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Topic: [SOLVED] PC sometimes not booting ( ERROR: device '/dev/sda3' not found) (Read 1541 times) previous topic - next topic
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[SOLVED] PC sometimes not booting ( ERROR: device '/dev/sda3' not found)

From time to time my PC with Artix Linux, installed from a Cinnamon/OpenRC - iso, does not boot.
It shows this:
Code: [Select]
:: running hook [resume]
Waiting 10 seconds for device /dev/sda3 ...
ERROR: device '/dev/sda3' not found. Skipping fsck.
:: mounting '/dev/sda3' on real root
mount: /new_root: no filesystem type specified.
You are now being dropped into an emergency shell.
sh: can´t access tty; job control turned off
[rootfs ]#
Then I press: "ctrl+alt+del"  and it boots without problem.

I thought it could be a hibernate problem, since I used hibernate on cinnamon, but now I use the FVWM window manager and .xinitrc + startx and no hibernate or suspend, and the failure still happens sometimes..

I would like to understand what could be causing this, to avoid the problem with the next installation or to fix it.
Could a too small swap partition be the reason? (4GB swap , but 8GB RAM here) ..

edit: gnome-disks says the drive is okay.

lsblk of /dev/sda:
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NAME      MAJ:MIN RM   SIZE RO TYPE  MOUNTPOINT
sda         8:0    0 238,5G  0 disk  
├─sda1      8:1    0   200M  0 part  /boot/efi
├─sda2      8:2    0     4G  0 part  [SWAP]
└─sda3      8:3    0 234,3G  0 part  /

Re: PC sometimes not booting ( ERROR: device '/dev/sda3' not found. Skipping fsck )

Reply #1 –
Well on rare occasions my M4400 with SSD upgrade will not get past BIOS POST and beeps and says no bootable devices. Power off then back on and it boots normally. Then if I boot with an eSata external drive plugged in, occasionally it will detect the eSata drive as sda and the internal hdd as sdb, rather than the other way round, but it still boots and works in this case (because I use UUID or LABEL in /etc/fstab.) And sometimes the trackpoint and touchpad are not properly detected at boot and I get a slow draggy pointer and scrolling problems and rebooting fixes it. I've no idea what causes these things, but have sometimes seen similar inconsistencies in hardware detection. I have 8GB RAM and 16GB swap btw.

Re: PC sometimes not booting ( ERROR: device '/dev/sda3' not found. Skipping fsck )

Reply #2 –
okay..
I believe, I have seen one time, that sda was sdc and the other way round, too.. I have also looked for a BIOS update, but could not find a newer one.. (I have also replaced the SATA cable, just in case...)
thanks for the reply

Re: PC sometimes not booting ( ERROR: device '/dev/sda3' not found. Skipping fsck )

Reply #3 –
If you've got 2 or more disks, then you should consider using either partition LABELs or UUIDs in your /boot/grub/grub.cfg (and /etc/fstab).

Re: PC sometimes not booting ( ERROR: device '/dev/sda3' not found. Skipping fsck )

Reply #4 –
I had the exact msg appear after rebooting from a fresh install of the latest artix lxqt iso. The problem flummoxed me.  I found the answer in the arch  linux forum (i think).

Run:
cat /proc/cmdline
If it doesn't show a UUID for your hard drive but instead /dev/sda something, then you will have to edit GRUB.

Open  GRUB and look for this entry. Add the # to the last line if it doesn't have one, make it look like this:

# Uncomment if you want GRUB to pass to the Linux kernel the old parameter
# format "root=/dev/xxx" instead of "root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/xxx"
# GRUB_DISABLE_LINUX_UUID="true"

Now GRUB should see your hard drive.

For some reason the default setting  is NOT to use UUID. I was pulling my hair out when I saw that. Like why? Anyways I hope this helps.

Re: PC sometimes not booting ( ERROR: device '/dev/sda3' not found. Skipping fsck )

Reply #5 –
 And then automatically re-generate the grub.cfg file with:

      grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg