have happened and it mentioned the dkms thing again in the updates and is asking me to reboot as usual. Did reinstalling the kernel fix the initram size problem or will I have to chroot again? If the initram thing happens again, is there a way to fix it so I don’t have to keep reinstalling my kernel?

[dalto]

Removing the second kernel should have fixed it.

To be sure, when you update, read the output and make sure you don’t get an out of space error.

[banaarceus]

What would that error look like? Just “Out of space?” or does it have some specific term I should look for?

Thanks for the reply!!

[dalto]

You can see the error in your pic here:

“No space left on device”