[SOLVED] failed to start Load Kernel Modules after system update

[random grotto]

Yesterday I performed a system update with pacman -Syyu and thus morning it wouldn't boot normally.
First off the usual rapid output you see after selecting which os to boot in in grub was being outputed after the login prompt was printed to the screen.
Second I managed to snap a pic of the singular red error message during boot and it says [Failed] failed to start Load Kernel Modules
I did a bit of research and found various answers which none have worked so far.
Here's what I tried:

• booted into live usb and mounted partition home, root and boot to mnt and arch-chroot into them. Then perform a system upgrade again, then mkinitcpio -p linux (same for Linux lts) and finally grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

I recently managed to boot into root but if I try boot into my normal user which starts an x server it will freeze the pc.

Here's a bit of info:
Cpu: Intel i7 13700k
Gpu: nvidia rtx 2070 super
uname -r ==> 6.1.13-1-lts
pacman -Q nvida ==> nvidia 525.89.02-3
pacman -Q nvidia-lts ==> nvidia-lts 1:525.89.02-5

Hope somebody has a clue I really need this pc for school and right now I can't work on it

[pallid tulip]

Could you please post the output of cat /etc/fstab

.s paste

[rain sphinx]

Paste short snippets, up to a few lines, in channel. Please do not use pastebin.com or paste.ubuntu.com; some good, sane paste services are ix.io, paste.rs, bpaste.net, and gist.github.com.
See .s ix or .s rs for an easy way to paste from a pipe.

[pallid tulip]

From chroot ofc

[random grotto]

I'm on my phone and have no means of copying and pasting the output so if it's alright with you I'll try to send the clearest photo I can

I'm actually in root rn (not from the usb, the actual install) but it shouldn't change anything right?

[pallid tulip]

Yes

[random grotto]

I'm guessing you're looking for the uuids so here's also the output of lsblk -f

[pallid tulip]

Yes pls

[random grotto]

As you can see I don't have my boot partition mounted by default and the pacman -Syyu I did definitely didn't have access to that partition

My arch install is entirely on /dev/sdb btw

[pallid tulip]

Well you'll have to add your boot partition to your fstab

Otherwise it won't be mounted

Which is probably what is causing your problem

[random grotto]

Alright I'll do that but I should mention I did try earlier to manually mount my boot partition and perform the update which did not fix my issue

[pallid tulip]

Yes because when you reboot it doesn't get mounted

you only mounted it inside the chroot

Or the iso

Could you also mount your boot and send an ls /boot

Just to make sure the kernel and initramfs are good

[random grotto]

Ok shit I'm confused now. I installed arch a few months ago, thought my boot partition was ext4 but now that I look at it it seems it's fat32

This shouldn't really be an issue though

[pallid tulip]

ESPs should be fat32

[random grotto]

Yes it is

[pallid tulip]

that's not a problem

[random grotto]

Ok

[pallid tulip]

Also a bit confused as to how you managed to boot

[random grotto]

So now I wrote this line in my fstab. Does it look good to you ? I can't remember the name of the utility to test fstabs. Or maybe it's just mount -a??

[random grotto]

Well my grub works and the only issue I had was that it would freeze when I tried to log into my normal user which starts and x server

[pallid tulip]

mount point should be /boot not /boot/EFI

Unless it is /boot/efi

[random grotto]

Actually no there was also the kernel modules not loading

I'm sorry if I'm not making a lot a sense I'm just very confused rn..

[pallid tulip]

Where did you mount your boot before

mount it on /boot and send an ls /boot

[random grotto]

About that... let me show you before and after the mount the contents of /boot

[pallid tulip]

This is after mounting?

or b4

[random grotto]

After mount

[pallid tulip]

wth

[random grotto]

Yeah I usually mount it to /boot/EFI

[pallid tulip]

You're booting from your root partition 😅

[random grotto]

I remember doing this so grub would work

Because I couldn't make grub work without the default fallback path

[pallid tulip]

I don't understand how using the root partition would fix that

We gotta fix your boot partition

[random grotto]

This output is with /dev/sdb1 mounted to /boot/EFI btw

[pallid tulip]

Welll

First unmount the boot partition

[random grotto]

Done

[pallid tulip]

And delete all contents of /boot

rm -rf /boot

[random grotto]

Yes

[pallid tulip]

Now mount it

Mount it to /boot

[random grotto]

Wait oh shit do you mean that all those .img things should've been in my boot partition???

[pallid tulip]

Yes

Mount it

Then do rm -rf /boot once again

[random grotto]

Done

[pallid tulip]

Then we reinstall the kernel and microcode

pacman -Syu linux linux-lts intel-ucode grub

and grub

Well grub should already be installed

but do this again

Just to make sure

[random grotto]

Alright it's installing

Btw I noticed the output of pacman when I do this is the same as mkinitcpio -p?

