this post was submitted on 17 Jan 2022
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Basically I tried to uninstall an old version of the linux kernel, I had like 5 versions installed because it was taking up too much space on my /boot partition and now my PC is bricked, this is what it displays when i try to boot it

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[–] ksynwa@lemmy.ml 11 points 2 years ago (9 children)

Basically I tried to uninstall an old version of the linux kernel

Have you tried using a live ISO, chrooting and installing whatever it was you uninstalled?

[–] asdflkjasdf@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Nope, how do I chroot and install that? I assume it involves sudo apt install linux kernal whatever?

[–] ksynwa@lemmy.ml 8 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

You should look around to find videos or more comprehensive tutorials for this. This is a useful skill to have if you are Linux user. So many breakages can be solved by using this.

For chrooting you first have to boot a live ISO (you did this for installing Ubuntu). You can use an Ubuntu live ISO but it's not necessary. It should work with most distros.

Then open the terminal. (Or not. You can do this from the TTY as well.)

After that you mount your file system to a mount point (typically /mnt but can be whatever). You can do this by running the following commands. PLEASE DON'T BLINDLY COPY PASTE. Replace /dev/sda1 with whichever devices is mounted to / for your system:

# mount /dev/sda1 /mnt
# mount -t proc proc /mnt/proc
# mount -t sysfs sys /mnt/sys
# mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev
# mount -t devpts pts /mnt/dev/pts
# chroot /mnt

After this you should be able to use apt to install whatever you had uninstalled.

Here I am making some assumptions:

  • you are not using disk encryption
  • your / file system is supported by the kernel natively (that you are not using something like zfs)

So if any of these is the case then you will have to adapt accordingly.

When done you can exit the chroot and umount. Then try rebooting to see if the problem is fixed:

# exit
# for point in /mnt{/dev/pts,/dev,/sys,/proc,}; do
>   umount $point
> done
# reboot
[–] asdflkjasdf@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Thanks, I managed to chroot, now I don’t know how to fix the shit I did. I think I have to fix something in /boot because that's what I've played with, someone told me I'm missing an initramfs file I think. Am I supossed to run sudo apt update initramfs and then delete all the kernel files in /boot that are previous to the linux-image-5.11.0-43 which is the one I’m using?

[–] ksynwa@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Oh yeah in that case you will have to mount your boot partition to /mnt/boot before chrooting into /mnt. After that I don't know how to fix the package in apt (sorry). You can try force reinstalling the package that provides the kernel. Maybe it will regenrate the initramfs.

You shouldn't manually delete files in /boot.

[–] asdflkjasdf@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago (2 children)

Oh, so I have to umount and mount again mounting first on /mnt/boot and then try to fix it?

[–] ksynwa@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago
[–] onoffled@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

This might be a bit off-topic for this comment thread, but is reinstalling everything an option ? If you have a backup of your data, this might get you up and running quicker. If you don't have a backup, you could plug in another drive and copy files using the live media.

[–] asdflkjasdf@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 years ago (1 children)

Yes, but it would imply having to move almost 1TB of files, plus having to reconfigure all my system after reinstalling, which will also take quite a lot and I get to learn a bit from here even though I'm so fucking stressed right now.

[–] onoffled@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago

Well it looks like you're in good hands with @ksynwa@lemmy.ml!

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