How to fix failed arch kernel update

Published: Oct 17, 2017 by nemanjan00

If you are anything like me, it happens to you also that you battery just runs out and laptop turns off.

The problem comes if you were just doing kernel update…

That is the problem I had last night…

So, how did I fix it?

Getting shell on that computer.

I grabbed first linux installation I found laying around.

It was Ubuntu Server…

It does not have live system, but, when you start installation, you can just switch to different tty (Ctrl+Alt+F2)..

Now, what you need to do is chroot into your installation of arch.

All od your partitions should be enumerated in /dev/sd* or in /dev/mapper/* (for lvm).

If you use have encrypted lvm/partition, you need to first run

cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/sdX2 name

And, if I remmember well, that partition/lvm will appear in:

/dev/mapper/name

Now that you found/decrypted/etc. ypur partition, we need to mount them.

We are going to take /mnt as base and mount your system inside.

For example:

mount /dev/sda2 /mnt
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot
mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/home

If you are using arch live, you probbably have arch-chroot command.

What you should do is just:

arch-chroot /mnt

If you are not using arch live, you first need do mount /sys, /dev and /proc

cd /mnt

mount --rbind /sys sys/
mount --rbind /dev dev/
mount --rbind /proc proc/

chroot .

Well, now you just need to install any version of kernel form cache…

pacman -U /var/cache/pacman/pkg/linux- # press tab and pick any version

Now, just reboot computer and update system. That should be it.