April 16, 2026, 8:45pm 1

Hi everyone,

I’m having a persistent issue with kernel updates on CachyOS and I’d really appreciate some help tracking down the root cause.

For the past couple of months, every time I update the kernel and reboot, the system ends up in emergency mode. The update itself completes, but something breaks during boot afterwards.

During the update I consistently get this error related to mkinitcpio:

==> ERROR: Hook 'sd-btrfs-overlayfs' cannot be found

I already removed sd-btrfs-overlayfs from my mkinitcpio hooks and re-generated the initramfs with mkinitcpio -P. The process completes without errors now, but after rebooting the system the same problem reappears and /boot fails to mount.

Here is the relevant error from journalctl -xb -p 3:

usb 3-2.1.2: device descriptor read/64, error -32
zram-generator failed with exit status 1
systemd-modules-load: Failed to find module 'ntsync'
systemd-modules-load: Failed to find module 'uhid'
systemd-modules-load: Failed to find module 'crypto_user'
systemd-modules-load: Failed to find module 'i2c_dev'
systemd-modules-load: Failed to find module 'pkcs8_key_parser'
Failed to start ufw.service
Failed to mount /boot
Timed out waiting for device /dev/zram0

My /etc/fstab looks correct and points to the right partition:

/dev/nvme0n1p1 (vfat, UUID=7AA0-21B7) -> /boot
/dev/nvme0n1p2 (btrfs, UUID=5a532593-8224-4893-8df1-d127536c90b9) -> /

The system works fine otherwise, but any kernel update seems to break the boot process.

What I’ve already tried:

• Removed sd-btrfs-overlayfs from mkinitcpio hooks

• Regenerated initramfs (mkinitcpio -P)

• Verified /etc/fstab

• Reinstalled kernel packages

• Checked boot partition integrity

Any guidance would be really appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

can you also report this file

cat /etc/mkinitcpio.conf

and

inxi -Fza

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