After some problems upgrading my system I managed to end up with the following situation and I’m not sure what to do in order to fix it.
When I boot the Pocket, I am dropped into initramfs busybox and it says that it cannot determine the type of the root device. In order to boot, I do the following:
Now the system boots. When I run sudo apt update and sudo apt upgradeI can see that it runs update-initramfs but whatever that is, it isn’t enough. When I rebooted, the same procedure was necessary. What am I missing?
alex@subterraneobombus ~> sudo reform-check
I: Contents of /proc/device-tree/model: MNT Pocket Reform with i.MX8MP Module
I: `uname -a` output: Linux subterraneobombus 6.15.6-mnt-reform-arm64 #1 SMP Debian 6.15.6-1~exp1+reform20250719T140750Z (2025-07-19) aarch64 GNU/Linux
E: Cannot get version of linux-image-mnt-reform-arm64 as it is not installed
I: Version of reform-tools: 1.76-1+reform20250622T103710Z+1
I: Mount source of /: /dev/mmcblk2p2 (eMMC)
I: Mount source of /boot: /dev/mmcblk2p1 (eMMC)
W: MNT Reform Desktop meta-package is not installed: reform-desktop-full
W: Depends of reform-desktop-full is not installed: alsa-ucm-conf
W: Depends of reform-desktop-full is not installed: blueman
W: Depends of reform-desktop-full is not installed: espeak-ng
W: Depends of reform-desktop-full is not installed: espeak-ng-data
W: Depends of reform-desktop-full is not installed: flatpak
W: Depends of reform-desktop-full is not installed: fwupd
W: Depends of reform-desktop-full is not installed: gnome
W: Depends of reform-desktop-full is not installed: gnome-disk-utility
W: Depends of reform-desktop-full is not installed: gnome-firmware
W: Depends of reform-desktop-full is not installed: gnome-shell-extension-dashtodock
W: Depends of reform-desktop-full is not installed: gnome-shell-extension-manager
W: Depends of reform-desktop-full is not installed: gnome-software-plugin-flatpak
W: Depends of reform-desktop-full is not installed: gvfs-backends
W: Depends of reform-desktop-full is not installed: modemmanager
W: Depends of reform-desktop-full is not installed: network-manager-gnome
W: Depends of reform-desktop-full is not installed: reform-desktop-minimal
W: Depends of reform-desktop-full is not installed: speech-dispatcher-espeak-ng
W: Depends of reform-desktop-full is not installed: wlr-randr
W: MNT Reform Desktop meta-package is not installed: reform-desktop-minimal
W: Depends of reform-desktop-minimal is not installed: cryptsetup-initramfs
W: Depends of reform-desktop-minimal is not installed: dhcpcd-base
W: Depends of reform-desktop-minimal is not installed: fbset
W: Depends of reform-desktop-minimal is not installed: fdisk
W: Depends of reform-desktop-minimal is not installed: iputils-ping
W: Depends of reform-desktop-minimal is not installed: lshw
W: Depends of reform-desktop-minimal is not installed: netcat-openbsd
W: Recommends of reform-desktop-minimal is not installed: flash-kernel
W: Recommends of reform-desktop-minimal is not installed: linux-headers-mnt-reform-arm64
W: Recommends of reform-desktop-minimal is not installed: linux-image-mnt-reform-arm64
W: Recommends of reform-desktop-minimal is not installed: reform-qcacld2
W: Suggests of reform-desktop-minimal is not installed: firmware-atheros
W: Suggests of reform-desktop-minimal is not installed: firmware-iwlwifi
W: Suggests of reform-desktop-minimal is not installed: firmware-mediatek
W: Suggests of reform-desktop-minimal is not installed: firmware-misc-nonfree
W: unexpected content in /etc/default/flash-kernel:
--- - 2025-08-21 00:39:38.451161804 +0200
+++ /etc/default/flash-kernel 2025-06-29 23:27:32.963272998 +0200
@@ -1,2 +1,2 @@
-LINUX_KERNEL_CMDLINE=""
+LINUX_KERNEL_CMDLINE="loglevel=3"
LINUX_KERNEL_CMDLINE_DEFAULTS=""
I: the following files differ from how they are shipped by reform-tools (ignore /var/lib/alsa/asound.state):
??5?????? /var/lib/alsa/asound.state
??5?????? c /etc/profile.d/reform.sh
??5?????? c /etc/skel/.config/sway/config.d/input
??5?????? c /etc/skel/.config/wayfire.ini
E: linux-image-mnt-reform-arm64 is not installed
E: linux-headers-mnt-reform-arm64 is not installed -- cannot compile reform2_lpc module
dpkg-query: no packages found matching linux-image-mnt-reform-arm64
E: the currently running kernel is not the one provided by linux-image-mnt-reform-arm64
I: kernel boot parameters your system does use but which are not the default:
+ loglevel=3
+ loglevel=3
I: kernel boot parameters which are the default but your system doesn't use them:
- fbcon=font:TER16x32
E: the linux header package linux-headers-6.15.6-mnt-reform-arm64 for the currently running kernel is not installed
I seem to be missing a few things according to sudo reform-check so I’ll do that, first.
I wonder why you have to explicitly pass the type of your rootfs here. If you cannot mount it without giving the type then that sounds like your error message that it cannot determine the type of your rootfs.
You only mounted your rootfs but you did not mount /boot into it. So the initramfs you created here will be stored in the /boot directory of your rootfs but it will not be stored in the filesystem which then gets mounted as /boot.
Since whatever initramfs you create here has no effect on the initramfs you are currently running at that point i rather suspect that what made it work was you manually passing the type of the rootfs.
Did you ever try just mounting the rootfs but nothing else?
All I remember it saying that it couldn’t determine the type.
Ah, interesting. I will add this to my notes.
I remember it making a difference, but since everything works for me now, there’s no way to go back.
I’m not sure what you mean. I tried to just mount /root but then I didn’t know what to do with it. Just exiting the shell at that point didn’t get me booting.
Back in September 2024 I switched my sources to Trixie:
But when I wondered about what else was required now that Trixie had landed, I was discouraged and wanted to go back to unstable. I changed the sources and ran sudo apt update and somewhere after that my problems started. There was a critical bug in systemd so I held it using sudo apt-mark hold systemd. I tried sudo apt upgrade and I guess something didn’t work: something about me uninstalling the kernel that was running and I should be extra sure I wanted to do this, yes/no. I said no and the upgrade was interrupted. At this point I had seen that udev had been uninstalled. The history shows I did sudo apt install udev to recover and that there was a systemd circular dependency because I did sudo apt-mark unhold systemd, then sudo apt --fix-broken install and sudo apt full-upgrade. So that’s how I ended up with some bonkers setup.
