Fix boot problem after updating packages

Introduction

Just the other day I updated all my packages through yay -Syu (like pacman -Syu but also updates aur packages).

And after a reboot, it entered a boot loop…

I believe this had happened to most arch users, and most of the time its just because we broke the dependencies of some packages after the upgrade.

So here’s how I saved boot failure after yay -Syu.

Manually boot from grub (optional)

follow this guide¹ to boot your linux from grub (generates log).

The grub command line can also be entered from your bootable usb drive.

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ls # list partitions
ls (hd1,gpt2)/ # see files in a partition
set root=(hd1,gpt2) # your linux root partition
linux /boot/vmlinuz-5.13-x86_64 ro root=/dev/nvme0n1p1
initrd /boot/initramfs-5.13-x86_64.img
boot

chroot to your system

manjaro-chroot is provide in manjaro-tools-base package, and is already installed in your live system.

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# mount root
mount /dev/nvme0n1p2 /mnt
# mount boot
# mount /dev/xxx /mnt/boot
# mount efi
mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /mnt/boot/efi/

manjaro-chroot /mnt

check your boot log

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# -b: show boot log
# -1: offset, last boot
journalctl -b -1

fix any problems

find any suspicious errors in the boot log, and search it on the web, see how to fix them.

for me, a package from aur was causing the problem, and I tried to fix it, but no luck.

So I just uninstalled it!

reboot

success!