Is it doing it automatically?

[pallid tulip]

Yes because when you install a kernel it generates the initramfs automatically

it is a post transaction hook

[random grotto]

Neat alright

[pallid tulip]

No need to do it again

[random grotto]

It just finished

[pallid tulip]

Ok now we reinstall grub

grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot --bootloader-id=GRUB

[random grotto]

With just pacman?

[pallid tulip]

nop

[random grotto]

Ok yeah that's what i thought

[pallid tulip]

We already did that

:)

[random grotto]

Alright

No wrror reported

[pallid tulip]

Alright

generate the config

grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

sorry typo

[random grotto]

Says "done"

Ty for taking the time btw

[pallid tulip]

Okay now fix your fstab

the mount point should be /boot

not /boot/EFI

Also when you're done show me the contents of /boot pls

[pallid tulip]

Good

Should be good to reboot

Then if there's another issue we see about it

[random grotto]

I put "defaults" because that's what I remember doing manually (before I regenerated the fstab thus morning) but should I put it at rw,relatime?

Alright it's rebooting

[pallid tulip]

This is fine

You can add noatime

[random grotto]

Haha wth it booted into windows lol

Forgot to say this is a dual boot

[pallid tulip]

Oh lol

Go into bios and put grub at the top

[random grotto]

Looks like it doesn't detect grub as a boot option

[pallid tulip]

prioritize it

[random grotto]

No I don't think this is a priority issue I've had this happen before where it literally can't detect grub as a boot option

Shit the image is not posting

[pallid tulip]

Alright we'll see about it but first check in bios to see if grub appears

and set it to the top if it does

If not we install grub at the fallback path

[pallid tulip]

Alright you got the usb?

[random grotto]

Yup

I'll cheoot in it

[pallid tulip]

You gotta chroot and then @ me

[random grotto]

Aleight

[pallid tulip]

Should have installed it at the fallback path from the start

my bad

[random grotto]

No it's one of those annoying motherboards you couldn't have known

[pallid tulip]

Btw when chrooting don't forget to mount your boot partition as well

[random grotto]

Yes

[pallid tulip]

mount root then boot then do arch-chroot

[random grotto]

Although rn I'm having another issue ... seems nothing will boot now. I can't even access my the bios.

Dw about it I'll figure that out

[pallid tulip]

Did you manage to boot from the iso

[random grotto]

Yes I will now chroot into it

I did arch-chroot btw

[pallid tulip]

Once chrooted grub-install --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot --removable

Then regen the config

[random grotto]

Should I delete the old GRUB folder now?

[pallid tulip]

You can keep it it's not a problem tbh

[random grotto]

Alright

[pallid tulip]

But yeah if you want

[random grotto]

Alright I regenerated the config

[pallid tulip]

Alright let's see if it boots

reboot

[random grotto]

Fucking windows.. I'll let it do its thing and ping you

[pallid tulip]

Alright, you still might need to reorder the boot options in BIOS

That is if it worked and grub now appears

[random grotto]

Yeah I will

Ok it did detect grub this time. Booting into arch but I still have the weird output thing after the login prompt

If I enter my password now it will probably freeze let me try

[pallid tulip]

Hmm that's dmesg output

[random grotto]

I also still have the original error message of "failed to start Load Kernel Modules" and some other error codes that went by too fast

I'll log in as root for now and check dmesg

[pallid tulip]

Paste journal as well

journalctl -b

.s ix

[rain sphinx]

<command to print output> |& curl -F 'f:1=<-' ix.io

[pallid tulip]

You can paste from the terminal with this

Replace <command to print output> with the command

[random grotto]

Dmesg output: http://ix.io/4p5R
Journalctl output: http://ix.io/4p5S

This command is really cool

In the first link if you search for "Load Kernel Module" you'll find the error I was talking about

[pallid tulip]

Yeah saw it

So much error msgs

Can you send an lspci -k

[random grotto]

Or not...

Sorry wasn't responding to your messgae

I meant I can't find the fail thing now

Lspci -k output: http://ix.io/4p5V

[pallid tulip]

Yeah they're not loaded

The nvidia drivers

[random grotto]

Dammit

I had the freezing issue before and fixed it by adding nomodeset somewhere but I'm not sure where

[pallid tulip]

It's still added

hold on

[random grotto]

Ok

[pallid tulip]

Remove nomodeset

and also send the output of cat /etc/mkinitcpio.conf

[pallid tulip]

from /etc/default/grub

I'll be back in a bit

Gotta do smth

[random grotto]

Mkinitcpio.conf => http://ix.io/4p60

Dw take your time

Removing the nomodeset and then remaking the grub config and mkinitcpio -p linux-lts (and normal linux) had 2 effects

First grub now detected my 2 windows install on other drives

And second it now freezes at this step after selecting arch to boot into:

Cursor is not even blinking

Managed to boot still by pressing e on the boot option for Linux and inserting nomodeset temporarily on the Linux line

[pallid tulip]

Okay

I'm back @random grotto

If ur still here we can continue

Well okay you gotta remove kms from the mkinitcpio.conf HOOKS

After that you need to rebuild the initramfs

mkinitcpio -P

[random grotto]

Yes im still here :)
Before that should I put back nomodeset?

