Dracut could not boot

[gritty juniper]

I tried to install gentoo with luks encryption and I think I failed, can someone help

[unborn timber]

Check if that UUID matches your encrypted partition for a first step I think

[gritty juniper]

Okay give me a sec

[gritty juniper]

It exists

[unborn timber]

That appears to be the UUID of your BTRFS root, your luks container should go there I believe

[gritty juniper]

So what should I do

?

[unborn timber]

Change the UUID in the dracut cmdline so it points at your luks container instead of the btrfs root partition

[gritty juniper]

Okay gimme a sec

In /etc/dracut.conf.d

???

Or etc/dracut.conf.d/00-installkernel.conf

[unborn timber]

Whichever one you set up before

[gritty juniper]

So in etc/dracut.conf.d/00-installkernel.conf i already have right uuid

Pointing to the 49a...

Wait

I wrote 8 instead of 0

wow

IG its time to get glasses

Okay im now sure its correct

Should I reboot now or do installkernel?

[unborn timber]

I believe you need a space either end of that string

[gritty juniper]

Got it

[unborn timber]

emerge --config <your kernel> to run all that stuff

[gritty juniper]

Okay

How do I check my kernel?

[unborn timber]

What do you mean by "check" here?

[gritty juniper]

I mean by <your kernel> you mean gentoo-kernel or gentoo-kernel-bin

??

Or do I need to type gentoo-6-18-18

[unborn timber]

Whichever one you installed, I dunno 😄

[unborn timber]

the versions of packages are not needed unless you want to be specific

[gritty juniper]

Then gentoo-kernel

Okay

It's working

[gritty juniper]

It finished

Should I reboot?

[unborn timber]

What could possibly go wrong?

[gritty juniper]

[Dramatic music]

Same thing ig

[unborn timber]

That's at least a bit different 🤔

[gritty juniper]

So what do I do now

[unborn timber]

Ah ok I sent that message before seeing this pic with the same error

Identical error suggests that somewhere in your dracut config there is another UUID set that is overriding the one you just did

Or perhaps it is still booting the old kernel/initramfs with that old UUID in it, instead of the new fixed one emerge --config <kernel> just made

Was your ESP mounted when you did all this?

Because you changed something, we should expect different behaviour. With it being identical I think it's worth investigating whether your changes applied properly

[gritty juniper]

Yes, I mounted everything

[gritty juniper]

I think it might be a reason

[unborn timber]

Do you have the grub flag set in installkernel?

[gritty juniper]

I remember existing some dracut config file

[gritty juniper]

Yes

[unborn timber]

I see three causes for this, in order of likelihood;

• dracut is misconfigured still
• ESP not mounted when installing the new initramfs, so the old initramfs is being booted (you ruled this out)
• grub not reconfigured to find the new initramfs (grub flag on installkernel should do this for you)

[gritty juniper]

Let me check dracut real quick

[unborn timber]

To explain your error a bit, until your root is decrypted, it is literally just a big pile of data as far as linux is concerned

Your btrfs partition with that UUID it's looking for doesn't exist until the root is decrypted and the btrfs subvolumes mapped

[gritty juniper]

Okay

But i didn't mess up encryption, did I?

[unborn timber]

Not from what I've seen

[gritty juniper]

So

I just checked etc default grub

And it didn't change

These are my flags

And I dont have /etc/dracut.conf.d/luks.conf file

Should i create it and add this line with my uuid?

[weak cargo]

The whole section needs to be followed for your setup https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Rootfs_encryption#Dracut

It's why the Handbook highlights it

[gritty juniper]

That's wired cuz I remember creating this file

[gritty juniper]

Kernel_cmdline will be my /boot partition?

Or my rootfs?

[weak cargo]

The whole roofs article is meant to be followed as you go through the handbook install

[gritty juniper]

I followed it

[weak cargo]

cool

the basic idea is the Handbook doesn't officially support this type of setup so instead we link to this guide to show you show how to enable it along side

so the next step is to see if you missed a step

[gritty juniper]

Okay

So

After I did luks target configurtion

I need to to grub-install --efi-directory=/boot/efi

Right???

Or should I do emerge --config kernelinstall

[unborn timber]

I don't see where it says that?

