[SOLVED]Grub-Install can't Find Kernel and/or initrd, mkinitcpio Fails

Question

Hi all,
I have recently installed Arch on my new build (with UEFI firmware). I successfully set up xorg, alsa/pulseaudio, xfce, etc... things were looking pretty good. Then, I tried to blacklist the pcspkr in order to silence the annoying beep every time I selected "Log Out" inside xfce. I executed
mkinitcpio -p linux
and was presented with the following errors:
==> Building image from preset: 'default'
-> -k /boot/vmlinuz-linux -c /etc/mkinitcpio.conf -g /boot/initramfs-linux-fallback.img -S autodetect
==> ERROR: specified kernel image does not exist: `/boot/vmlinuz-linux'
==> Building image from preset: 'fallback'
-> -k /boot/vmlinuz-linux -c /etc/mkinitcpio.conf -g /boot/initramfs-linux-fallback.img -S autodetect
==> ERROR: specified kernel image does not exist: `/boot/vmlinuz-linux`
There were no such files anywhere on /boot. I tried doing
find / -name vmlinuz-linux
and nothing was found. I wasn't quite sure why that was happening, but I tried uninstalling/reinstall grub (grub-common and grub2-efi-x86_64). I installed grub to /boot using
grub-install --directory=/usr/lib/grub/x86_64-efi --target=x86_64-efi --efi-directory=/boot --bootloader-id="Arch Linux" --boot-directory=/boot --recheck --debug
and then generated /boot/grub/grub.cfg. I tried rebuilding the initramfs again but got the same error. I was tired and frustrated so I removed the old grub efi entry with
efibootmgr -b 0 -B
and then went to sleep.
I didn't have the chance to turn the computer back on until tonight... I was then presented with a grub2 shell. Since I didn't know where the kernel/initrd were located I tried
set root=(hd1,gpt1)
chainloader +1
but grub told me
error: invalid EFI file path
So that's about it. It appears that grub-mkconfig is having trouble locating the kernel/initrd so it doesn't make any entries, dropping me right into a shell. I've tried booting up with my installation USB and chrooting in and reinstalling grub again but nothing seems to work. So what I'd like to try to do is just boot up into my system and then modify add the grub boot entries entries I want... but I just can't figure out what's causing all these issues.
Sorry if I mess up any terminology... still learning the ropes here. Thanks for any input.
Last edited by cogeary (2012-09-17 05:35:51)

Answer 1

DSpider wrote:
==> ERROR: specified kernel image does not exist: `/boot/vmlinuz-linux'
Probably because you have a separate boot partition (not just the 512 MB "UEFISYS" FAT32 partition), which you forgot to mount (in fstab).
Post your /etc/fstab.
Thank you for your reply!
However, I do not have a separate boot partition apart from the "UEFISYS" partition. Here is my fstab:
# UUID=3ec307aa-0ead-4d33-b292-42bbe783d6ee
/dev/sda2 / ext4 rw,relatime,data=ordered 0 1
# UUID=B192-6C57
/dev/sda1 /boot vfat rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=cp437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro 0 2
When I first looked at the fstab I saw that both of the entries repeated themselves. This was because I had even tried reformatting /boot so I had to generate a new fstab, but for some reason I used ">> /mnt/etc/fstab" rather than "> ..."
So I executed
genfstab /mnt > /mnt/etc/fstab
and reinstalled grub, but still no difference... mkinitcpio fails and I reboot to a grub shell.
Last edited by cogeary (2012-09-16 18:15:51)