1

For whatever reason, after the latest update, CachyOS will not start outside of LTS. I even attempted reinstalling the boot and root partitions (I have home on a separate one) and have the same issue. I cannot get to the TTY either, so I can’t debug it that way. The most I got was that some start task never moves forward. Tried it last night, had to shut it down after 19 hours of doing nothing. Is there any way I can fix this?

2

I just updated my system right after reading your post; no problems here at all; so I can’t reproduce your problem. I think the updates are okay coming from CachyOS, I’d guess it’s something within your system or some other thing.

  • Try booting without any USB devices connected. Reconnect the devices after you get to a working desktop. Mouse and keyboard should work nearly instantly after being plugged into the working desktop. It could be a flash drive or any other USB devices holding things up.

On my linuxes, a USB SD card reader causes the whole system to hang forever if it’s connected during boot.

Questions:

  1. Do you remember installing any custom kernels? (Linux kernel Version 7 is not yet fully ready, although the “release candidate” is already available for testing. I wouldn’t install it yet.)

  2. Do you get to a GRUB> menu? or is there a flashing cursor on screen, or is the screen just blank?

On other distros I’ve tried, a blank screen usually means display mode / compatibility issues which are correctable if you can get into a GRUB menu during boot.

  1. Have you tried booting into a Live USB linux? If that works, then at least you know that your hardware is (probably) working.

  2. Do you remember any wierd errors or snafus during your original CachyOS install?

Sorry if I’m not helping yet, this is all I could come up with so far.

3

I have exactly the same problem. After this last update, my Cachyos machine in unusable. I can get past the Grub screen, I then hit enter to boot into Cachyos, and all I get is a black screen. The only USB device I have is my optical mouse. I will disconnect that and try again. Wish me luck.

4

You may use runlevels or similar even if you do not have an external to boot from;

From there you should be able to upgrade and/or even install other kernels.

ex;

sudo pacman -Syu linux-cachyos-lts

PS.

This is the kind of reason why keeping multiple kernels is a good idea.
Something like Latest+LatestLTS is a common reasonable combination.

I have LTS, though perhaps you are saying this for others? Good to know about the update command for it though.

I can get to systemd-boot’s menu. That’s how I open LTS. I have version 7 as my main kernel, so I assume that’s what’s borked it, though there are a few oddities that may suggest another issue. Using kernel 7 after rebooting without USB devices plugged in, I was able to get to the login screen and get to TTY from there. I was then able to get to the desktop using startplasma-wayland. I will try rebooting again to see if the problem has magically fixed itself. Booting into a live USB works fine. That’s how I was able to reinstall everything (should’ve tested LTS before doing this because now I’m stuck reinstalling all my programs but oh well. Doesn’t hurt to purge it every once in a while to get rid of programs I don’t use I suppose. I don’t recall any errors during my original CachyOS install, nor any others from before now that I wasn’t able to resolve.

Edit: Turns out removing USB devices does nothing to help. But what does help me get into kernel 7 is rebooting into LTS, then rebooting into the main kernel. This will get me to a login screen. Attempting to login normally leads to a black screen though, so I instead have to login through TTY. After logging in, I run startplasma-wayland and I can get into the desktop from there. No, I don’t know why I have to reboot from LTS to avoid a black screen.