[gritty juniper]

Here

[unborn timber]

It does not say /boot/efi

[gritty juniper]

Yeah but I created /boot/efi

Ima be honest ai told me to do so

[unborn timber]

It's hard to provide support when the ground constantly moves under our feet like this

[gritty juniper]

I'm sorry

I'm trying my best

[unborn timber]

/boot/efi is a valid layout but is no longer recommended. Just /boot for simplicity, or /efi for split layouts

I go with just /boot, for simplicity

[gritty juniper]

So what should I do now

[unborn timber]

Share a lsblk so we can start to get a baseline of what is going on

[gritty juniper]

This is how my layout looks

Can i just change /boot/efi to efi?

[unborn timber]

Really not sure what's happening there lol but we can work with it. Unmount /boot and /boot/efi

[gritty juniper]

Okay

[unborn timber]

Was that little ext4 boot partition an LLM suggestion also?

[gritty juniper]

Yes

[unborn timber]

Curious, wonder where it got that from

Not one I've seen before

[gritty juniper]

I mean gemini pro usually helps me very well, but IG gentoo is beyond llms

Anyway I got it unmounted

What now

[unborn timber]

I suggest cleaning out everything in /boot to get a clean slate

Then remount your ESP to /boot, which is the simplest layout and one I use and recommend

[gritty juniper]

How should I do that

[unborn timber]

Very carefully

rm -rf /boot/*

[gritty juniper]

Thats why I ask

Okay

[unborn timber]

Please be careful typing that lol

[gritty juniper]

Yeah

I'm not deleting french language pack

[gritty juniper]

Done

Same with efi?

I mean boot

P2

[unborn timber]

Sure but not strictly necessary right now

[gritty juniper]

Okay

[unborn timber]

Now you want to mount your fat32 ESP to /boot

[gritty juniper]

I just want this to work RN 🙂

And be encrypted

Just the system not bootloader ofc

[unborn timber]

That's the objective

[unborn timber]

Once you've done this, ls /boot please

[gritty juniper]

Its empty

[unborn timber]

After you mounted the fat32 partition there?

[gritty juniper]

Oh wait

I didn't mount yet

Gimme a sec

[unborn timber]

We cleared it out just then so the dir is definitely empty for the partition to mount to

It doesn't need to be empty, linux mounting will just overlay the partition on the dir, but loose stuff in the /boot dir can cause issues

[gritty juniper]

Waif, drive is in use and I need to find out why

Eghhh

Whyyy

I unmounted everything

[unborn timber]

why are we in cfdisk?

[gritty juniper]

To make it fat32

Ohhh

Okay

I didn't understand the task

I need to mount

So mount /dev/nvme1n1p1 /boot

???

Right

??

[unborn timber]

Yep

[gritty juniper]

Okay

[unborn timber]

I don't think panicking is going to help

[gritty juniper]

Wait I will be afk for like 10 to 15 minutes

I got a call

[unborn timber]

No rush lol

[gritty juniper]

Thank you so much

[gritty juniper]

Can we continue in like 30-40 minuts

I must help my dad

[gritty juniper]

I'm back @unborn timber

Sorry for taking soo long

Okay I mounted it to /boot

There is only EFI in /boot now

What do i do now

[unborn timber]

what is in /boot now?

[gritty juniper]

EFI

[unborn timber]

Okidoke, I would remove that also

[gritty juniper]

So rm -rf /boot/* again

[unborn timber]

Should to the trick yep

[gritty juniper]

Done

Its empty again

[unborn timber]

Now you can --config your kernel again to get your kernel/initramfs there in /boot, then you can install grub into /boot, and then configure grub again to pick up your kernel/initramfs

All in one place now

[gritty juniper]

Okay

So I need to chroot now and emerge --config installkernel?

[unborn timber]

Oh well all this should have been done in the chroot really, if you've rm'd against just /boot while outside the chroot then you've deleted stuff off the iso

Which is not a problem, but is not what you want

[gritty juniper]

Okay

I should do --config instalkernell or --config gentoo-kernel

??

I have to mount p1 as /efi and p2 as /boot

Right??

[plucky solstice]

shoulda used ugrd

[gritty juniper]

Can we switch?

