Starting Dracut Emergency Shell

User Support
1

The Problem

Steps to produce:

  1. I did a fresh reinstall of Qubes Release 4.0.3 from a backup and I was then able to login without problem.

  2. Then, I installed Windows on another “disk” (see more context here below). All went fine.

  3. When I wanted to boot my machine on Qubes, Qubes asked for my password.

  4. Unusual long period of time after entering my password.

  5. Error messages come:

    [long colums of numbers] preceding…

     Could not boot.
 /dev/disk/by-id/md-uuid-xxxxxxxxxxxx does not exist
 Starting Dracut Emerg ncy Shell...
 Warning: /dev/disk/by-id/md-uuid-xxxxxxxxxxxx does not exist
 
 Generating "/run/initramfs/rdsosreport.txt"`
 
 Entering emergency mode. Exit the shell to continue.
 Type "journalctl" to view system logs.
 You might want to save "/run/initramfs/rdsosreport.txt" to a USB stick or /boot 
 after mounting them and attach it to a bug report.

 dracut:/#

  6. If I type ls -l /dev/disk/by-id/, I can indeed see that md-uuid-xxxxxxxxxxxx is not present.

  7. Typing exit at the dracut:/# invite makes Qubes going on booting and, at very first sight, things look normal.

Some Context

  • I have 2 SSD in RAID0. On this RAID0, I created two volumes. Qubes was installed on the biggest and then Windows on the smallest.

  • “Qubes devices / View and manage devices” icon to attach drives and USB sticks to VMs:

    It seems to me that there are now more entries in this tool than before the Windows installation. I can now see things like:

    • dom0: md126 - ()
    • dom0: md126p1 - ()
    • dom0: md126p2 - ()

  • Do I have GRUB or EFI?

    I guess I have only EFI since I only have:

      [xxxxx@dom0 ~]$ ls /boot/grub/
  splash.xpm.gz
  [xxxxx@dom0 ~]$ ls /boot/grub2/
  themes
  [xxxxx@dom0 ~]$

    … but I have I have a full /boot/efi/EFI/qubes/xen.cfg file

Some Questions

  1. Could you help me define what happened?
  2. What should I do to fix the problem?
  3. Will there be after-effects?

I don’t know what I got into, so your help is greatly appreciated. Thank you!

2

Anyone who could provide me with a hint for this “dracut” thing?

Will my system definitely crash at the next reboot and I should backup everything as soon as possible for a clean re-install? Or is this only a “minor” thing that can be solved easily?

This situation worries me a bit (to say the least…) and any input would be most helpful and appreciated!

Thank you so much!

3 
    Could not boot.
    /dev/disk/by-id/md-uuid-xxxxxxxxxxxx does not exist
    Starting Dracut Emerg ncy Shell...
    Warning: /dev/disk/by-id/md-uuid-xxxxxxxxxxxx does not exist

This reads to me like Windows a part of your Qubes install.

  1. Typing exit at the dracut:/# invite makes Qubes going on booting and, at very first sight, things look normal.

By this you mean that it will boot into a usable Qubes desktop?

If that is the case, the fix may be as simple as altering /etc/fstab
to remove/re-point the currently missing UUID.

4

Thanks for your input, Jarrah, it helped me find the solution!

It looks like the installation of Windows changed the UUID of the RAID0 volume containing QubesOS.

To solve the problem, I had to:

  1. Find the new UUID of the volume with:
    • lsblk (to identify the RAID0 volume containing QubesOS) and
    • ls -l /dev/disk/by-id/ (to find its UUID)
  2. In /boot/efi/EFI/qubes/xen.cfg, update the rd.md.uuid= parameter with the new UUID

Thanks again to the community and particularly to Jarrah!