[pallid tulip]

No keep nomodeset removed

[pallid tulip]

Remove this

[pallid tulip]

And then do this

Also btw for quiet boot you need to put quiet before loglevel=3 in the kernel params

(Just a side note)

[random grotto]

Alright I'm doing the mkinitcpio -P thing

Didn't know about the quiet thing

[pallid tulip]

Yeah the order matters

.aw silent boot

[rain sphinx]

Arch Wiki: Silent boot

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Silent_boot

[random grotto]

I'm guessing it doesn't display the systemd stuff I was seeing if I do it properly?

[pallid tulip]

Well there's a lot of things you can do to make it more and more quiet but basically yeah

You will still see some things

All the info is in the arch wiki page I linked if you wanna know more

[random grotto]

I guess I'll remove quiet interiely I don't mind seeing that stuff

It's actually useful

Ok should o reboot now?

[pallid tulip]

Well if you changed the kernel params

then regen the grub config

before rebooting

[random grotto]

Rebooting...

Um

So it still freezes but I see way more stuff rn

[pallid tulip]

Can you resend lspci -k

[random grotto]

I'll have to reboot with nomodeset for that tho

Won't that change the output of lspci -k?

It's frozen rn

Or maybe i could chroot to get the lspci -k?

[pallid tulip]

Oh I thought you could still login as root

Okay hold on

So the freeze happens right when you login with your user?

[random grotto]

That's what it did before but right now it freezes even before that

[pallid tulip]

Oh

can't switch tty or anything?

ctrl alt + [1-7]

[random grotto]

Nope

That's something I experienced before tho with nvidia

I think I made a thread about it let me check

[pallid tulip]

Alright just boot with nomodeset

See if it boots

If it does paste lspci -k

[random grotto]

It took more than a minute to boot but eventually it did. Still saw some errors on the output but right now I just logged in as root and will send the output of lspci -k (the image I took and not even a second later the login prompt appeared...)

.s ix

[rain sphinx]

<command to print output> |& curl -F 'f:1=<-' ix.io

[random grotto]

http://ix.io/4p5V

Wait why do I have nouveau listed in this output...?

Nouveau is not installed according to pacman

[pallid tulip]

Ohh hold on

[random grotto]

But I have 2 nvidia drivers installed nvidia and nvidia-lts

[pallid tulip]

I just noticed you have a 13th gen intel cpu

Try booting with ibt=off and don't use nomodeset

[pallid tulip]

It's there but not used

dw about it

[random grotto]

Yes I do

ibt=off would be on the same line as nomodeset?

[pallid tulip]

Yes in kernel params

[random grotto]

Ok

[pallid tulip]

But don't use nomodeset tho

Just want to see if it boots without it

[random grotto]

Does it need to be in a specific position or is that right?

[pallid tulip]

Nope this is fine

[random grotto]

I'm not sure but I think it froze here

[pallid tulip]

stuck?

Oh

sorry I didn't read the caption

[random grotto]

I didn't see well but I think the cursor stopped blinking

[pallid tulip]

It's a black screen now?

[random grotto]

No just like in the picutre

[pallid tulip]

Oh just like this

[random grotto]

Yes

I'll reboot one sec

I didn't see a fail this time tho

Just froze

I'll try with both nomodeset and ibt=off

[pallid tulip]

Yes

Do that

Order doesn't matter

[random grotto]

Oh???

YES

[pallid tulip]

Boots?

[random grotto]

FUCKING FINALLY

Perfectly

[pallid tulip]

Okay just to make sure the nvidia driver is properly loaded

post one last lspci -k

XD

[random grotto]

Alright

[random grotto]

this is lspci -k

[pallid tulip]

Kernel driver in use: nvidia 😁

perfect

[random grotto]

fuck yeah

alright ill make the changes permanent

thank you so much for spending the time man

[pallid tulip]

Yes and don't forget to regen the grub config

[random grotto]

yup

[pallid tulip]

You're welcome :)

... close

[rain sphinx]

#11251 📣 if you don't need help with this anymore, add [SOLVED] to the start of the post's title (for example, the title could say [SOLVED] pacman not working)
if you're on a laptop or desktop computer, see the note on archiving by sending a message that says ... archive.

[random grotto]

[SOLVED] failed to start Load Kernel Modules after system update

... archive