Or its not worth it now

[plucky solstice]

it takes 3 seconds to switch

ot apparently 6 hours to make dracut work

up to you tho

[gritty juniper]

Yeah

Let's switch

Can you show me how

[plucky solstice]

you only want one file setting installkernel USE flags tho, ideally

[gritty juniper]

I dont understand

What should I do

Cuz I'm lost

[plucky solstice]

you can see if you have any files in /etc/portage/package.use that set USE flags for installkernel

like "grep -r installkernel /etc/portage/package.use"

if you don't, you can put that line in any file

me running cat was just showing the contents of that file on my system

[gritty juniper]

I have this

Should I put this line in it?

[plucky solstice]

that line should be changed

because that's telling it to use dracut

[gritty juniper]

So what should I do

What command

[plucky solstice]

i want you to slow down and think about what you're doing lol

setting USE flags is a relatively common gentoo process

the goal here is to add the ugrd USE flag and remove the dracut one from the installkernel package

[gritty juniper]

Okay

Now I understand what I must do

Give me one sec

I will do it in a moment

I just must finish one think

[plucky solstice]

once the USE flags are set, you will need to re-emerge that package

unless it has been installed before it's generally best to "oneshot" it

so like emerge --oneshot --verbose sys-kernel/installkernel

when you do that you should see the new USE flags you set are used

--oneshot == -1 (number 1 not l)

this is especially important for packages which are dependencies of other packages, and the kernel depends on installkernel so that is the case here

[gritty juniper]

Im back at my pc

I changed the flag

And now I'm doing this emerge

[gritty juniper]

Well it didn't like this command

[plucky solstice]

you've somehow got dracut and ugrd set

it's saying you need one or the other

if you run that grep command again, you could see if something is setting dracut

[gritty juniper]

But I have ugrd

Flag

[plucky solstice]

both are set

dracut should have a - in front of it

[gritty juniper]

Oh okay

Now it works

[plucky solstice]

nice

[gritty juniper]

And its done

[plucky solstice]

so once that is done, you should be able to emerge --config your kernel again

[gritty juniper]

Okay

[plucky solstice]

and if that works without error, you should be able to reboot?

i did not double check all of your config

but if dracut was running and had errors, ugrd should at least run with your bootloader setup (and should not have errors)

there could be other issues but we'll have to see

[gritty juniper]

Well I still need to mount /boot and /efi

[plucky solstice]

i would recommend only using /boot if you can help it

but yeah you want both mounted if you use both

[gritty juniper]

Let's do only /boot then

Can I use free space from efi then?

[plucky solstice]

yeah i think that is the recommended way on the rootfs wiki page

so yeah i would use whatever is fat32 formatted

how is your disk setup?

if your /boot and /efi are one after the other you could even delte both and make a new larger partition to fill the space

but if it's at least 500mb it should be fine

[plucky solstice]

its about 1gb so should be fine

[gritty juniper]

Ehh I mounted boot

[plucky solstice]

you should be able to just mount that to /boot (and adjust fstab if it's in there)

yeah i mean having it split is fine

[gritty juniper]

But it still doesn't like it

[plucky solstice]

you just have to be sure to mount both when you do stuff like this

are they defined in the fstab?

[plucky solstice]

can you wgetpaste the build log it has listed there?

[gritty juniper]

Not really

Let me check

[plucky solstice]

im just gonna guess you don't have btrfs-progs installed?

[gritty juniper]

I think I do

I mean I compiled this before

[plucky solstice]

can you double check that you have that and cryptsetup?

[gritty juniper]

As use flag?

[plucky solstice]

as packages

emerge btrfs-progs cryptsetup

[gritty juniper]

Well its compiling

So ig I didn't have that

[plucky solstice]

yeah ugrd will error out of those are missing

that may have been part of the problem, dracut can ignore that stuff

[gritty juniper]

It still dont let me install

It wants /boot/efi

How do I wget this log to you

[plucky solstice]

you can install wgetpaste

and then do like wgetpaste <file>

and share the link it makes

i think maybe your fstab has issues?

[gritty juniper]

https://bpa.st/IYSQ

[plucky solstice]

that may have a typo

[gritty juniper]

now its good

[plucky solstice]

can you share your fstab?

