I'm running Debian Testing (Buster) and I'm swapping from Grub2 to systemd as I couldn't get Grub2 to work and someone suggested I try systemd-boot instead.
The boot/root drive is on an eMMC drive on the motherboard, whilst the data drive is on an mSATA SSD.
I have systemd-boot half working and it crashes on boot with this message
Begin: Running /scripts/local-block ... done.
Begin: Running /scripts/local-block ... done.
done.
Gave up waiting for root file system device. Common problems:
- Boot args (cat /proc/cmdline)
- Check rootdelay= (did the system wait long enough?)
- Missing modules (cat /proc/modules; ls /dev)
ALERT! PARTUUID=2251a5a4-6c18-425c-9264-df971d297b09 does not exist. Dropping to shell!
I've rebooted and managed to login using SuperGrub USB disk and I can see that the UUID does match my root partition so i don't know why it cannot find it.
/proc/cmdline output
BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-4.19.0-5-amd64 root=UUID=2251a5a4-6c18-425c-9264-df971d297b09 ro
/boot and /boot/efi listings
kodi@BB-8:~$ ls /boot
config-4.15.0-3-amd64 grub System.map-4.15.0-3-amd64 vmlinuz-4.19.0-5-amd64
config-4.19.0-5-amd64 initrd.img-4.15.0-3-amd64 System.map-4.19.0-5-amd64 vmlinuz-4.9.45-ubilinux+
config-4.9.45-ubilinux+ initrd.img-4.19.0-5-amd64 System.map-4.9.45-ubilinux+
efi initrd.img-4.9.45-ubilinux+ vmlinuz-4.15.0-3-amd64
kodi@BB-8:~$ sudo ls /boot/efi
debian EFI loader
kodi@BB-8:~$ sudo ls /boot/efi/debian
drwx------ 2 root root 4096 Jul 16 22:31 .
drwx------ 5 root root 4096 Jan 1 1970 ..
-rwx------ 1 root root 31595838 Jul 26 11:09 initrd.img-4.15.0-3-amd64
-rwx------ 1 root root 33228805 Jul 26 11:09 initrd.img-amd64
-rwx------ 1 root root 4933392 Jul 26 11:09 vmlinuz-4.15.0-3-amd64
-rwx------ 1 root root 5217520 Jul 26 11:09 vmlinuz-amd64
UUID of drives and a df command
kodi@BB-8:~$ ls -al /dev/disk/by-uuid/
total 0
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 220 Jul 26 08:59 .
drwxr-xr-x 8 root root 160 Jul 26 08:58 ..
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Jul 26 11:10 2251a5a4-6c18-425c-9264-df971d297b09 -> ../../mmcblk0p2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jul 26 11:10 42a36b04-83f8-4105-aef4-7f24b9ffff66 -> ../../sdb3
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jul 26 11:10 8280cf20-b70e-44f4-b092-6d3f92d54eab -> ../../dm-0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jul 26 11:10 8A84-E6C0 -> ../../sdb2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jul 26 11:10 8B91-8099 -> ../../sdb4
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 15 Jul 26 11:10 A9CE-4035 -> ../../mmcblk0p1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jul 26 11:10 b2a67d10-07da-4eb4-bc16-b768084db045 -> ../../sda1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jul 26 11:10 b618f5b0-2b8a-4e33-b288-407fd4355f83 -> ../../sdb5
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jul 26 11:10 f9a00ae7-07d2-4726-947b-03a4074049dd -> ../../sda2
kodi@BB-8:~$ df -h
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
udev 3.9G 0 3.9G 0% /dev
tmpfs 783M 78M 705M 10% /run
/dev/mmcblk0p2 57G 14G 41G 26% /
tmpfs 3.9G 39M 3.8G 1% /dev/shm
tmpfs 5.0M 4.0K 5.0M 1% /run/lock
tmpfs 3.9G 0 3.9G 0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/sda1 820G 555G 224G 72% /home
/dev/mmcblk0p1 511M 82M 429M 17% /boot/efi
/dev/sda2 96G 67G 24G 74% /home/hts
10.1.1.1:/media/backup 2.7T 2.3T 178G 93% /media/backup
tmpfs 783M 44K 783M 1% /run/user/1001
/dev/dm-0 7.8G 36M 7.3G 1% /media/kodi/8280cf20-b70e-44f4-b092-6d3f92d54eab
/dev/sdb4 7.9G 4.8G 3.2G 61% /media/kodi/DATA
/dev/sdb3 14G 12G 1.7G 88% /media/kodi/boot
Update: add modules
Add to /etc/initramfs-tools/modules
mmc_core
mmc_block
sdhci
sdhci-pci
Then type for 4.19.0-5 kernel
sudo update-initramfs -u -k all
Rebooted and I get the same message.
UPDATE: my systemd loader.conf
Here is my /boot/efi/loader/entries/debian.conf
title Debian
linux /debian/vmlinuz-amd64
initrd /debian/initrd.img-amd64
options root=PARTUUID=2251a5a4-6c18-425c-9264-df971d297b09 rw
This is the UUID for my /dev/mmcblk0p2 eMMC device which is mounted as root.
Best Answer
On giving this another look, it seems you have a mismatch between PARTUUID=... and UUID=... and that's what's causing this problem.
You mentioned bootloader is configured with:
But when you manage to boot it, you actually find this UUID under
/dev/disk/by-uuid:Furthermore, that's even listed in
/proc/cmdlineof the successful boot (I'm assuming it's the one with SuperGrub USB):The two UUIDs are different. PARTUUID= is the UUID that will be found in the GPT partition table (that's why it's called "PART", because it's a property of the partition, recorded in the partition table), while UUID= is a UUID recorded in the filesystem (ext4, or xfs, or whichever filesystem you formatted the partition with) and Linux is able to read those while scanning the disks.
So, it looks like you need to fix your boot options to use UUID= instead of PARTUUID=, since the UUID you have is a filesystem UUID and not a partition UUID.
Edit file
/boot/efi/loader/entries/debian.confand replace the last line with:That should fix your issue!
Make sure your
/etc/fstabin the system also matches the correct tag.You can also use the
blkidcommand to inspect the UUIDs present in your partitions and filesystems. This might help you confirm that you have the correct kind of UUID.For instance, using
blkid -o exportshould display something like:That should help you see all UUIDs with a tag that is recognized by Linux.