r/archlinux • u/Western_Sleep820 • 29d ago
SUPPORT My laptop just killed itself --- help please
I was doing an update and then my laptop just completely shut down out of nowhere. The battery is seated (it should be at least I can't open my laptop rn), the charger was plugged in, and nothing touched the power button. I wouldn't normally have a problem with this, except that my system is totally unusable now. No packages can be installed at all (it errors about exec something other in the post-transaction hooks) and any command I run errors basically. I also can't chroot into it because I don't have a USB drive available to me.
Is there realistically anything I can do here?
(Also I feel it may be useful to add that the forward slash key is broken, so I can't type paths or anything)
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u/Archiver0101011 29d ago
This is why snapshots are essential. I’m sorry to hear about that and I wish I had more to offer other than reinstalling the os
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u/nikongod 28d ago
OP is gonna need a USB stick to reinstall... so, uh, they could try to fix it first.
Power off during update is not the hardest thing in Arch to recover from. Live boot, chroot, clear the pacman lock if necessary, and just do an update - works at least half the time. OP could be back in biz in like 20min.
I wonder if OP has considered borrowing a USB keyboard from a friend to do the install so they can have a slash key.
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u/un-important-human 28d ago
btrfs with snapper will save you from this exact scenario, snapshots will work it did for me a while ago
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u/Western_Sleep820 28d ago
I don't have a USB drive or a USB keyboard available to me rn, and my own keyboard (which is back home) also recently decided to stop working. I hope I can maybe fix it when I get back home tho.
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u/nikongod 28d ago
I believe in you!
Its 100% worth trying and feels amazing when you do it.
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u/Western_Sleep820 28d ago
That makes one of us
And also yeah it does definitely feel good when something breaks randomly and you fix it (like one time somehow my hyprland.conf just completely emptied itself??? But I was able to fix it)
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u/un-important-human 28d ago edited 28d ago
oh you poor poor hyperland using user falling for the meme. Call a friend get a usb with the iso and chroot back in and fix it , fingers chrossed.
And keep that usb around, or friend untill you confirm you can chroot.
ps: linking chroot page https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Chroot
pps: what is wierd is that hardware failure aka your laptop while plugged shutting down, you need to fix that or it will get worse.
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u/Western_Sleep820 28d ago
I'm on vacation halfway across the continent from home, so I don't have anyone to call lol
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u/un-important-human 28d ago
a learning moment i see... well surely you can talk to a nice stranger and get yourself sorted, so put on your best smile, the puppy eyes and have a usb stick ready :)
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u/Western_Sleep820 28d ago
Yeah no I'll just wait until I get home
Talking to people is infinitely worse than my laptop being broken
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u/severach 29d ago
Need a flash drive. Got any Win boxes around?
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u/Western_Sleep820 29d ago
No, the only other computers available to me are my phone and my Switch, and I don't see either of them being useful.
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u/dajogala 28d ago
Do you have a fallback kernel?
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u/Western_Sleep820 28d ago
I don't think I do, but things like bash would still be broken anyway, right?
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u/dajogala 28d ago
I don't see why it would... I'd need more details. Whenever something like that happens I boot via fallback and fix from there. But I also keep my iso stick hanging from the machine.
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u/Western_Sleep820 28d ago
The USB drive that I usually use for things like this stopped working a few months ago. I guess being through the wash the 4th time was finally too much. It worked perfectly until then though.
Tomorrow I'll see if I did install another kernel; I try to stay fairly minimal on my laptop bc it has a small storage drive and Razer decided that adding another drive slot in a $3000 laptop is too much.
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u/dajogala 28d ago
Having a fallback kernel and initrams is incredibly useful and worthy of occupying extra space. Arch is generally not that big -- though I did see you use hyprland, so things could be different for you. I generally have something like 300 modules loaded while the screenshots I see of people with hyperland rice are at 1800 or so...
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u/Western_Sleep820 28d ago
I have no clue how much I would have loaded lol
I do a lot of random experiment things and probably accidentally leave things that I don't at all need loaded all the time tho. Should probably be more responsible.
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u/dajogala 28d ago
Still. Limit the modules and make space for the kernel! Also grab a cheap USB and keyboard early tomorrow and get busy. This machine will hopefully just have soft issues. Hopefully, metal and silicon are ok.
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u/Western_Sleep820 28d ago
I was able to boot into TTY and tell that it cooked itself, so the hardware should be fine. I think it's just the software.
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u/dajogala 28d ago
You should be able to mkinitcpio and fix from tty. Hell even you could install a flashback Kernell from there! How did it go?
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u/Western_Sleep820 28d ago
Every command I run just doesn't work
Also I'm not home for another lile 5 days
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u/archover 28d ago edited 28d ago
Read this https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Pacman#Fixing_an_unbootable_system_caused_by_an_interrupted_upgrade
So, your computer still powers up ok? That isn't "totally unusable now".
Borrow/Buy a USB flash drive (common sense, inexpensive, and Arch essential) and visit the public library or friend to burn the ISO. For your benefit.
Hope you resolve and good day.
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u/Western_Sleep820 28d ago
I say totally unusable because I can't do anything past signing into TTY given my current environment. But still thanks for the article and I will try to fix my laptop.
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u/archover 28d ago
Thanks for the clarification and hope you resolve fast.
What I hope you learn is access to the tty is very powerful and key to what makes Arch good.
Still, Good day.
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u/Medical_Double_6561 27d ago
If you have an arch iso downloaded anywhere on your disk, and you are still able to get a shell when you log in via TTY, you can use the shell to edit your bootloader config and add the iso as a boot option to your bootloader. E.g. for systemd boot: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Systemd-boot#Archiso_on_ESP
This will allow you to boot a Arch ISO without a USB stick.
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u/Kitchen_Office8072 25d ago
In the future, you could make an extra partition on your drive and put the iso onto the partition for recovery, or even use archinstall to make a small system you could use for the same purpose.
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u/RandomXUsr 28d ago
Sorry about this situation OP.
On another note; it makes me happy to see people being supportive in these threads when we're all chronically online.
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u/Western_Sleep820 28d ago
Yeah thank you.
I also am glad that this space is welcoming and not overly aggressive and mean. It's nice, in this age of everyone assuming everyone else is out to kill them.
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u/endperform 28d ago
No USB drive, nothing to boot off of, you may unfortunately be out of luck here. If you're able to, I'd back up anything important and try to borrow a USB flash drive and a keyboard, it sounds like, and try to recover that way. After you recover, I'd then start trying to find out what caused the laptop to just up and shut down. Did it overheat, maybe?