[gritty juniper]

Yep

https://bpa.st/KIDQ

[plucky solstice]

i would not have /boot and /boot/efi

[gritty juniper]

Yeah

[plucky solstice]

i would put that efi bit at just /efi

[gritty juniper]

I see

[plucky solstice]

(make sure to unmount and remount)

[gritty juniper]

Wait so i should just delete /efi and leave /boot right?

Like this

[plucky solstice]

i think you want the shorter uuid one at /efi

and the olonger one at /boot

if yo want both

but yoiu could just sorta get rid of the one at /boot and put the short uuid (fat32) one at /boot

[gritty juniper]

Aren't we creating only /boot?

[plucky solstice]

wasn't sure if you were gonna do that but yeah if you want that, you want to remove the current /boot entry

and only leave that /boot one you adjusted

then unmount everything

mount /boot again

and then grub-install --efi-directory /boot and then finally the emerge --config for your kernel

[gritty juniper]

Okay

So I removed /boot with long uuid

It looks like this

[plucky solstice]

i think that looks mostly fine, using a path for the root is not a great idea but should work (with ugrd)

[gritty juniper]

No I umount and mount

[plucky solstice]

yeah

and i would check lsblk to see if anything is still mounted

nothing efi/boot related should be mounted

(before you remount)

[gritty juniper]

Okay

[gritty juniper]

We can change that

Just tell me with what should I change that

[plucky solstice]

you can replace that /dev/mapper/root bit with a uuid like the other entries

being sure to use the fs uuid (btrfs one)

[gritty juniper]

So with this uuid?

[plucky solstice]

yes

[gritty juniper]

Okay

I umounted both p1 and p2 yet lsblk still shows them

Is this okay?

[plucky solstice]

lsblk should still show the partitions

just shouldn't show mountpoints

[gritty juniper]

IG its good then

Should I mount p1?

[plucky solstice]

yeah

you should be able to just "mount /boot"

and you'll want to reinstlal grub

[gritty juniper]

Okay it worked

So now grub-install --efi-directory=/boot?

[plucky solstice]

ye

[gritty juniper]

I got an error

It was in Polish so I used translator

[plucky solstice]

are you EFI booting?

[gritty juniper]

No

Idk

What does efi booting mean

[plucky solstice]

uefi systems

vs MBR systems

[gritty juniper]

I have uefi

[plucky solstice]

can you share the full error?

that issue may not be major

[gritty juniper]

EFI variables are not supported on this system

[plucky solstice]

hmm

it seems you're not efi booted?

[gritty juniper]

Written 2 times

[plucky solstice]

or your efivars are not mounted?

[gritty juniper]

How do I check that

[plucky solstice]

but typically that is automatic

you can check for an efivarfs mount

[gritty juniper]

Nothing

[plucky solstice]

hmmmm

you could try to manually mount that

you could maybe get away with adding --removable to the grub install

[gritty juniper]

It worked

[plucky solstice]

nice

[gritty juniper]

What now

[plucky solstice]

i think the last step is reinstalling teh kernel

if that wroks you should be able to reboot

[gritty juniper]

Okay

Emerge --config gentoo-kernel then?

[plucky solstice]

ye

[gritty juniper]

And its working

Done

So I should reboot now

[plucky solstice]

ye

[gritty juniper]

Moment of truth

Emm

[plucky solstice]

hmmm

something with the grub install didn't go quite right

tbh i would try to ensure you're using UEFI mode when going into the livecd

grub is not reading its config

[gritty juniper]

How do I do that

[plucky solstice]

if you can select boot entires and they say "UEFI" be sure to select that option for the livecd

but grub can't find its config

do you have the grub USE flag on installkernel?

hmmm i saw you did

[gritty juniper]

You mean this?

[plucky solstice]

that should rub grub-mkconfig for you

that uefi:flash is the livecd right?

[gritty juniper]

This is boot menu

From my motherboard

[plucky solstice]

yeah

[gritty juniper]

Okay I'm back in the liveusb

Tell me what to do

[plucky solstice]

i would check for that efivarfs mount

but you've got to chroot back in

[gritty juniper]

Okay give me a sec

[plucky solstice]

once you do that, make sure /boot is mounted and try to emerge --config the kernel again

and look for the grub config file in /boot

[gritty juniper]

I'm back in chroot

[gritty juniper]

How do I check that

You mean this?

