I’ve set up Arch Linux with a Gnome DE. It worked very well for a few weeks.

But suddenly I get the following:
- FAILED. Failed to start Load Kernel Modules

and, further down,

- Dependency failed for Local File System
- Dependency failed for /boot/efi

I’ve checked related threads but not found a solution for my specific problem*

It might be relevant that in the process of trying to install Android Emulator I was told to install some 32 bit libs, which I tried to do?
Reading around I saw libs mentioned in connection with this kind of failure. Not sure what they even are, but ‘I was only following orders…’…

I would be very grateful for any help.


*
systemctl status systemd-modules-load.service shows in red: Active: failed (Result: exit-code) and something related to Process 264

/etc/modules-load.d/ is an empty directory

Opening /run/modules-load.d/*in nano shows nothing

/usr/lib/modules-load.d/ contains ‘bluez.conf’, which I seem to remember is something I installed to run bluetooth.

/var/log/ doesn’t have a file called ‘messages’

journalctl brings up thousands of lines. Not able to tell which ones are relevant
I also saw that you can run journalctl -b, but when I tried it, it didn’t report any errors

Also... /boot/efi is empty

On LQ, posts that have zero replies will continue to float to the top for a while.
By replying to your own thread, you have now disabled that feature.
Just something to consider.

Anyhow...
There's a lot of information missing here.
How exactly you installed ARchLinux for example.
"Suddenly" is very vague.
And where do you "get" this?
I'm guessing it's part of the boot messages. The first one could be very early, the latter read like systemd messages.
Please check the journal and give us some more context.
check the status of the services involved.
also check dmesg (grep for kernel modules?).

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Troubleshooting
This is only one (hopefully not the first) of many, many archwiki pages you will want to read.

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Thanks. So I cut my own neck then... noted for future.

Sorry, missing info and vagueness is down to me trying to be on point, and not fill my post with redundant material.

I installed Arch from a live USB. I set up the drive as a dual boot, chrooted and then pacstrapped base etc. in. That part I kind of get. For the UEFI setup, I blindly followed a guy on Youtube. I plan to delve into those steps to understand it better when I get the chance.

I think it's important, though, that it ran without any problems whatsoever for about a month so I think the installation was sound.

Yes, correct, I 'got it' on boot.

I'm going to now go and do the background reading you suggest (I've spent a few hours on the ArchWiki in recent weeks but find that sometimes it assumes a level of knowledge beyond mine) and try to follow your instructions on getting additional information. I might take a while.

Thanks for responding so promptly to give me a way forward.

Is there something in /etc/modules-load.d/ that was recently changed, such as some specified device module that was incorporated into some other module, deprecated, or removed altogether, so no longer exists? I was seeing the same failure message on several installations quite some time ago, and eliminated them by emptying that directory.

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Thanks for this useful suggestion. Another avenue of investigation.

I'll add it to my list of things to do in order to respond, which now includes learning about systemd and the protocol for providing the kind of info a person needs in order to help diagnose what a problem is. This is taking a bit of time, but at the same time is super-interesting.

I'll report back soon!

OK, so I've run journalctl on my most recent boot and sent the output to a text file. I've also located the last boot before things went wrong, if that might be useful.

But issues have arisen:
- The reports are many pages long (Even if I opt to only show messages from the kernel), so I'm guessing I need to weed out the relevant information? I've not seen anyone else on this forum paste such a massive number of lines.
- Even if I do need to send the whole lot, I can't find a way to share the text file with the information in it as I have no DE.
- I can't open my wireless adapter from the SSD installed OS, but if I use the live USB, go online with wifi-menu, then run 'journalcrtl -b -1 | pbpst -S' to send to a pastebin as shown on the Troubleshooting wiki you referenced, I get told 'pbpst: Failed to initialise internationalisation'.

Sorry I've not been able to come back to you with anything more conclusive...

Hi, I had a look where you advised and found the directory is empty. I'm guessing that would make this line of enquiry a dead end?

Thanks again for the pointer.

You don't need a DE to upload large files.

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Amazing! Thanks to mrmazda, I've got that output on my clipboard now. However when I pasted and went to publish I got:

that will be empty on a non-running system, The efi partition gets mounted to /boot/efi during start-up of the system.

The pastebinit you tried or the site it accepts from must be broken. Since you are obviously able to post here, here are some places you can upload via web browser:

• http://susepaste.org/
• http://paste.opensuse.org/
• http://pastebin.centos.org/
• http://paste.debian.net/
• http://paste.fedoraproject.org
• http://pastebin.com/
• http://paste.ubuntu.com/
• https://gist.github.com/

why did you decide to veer away from arch's installation guide? not recommended.

there's a command 'grep' that can help with that.
'journalctl' also has LOADS of options to specify the output; most importantly '-b' to restrict output to the current boot.
of course you will need a few attempts to figure out what you're actually looking for.
when you finally post here, don't give us too much (that's mostly because of me; i hate sifting through logs with my eyes only), but not too little context either.

@mrmazda - pastebinit worked well, thank you. It was LQ that didn't let me paste because there was too much text!

Which leads me to:

@ondoho - I ran the -b option, also restricted to the most recent boot but still got hundreds of lines. I have no idea what I'm looking for within the output, so I just ran a search on the world 'fail'.

If it's not still too much, please take a look at this. Otherwise I'll take a longer, harder look. Maybe just read through the whole thing.

Also, I get your point about deviating from the path of the installation guide. I still stand by the fact that there were no issues for some considerable time.
I'm prepared to do another install 'by the book' if all else fails, but I see my current issues as an opportunity for some learning and don't want to back down from them without a fight!

Anyway, here's what journalctl reports:

It looks like you may have removed/wrote over some files that is involved in loading modules.

With the system only a few weeks old, it might be easier to copy anything you have important off the drive and reinstall the system again.

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