Can't boot after upgrading to Snapshot 20220914 on Raspberry Pi 4

English Install/Boot/Login
1

Hi all,

I have upgraded my Raspberry Pi 4 to the recently released ARM snapshot 20220914 and it fails to boot. It get stuck at “dracut pre-pivot and cleanup hook”.
Trying to boot the system with the “(recovery mode)” option brings up the system, but with a lot of errors…

How can I determine why it gets stuck when booting without “(recovery mode)”?

Thanks in advance,
sandman

2

Unfortunately, when checking with

journalctl --list-boots

there is no entry for the boot attempts that fail / get stuck at “dracut pre-pivot and cleanup hook”.
Is there any way I can check what causes the stuck?

3

Likely the journal is not enabled (to prevent disk wear?) and I think the way to go is to enable that.

Enable persistent storage for the systemd journal log

4

Thank you for your reply and hints, marel!
I have double checked it, and persistend journal seems to be enabled. My journald.conf has “Storage=auto” set and /var/log/journal/ exists and it is being written to.

When I run journalctl --list-boots it does list some previous boots, but it seems that the boot attemts which are failing are not listed there:

user@host:~> sudo journalctl --list-boots 
[sudo] Passwort für root: 
IDX BOOT ID                          FIRST ENTRY                  LAST ENTRY                  
 -5 b2ef602085544bea97eb1ea868b6e2d4 Mon 2022-09-05 02:00:01 CEST Fri 2022-09-16 18:46:52 CEST
 -4 bf5a9208bd8747a1ae3ccb82b19d4fa8 Tue 2022-08-16 02:00:00 CEST Fri 2022-09-16 20:00:53 CEST
 -3 dfb6d8a84e994ce58e7020ecc27583bc Tue 2022-08-16 02:00:00 CEST Fri 2022-09-16 23:25:55 CEST
 -2 b6cbf138ba9e46618e07e553c4f8b9c6 Tue 2022-08-16 02:00:00 CEST Fri 2022-09-16 23:43:35 CEST
 -1 588528a0157d42029be23f8fa9ebe94e Tue 2022-08-16 02:00:00 CEST Sat 2022-09-17 03:30:01 CEST
  0 f6d333d7948e48c6bdc009022573c31f Mon 2022-09-05 02:00:00 CEST Sun 2022-09-18 13:23:42 CEST

Going through the boots with journalctl -b -xy I can review only the completed boots…

One thing that came to my mind is that I have an RTC installed, which gets enabled in early boot stage, which causes the system date and time to change during bootup. Might that be somehow prevent a proper logging or association of log messages to distinct boot attemts?

Thanks and BR,
sandman

5

Add the user to group systemd-journal:

karl@erlangen:~> id 
uid=1000(karl) gid=100(users) Gruppen=100(users),999(systemd-journal) 
karl@erlangen:~> journalctl --list-boots  
IDX BOOT ID                          FIRST ENTRY                  LAST ENTRY                   
 -3 fcaae23abaaf42649ce126157ff7e023 Sat 2022-09-10 14:52:28 CEST Sun 2022-09-11 06:22:33 CEST 
 -2 9b3c1d6f576e465cb4898a7d6e5c5748 Sun 2022-09-11 06:23:24 CEST Mon 2022-09-12 07:31:04 CEST 
 -1 60ba297c62814b669779c71e993fc210 Mon 2022-09-12 07:31:57 CEST Sun 2022-09-18 04:51:23 CEST 
  0 b1dabecad322460f8a755477a2a4bf69 Sun 2022-09-18 04:51:55 CEST Sun 2022-09-18 15:19:37 CEST 
karl@erlangen:~>
6

Done, but that won’t list any additional boot attemts… It just makes it more convenient to use journalctl without sudo, right?

Meanwhile I’ve found something strange while checking the groups of my user:

user@host:~> id
uid=1000(user) gid=1000(user) groups=1000(user),499(systemd-journal) context=unconfined_u:unconfined_r:unconfined_t:s0-s0:c0.c1023

What is this “context=unconfined_u:unconfined_r:unconfined_t:s0-s0:c0.c1023”??

Still, I can’t understand why I can’t get any logs of the failed boot attempts…

Thanks so far and BR,
sandman

7

It seems that there was a problem regarding the sd card. After shutting down the pi, removing the sdcard and inserting it back in, the installation of the corresponding snapshot and booting it subsequently was no problem anymore.
Up to now, the pi runs fine and any further updates were running smoothly.
To avoid any further sdcard issues, I have ordered an high/max endurance sd card and will switch to that… :slight_smile:

BR
sandman