[plucky solstice]

this bit

and if you are back in the chroot, you can mount /boot again and try to re-run the kernel isntall

grub should make config when that runs

i think there should be config at /boot/grub/grub.cfg

[gritty juniper]

It gave me output

[gritty juniper]

I did that

[gritty juniper]

And there is no grub.cfg

[plucky solstice]

hmmmm

do you see anything in the log about running grub?

what does "emerge -pv installkernel" say?

does it still show the grub USE flag?

[gritty juniper]

Ehh

[plucky solstice]

huh

that ain't right lol

[gritty juniper]

Ik

Its wired

[plucky solstice]

yeah you may have set USE flags wrong

can you show all files in /etc/portage/package.use

unless that is not in the chroot?

is that in the live cd env?

[gritty juniper]

Wait

What happend

Why I'm not in chroot

[plucky solstice]

did you open a new terminal?

you've got to manually chroot each shell

[gritty juniper]

Okay

Now I'm in chroot

But its still same

[plucky solstice]

hmmm

your use flag config may not be set right

[plucky solstice]

i would not set that there

tbh i would remove all that USE stuff from your make.conf

[gritty juniper]

Okay

[plucky solstice]

all you really need is like sys-kernel/installkernel grub ugrd -dracut in some file in /etc/portage/package.use

[gritty juniper]

Okay

Can I leave networkmenager tho?

[plucky solstice]

technically yes but there may be better places to set that

globally setting stuff like that should (Generally) be avoided

[gritty juniper]

Okay

[gritty juniper]

Packsge.use is a directory

Not a file

[plucky solstice]

yeah

it's generally a dir

it could be a file

but you can put files in there with config

[plucky solstice]

yeah you can use that file

[gritty juniper]

I need to edit this

Okay

[plucky solstice]

the name is mostly used for ordering

[gritty juniper]

Ohhh

That was the probkem

Silly me forgot

[plucky solstice]

ye this stuff is a bit tricky but it's important to learn it for maintaining your gentoo system

[plucky solstice]

yup

it's doin what you told it to do :P

you can set it to -dracut ugrd grub after the sapce

[gritty juniper]

Yep

The more I text here with you the better I understand this system

And how stupid I was when installing it lol

[gritty juniper]

Got it

Let's clear my use flags from make.conf and put them where they should be

[plucky solstice]

ye, USE flags in make.conf can work but can also kinda make a mess

like generally you want to be precise about what packages they apply to

[gritty juniper]

Okay

That's all that left

What do we do with it

[plucky solstice]

im not sure the cryptsetup/luks flags help

but the main thing is that those flags i described above are set for installkernel

once you do that, you can reinstall it

(emerge -1 installkernel)

[gritty juniper]

So I should remove them?

[plucky solstice]

probably

unless you haev a specific reason for them

[gritty juniper]

Okay and where do I put network manager

[plucky solstice]

not sure

i don't use that and im not sure waht that would even be applying to on your setup tbh

i would suggest setting it when/where you know it's needed

[gritty juniper]

Handbook told me to put that line there

IG it can stay

BTW if I used stage3 desktop, bluetooth is included?

Or I need to add it?

[plucky solstice]

not sure, may depend on the DE you use

i'd worry about that later tbh

[gritty juniper]

Okay

[gritty juniper]

So I will do this now

Done

Should I reboot now?

BTW there is still no config file in /boot/grub

[plucky solstice]

you need to emerge --config your kernel

it should make that file

[gritty juniper]

Oh okay

Now there is config file

Shall we reboot now?

[plucky solstice]

yup

[gritty juniper]

OMG

OMG

OMG

IT WORKS

[plucky solstice]

\o/

[gritty juniper]

THANK YOU

[plucky solstice]

yw

[gritty juniper]

You dont understand how happy im

And grateful

Thanks

You are the best man

[plucky solstice]

happy to help, this is why ugrd was made :P

[gritty juniper]

Now i will try to install chadwm

Thanks again