[SOLVED] New installation hangs on boot at two different places

Question

Hello
I recently made my another attempt at installing arch on a new desktop build. Previous successful attempts were old laptops.
I followed the Beginner's Guide on the Arch wiki.
Currently it stops at one of two places in the boot process:
1. [ OK ] Found device Samsung_SSD_850_EVO_500GB BOOTARCH
    Starting File System Check on /dev/sdb6…
2.  [ OK ] Started Journal Service
    [ OK ] Started udev Kernel Device Manager
I can not consistently recreate either scenario, but it seems to be random which of the two places it stops. Cold boot and CTRL ALT Delete. I doubt that has anything to do with it, but thought I'd add it anyway.
Current setup:
Hardware:
Motherboard - ASUS Z97 Pro (using ethernet adapter and sound on here)
Processor - Intel 4790K
Memory - 16 GB
Graphics - Gigabyte G1 Nvidia GTX 970 SLI x2
Storage - Samsung 850 SSD 500 GB and WD Black HDD 3 TB
I've also configured it to use a static IP
I started this journey by using the live Gparted CD to create partitions. I created two partitions on the SSD. One for windows 8.1 and one for linux. I then created two partitions on the HDD. One for windows, one for linux.
I installed windows 8.1 first. It divided up the partition I gave it. I am able to run Windows. Once that was done I began installing Arch.
I used the Feb 2015 ISO from the torrent.
Current partition scheme for linux:
sda1 /home
sda3 /swap
sda4 /var
sdb1 /
sdb6 /boot
sda is the HDD and sdb is the SSD
The other partitions not listed are for windows. To boot into windows, I use F8 to choose the windows boot manager partition. It currently defaults to the linux partition.
During the install, I mounted the root partition first. I then created directories for each of the other partitions and then mounted them. Home, var, and root are all ext4. Boot is FAT32, and Swap is swap.
I read where I made a couple of mistakes the first attempt on this computer and did a wipe and reinstall again. First mistake was not knowing that /boot needed to be FAT. I then learned that /swap does not need to be in the fstab. I also learned that a FAT partition can not use UUID in the fstab so I took that out and just used /dev/sdb6 instead.
I have run out of things to search for at this point and need help to continue moving forward.
Bellow is the current /etc/fstab. It was generated using
genfstab -U -p /mnt >> /mnt/etc/fstab
and then edited as noted above
#/dev/sdb1 LABEL=archroot
UUID=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx / ext4 rw,relatime,data=ordered 0 1
#/dev/sdb6 LABEL=BOOTARCH
#UUID=xxxxxxxxx
/dev/sdb6 /boot vfat rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1,shortname=mixed,errors=remount-ro 0 2
# /dev/sda1 LABEL=linux\134x20home
UUID=xxxxxxxx /home ext4 rw,relatime,data=ordered 0 2
#/dev/sda4 LABEL=archvar
UUID=xxxxxxxxxx /var ext4 rw,relatime,data=ordered 0 2
#/dev/sda3
#UUID=xxxxxxxxxxxxxx none swap defaults 0 0
Thanks for any help that can be provided
Jason
Last edited by p2ranger (2015-02-14 22:20:14)

Answer 1

I tried removing gummiboot and installed GRUB2. That didn't work.
As to the UUID's, I just typed in xxxxx's for the post because I didn't feel like transcribing random letters and numbers.
So after reading Head_on_a_Stick's suggestion, I redid my partitions and reinstalled arch again following the Beginner's wiki page and using gummiboot
New Partitions are as follows:
sda1  /home
sda3  /swap
sda4  /var
sdb1  /
sdb3  /boot (originally created from windows install)
Also, I took a screenshot from Gparted of the two disks if there is any info on there that may be of use
http://cotting.us/gparted-sda.jpg
http://cotting.us/gparted-sdb.jpg
Below is the contents and output requested
arch.conf
title Arch Linux
linux /vmlinuz-linux
initrd /initramfs-linux.img
options root=/dev/sdb1 rw
loader.conf
timeout5
#default 875966af283d44de9e754c1d68848eab-*
default arch
gdisk -l /dev/sda
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.10
Partition table scan:
MBR: protective
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: present
Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.
Disk /dev/sda: 5860533168 sectors, 2.7 Tib
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): E11d436B-ED6D-47AD-BCD0-F04384ED50B8
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 5860533134
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 2925 sectors (1.4 MiB)
Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name
1 2048 45672447 21.8GiB 8300
2 2871662592 5860532223 1.4 TiB 0700
3 2854432768 2871662591 8.2 GiB 8200
4 45672448 285443277 1.3 TiB 8300
gdisk -l /dev/sdb
GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.10
Partition table scan:
MBR: protective
BSD: not present
APM: not present
GPT: present
Found valid GPT with protective MBR; using GPT.
Disk /dev/sda: 5860533168 sectors, 465.8 GiB
Logical sector size: 512 bytes
Disk identifier (GUID): DA9A6AF9-066B-4C1A-8778-93CCE5A68D97
Partition table holds up to 128 entries
First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 976773134
Partitions will be aligned on 2048-sector boundaries
Total free space is 2029 sectors (1014.5 KiB)
Number Start (sector) End (sector) Size Code Name
1 2048 410247167 195.6 GiB 8300
2 410247168 410861567 300.0 MiB 2700 Basic data partition
3 410861568 411066367 100.0 MiB EF00 EFI system partition
4 411066368 411328511 128.0 MiB 0C01 Microsoft reserved …
5 411328512 976773119 269.6 GiB 0700 Basic data partition
lsblk -f
sda
-sda1 /home
-sda2
-sda3 [SWAP]
-sda4 /var
sdb
-sdb1 /
-sdb2
-sdb3 /boot
-sdb4
-sdb5
sdd
-sdd1
-sdd2
sr0
loop0
loop1
-arch_airootfs /etc/resolv.conf
loop2
-arch_airootfs /etc/resolv.conf
Since my fstab is changed, here is the new one
# /dev/sdb1 LABEL=archroot
UUID=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx / ext4 rw,relatime,data=ordered 0 1
# /dev/sdb3
#UUID=xxxxxxxx
/dev/sdb3 /boot vfat rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022, codepage=437,iocharset=iso8859-1, shortname=mixed, errors=remount-ro 0 2
# /dev/sda1 LABEL=archvar
UUID=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx /home ext4 rw,relatime,data=ordered 0 2
# /dev/sda4 LABEL=archome
UUID=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx /var ext4 rw,relatime,data=ordered 0 2
# /dev/sda3
#UUID=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx none swap defaults 0 0
After another install, it still hangs on booting. Here are some of the last lines it displays:
( OK ) Started create system users
Starting Create static device nodes in /dev...
( OK ) Started Journal service.
( OK ) Started create static device nodes in /dev.
( OK ) Reached target Local File systems (Pre).
( OK ) Started Rebuild hardware database
Starting udev Kernel Device Manager....
( OK ) Started Rebuild Dynamic linker cache
( OK ) Started udev Kernel Device Manager
I’m glad people like my setup. I spent a lot of time reading and comparing before I came up with what I bought.
Thanks for your help
Jason
Last edited by p2ranger (2015-02-13 23:52:29)