SOLUTION BELOW

The actual bug

I have never been in a more confusing situation regarding Linux.

I have a Dell XPS 15 9560, which had a dual boot Windows 10 / EndeavourOS setup. It was running fine for months. 10 days ago I updated Linux and after restart it couldn’t boot anymore. It got stuck at “A start job is running for /dev/disk/by-uuid/…” (which is the root partition).

First, with the help of a friend of mine who is quite knowledgeable about Linux (he runs vanilla Arch, etc), we spent 5 hours trying to fix it but had no luck.

Then I decided to back up everything and do a fresh install. Aaaand the same error happened again on the first boot. Then I though “ok, probably some problem with Arch, lets try Fedora”. Nope. Some similar error about not finding the root partition. (Here I must say that the kernel which was shipped with the ISO was working fine, but after updating to the latest one, it failed.) Here I thought “ok, then it might be a problem with the latest kernel, let’s install EndeavourOS with the LTS kernel.” Nope, LTS kernel also didn’t boot. Then I tried Ubuntu and it worked, but that’s not solving the problem. Then I decided to put another nvme drive in the laptop and try there. The same error again.

Now the greatest part: If I put the nvme drive into an external usb case, EndeavourOS installs, updates, boots without any problem, no sign of the error.

So now I don’t know how to proceed… Maybe there is something wrong with the pcie port in my laptop, but except for the booting problem, windows is working, I can also mount and access every partition in the ssd through a live usb. So no other signs of problem with the port whatsoever.

I would be grateful for any advice as I’ve lost several days trying to solve this and I am out of ideas…

Solution: The last working kernels are from 11. August 2023 (both linux and linux-lts) linux-6.4.10.arch1-1 and linux-lts-6.1.45-1. You can download them from here: linux / linux-lts and install them with

sudo pacman -U the_path_to_the_package

Thank you all for the help!

  • IllecorsEnglish
    0•1 year ago

    What are the kernel parameters? cat /proc/cmdline

    EDIT actually that will show the live system config. Assuming you’re using grub, what is the content of /etc/default/grub?

    Or /boot/loader/loaders/something.conf if you’re on systemd-boot

    • @oiram15OP
      0•1 year ago

      I’m on systemd-boot. Where isn’t a directory loaders under loader, but I found the parameters under /etc/kernel/cmdline:

      nvme_load=YES nowatchdog rw root=UUID=9ae3c50f-be08-4594-ac30-2d094375868d

      • IllecorsEnglish
        0•1 year ago

        My bad, I think in your case it’s in /efi/loader/entries/something.conf

        Since / is not mounted, yet, bootloader will not be able to read anything under /etc/. Unless it’s used to automatically populate the loader.conf.

        Also check /efi/loader/loader.conf.

        • @oiram15OP
          1•1 year ago

          I found it!

          [liveuser@eos-2023.08.05 ~]$ cat /mnt/efi/loader/entries/02ef85f9edc146d598502c1b296ff64a-6.4.12-arch1-1.conf 
# Boot Loader Specification type#1 entry
# File created by /etc/kernel/install.d/90-loaderentry.install (systemd 254.1-1-arch)
title      EndeavourOS
version    6.4.12-arch1-1
machine-id 02ef85f9edc146d598502c1b296ff64a
sort-key   endeavouros-6.4.12-arch1-1
options    nvme_load=YES nowatchdog rw root=UUID=9ae3c50f-be08-4594-ac30-2d094375868d systemd.machine_id=02ef85f9edc146d598502c1b296ff64a
linux      /02ef85f9edc146d598502c1b296ff64a/6.4.12-arch1-1/linux
initrd     /02ef85f9edc146d598502c1b296ff64a/6.4.12-arch1-1/initrd
          • IllecorsEnglish
            0•1 year ago

            I’ve never used machine-id with systemd-boot, but everything appears to be corrent. Presumably, /boot contains a directory named 6.4.12-arch1-1, which contains files linux and initrd, correct?

            You could try rebuilding the initramfs with mkinitcpio --allpresets while chrooted.

            • @oiram15OP
              0•1 year ago

              they are under /02ef85f9edc146d598502c1b296ff64a/6.4.12-arch1-1/, but yes.

              EndeavourOS is using dracut by default.

              Edit: we tried rebuilding initramfs before, but it didn’t help

              • IllecorsEnglish
                0•1 year ago

                OK, I see nothing wrong. Let’s try building a new config that’s as minimal as possible. Copy linux and initrd files to /boot/.

                /efi/loader/entries/test.conf

                title      Test
options    root=/dev/nvme0n1p2
linux      /linux
initrd     /initrd