Fix of the broken Arch linux kernel patch

Finally, I managed to solve the issue that I was facing with the Linux upgrades. I can now upgrade and start both the LTS and the non-LTS build of Arch. So I will now write what went wrong, what I missed, and what can be thought of in the future. Every time I force & resolve an issue like this, it's always something new about Linux that I end up learning.

What did I do to resolve the issue?

Mounted the /boot directory
Ran pacman -Syu to upgrade all the packages
Rebooted the machine The above worked for the failing Linux LTS kernel. How I fixed the non-LTS kernel is something I'll write about later.

So, what exactly was going wrong?

So whenever the Linux Kernel is either installed or is upgraded it updates the GRUB config and re-generates it. So while booting it could not load the necessary kernel modules and some things were not working. This was happening because the re-generated GRUB config was not saved the right way as the /boot partition was not correctly mounted.

Hence, whenever you have a separate /boot partition it should be mounted during a Linux kernel installation. So the fstab file should be mentioning the /boot partition in addition to the / partition which tells that you've booted it.

A more permanent fix

The fstab file already had an entry for the / partition. So all I needed to do next was to add another entry for the /boot partition. This can be achieved using the following command:

shell

sudo bash -c "genfstab -U /boot >> /etc/fstab"

The above update of the fstab file will make sure that the /boot partition is always mounted when you start your computer. And then performing an update of the Linux kernel will not render your system unusable. I did another Linux kernel update and the following is the output that I got after which my computer restarted just fine.

( 8/12) Updating linux initcpios...  
==> Building image from preset: /etc/mkinitcpio.d/linux.preset: 'default'  
 -> -k /boot/vmlinuz-linux -c /etc/mkinitcpio.conf -g /boot/initramfs-linux.img  
==> Starting build: 5.17.2-arch3-1  
 -> Running build hook: [base]  
 -> Running build hook: [udev]  
 -> Running build hook: [autodetect]  
 -> Running build hook: [keyboard]  
==> WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: xhci_pci  
 -> Running build hook: [modconf]  
 -> Running build hook: [block]  
 -> Running build hook: [encrypt]  
==> WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: qat_4xxx  
 -> Running build hook: [filesystems]  
 -> Running build hook: [keyboard]  
 -> Running build hook: [fsck]  
==> Generating module dependencies  
==> Creating zstd-compressed initcpio image: /boot/initramfs-linux.img  
==> Image generation successful  
==> Building image from preset: /etc/mkinitcpio.d/linux.preset: 'fallback'  
 -> -k /boot/vmlinuz-linux -c /etc/mkinitcpio.conf -g /boot/initramfs-linux-fallback.img -S autodetect  
==> Starting build: 5.17.2-arch3-1  
 -> Running build hook: [base]  
 -> Running build hook: [udev]  
 -> Running build hook: [keyboard]  
==> WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: xhci_pci  
 -> Running build hook: [modconf]  
 -> Running build hook: [block]  
==> WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: wd719x  
==> WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: qed  
==> WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: aic94xx  
==> WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: bfa  
==> WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: qla1280  
==> WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: qla2xxx  
 -> Running build hook: [encrypt]  
==> WARNING: Possibly missing firmware for module: qat_4xxx  
 -> Running build hook: [filesystems]  
 -> Running build hook: [keyboard]  
 -> Running build hook: [fsck]  
==> Generating module dependencies  
==> Creating zstd-compressed initcpio image: /boot/initramfs-linux-fallback.img  
==> Image generation successful  
( 9/12) Reloading system bus configuration...  
(10/12) Updating icon theme caches...  
(11/12) Updating the info directory file...  
(12/12) Updating the desktop file MIME type cache...  
:: Looking for AUR upgrades  
:: Looking for devel upgrades  
:: Resolving dependencies...  
:: Calculating conflicts...  
:: Calculating inner conflicts...

The reason this issue was overlooked

So, what caused me to overlook and get stuck in this issue, not once but multiple times? One of the main differences this time was that I had installed Linux with a separate /boot partition for the very first time in my life. But why did I even have to create a /boot partition in the first place? The reason was that the / partition that I was now creating was entirely encrypted. Therefore for GRUB to boot the / partition, need to have at least the /boot to be un-encrypted. And so I had to leave the /boot to be an un-encrypted directory and therefore a separate partition.

Fixing the other issue

Now that my Arch Linux with the LTS was booting just fine, I wanted to boot the other Linux kernel, the non-LTS one. When I attempted to boot that from the GRUB, there was a failure to load some kernel modules. This time simply running a kernel update was not helping as the issue persisted even after re-installing and rebooting multiple times.

The error that I was getting was the error "cannot load module 'crypto_user'". I still have to debug it more by going into the depths of the issue. But I remembered that I had never gotten the non-LTS Linux working in the first place.

So now all I had to do was to run sudo pacman -S linux linux-lts linux-headers linux-lts-headers. What kernel-headers are is another different rabbit hole to discover. But as per my understanding and putting it in simple words, they're nothing but interfaces between the kernel and the modules/programs that it interacts with. Once I ran this command and I restarted my Linux with the non-LTS Linux, it just restarted with nothing going wrong.

Alright... that's a wrap for today. Hope you gained some knowledge about Linux from this.