Broke initramfs - Interrupted pacman update

Issues & Assistance
1

Hi guys I think I made a stupid mistake and have broken both my install and my live USB in trying to fix the install so if somebody could explain to me like I’m 11 that would be great because I guess my brain isn’t working today. Also apologies for formatting I am typing on a phone as I do not have access to a second computer (part of the problem).

  1. Had bash open running cachy-update
  2. Had another window open doing other stuff
  3. I think I hit control C a couple times trying to copy something when the terminal was focused and not the web browser
  4. I see notification to reboot after update, so I reboot.
  5. I think I Interrupted a process by mistake possibly during the update, it’s the only thing I can think of.
  6. I can boot into BIOS (ASUS) and I can get to the LUKS password prompt, but once the drive is unlocked I see:

Booting Cachyos Linux’

Loading Linux linux-cachyos

Loading initial ramdisk… errors

fs/btrfs.csfind_path:1890:file/4/boot/initramfs-linux-cachyos.ing" not found.

Press any key to continue…

And after that, it kernel panics.

PXL_20260525_003302049
PXL_20260525_0033020491920×2557 1.02 MB

  1. I tried to look up how to boot into btrfs snapshots in GRUB but can’t seem to get to the GRUB menu (holding down esc goes to BIOS and idk what other hotkey to try)
  2. I remembered I have live cd on USB so I boot that up and try instructions on cachy wiki to use chroot: CachyOS chroot Helper | CachyOS
  3. Then reboot into Cachy… same error
  4. Then try to reboot back into live CD… now Ventoy is giving an error and won’t let me see anything there either
  5. Maybe I accidentally mounted and edited the wrong volume? I thought I had the right UUID though.

:sob:

I also just discovered my roommate stole my charger for my old laptop so I can’t fire that up to reburn the live USB. I know I have had snapper running so I should be able to get back to a snapshot if somebody can just tell me exactly how.

Thanks in advance for your patience.

2

If you have access to an Android device, you could use this app to burn a new CachyOS ISO onto a USB flashdrive:

Hope this helps to get you at least into the live session.

3

what did you do in tbe chroot?

this should be a simpke fix and you have zero need to update your USB if you were able to chroot from it.

4

I wasn’t trying to do anything to the USB at all, I barely touched it other than to boot the live CD. I have no idea how it got corrupted. Look, I know I did something stupid here, there’s no need to rub it in.

5

Thanks! I have found my USB-C usb-A adapter so fingers crossed I can get this to work.

6

If it’s any consolation (or maybe encouragement is the right word?) I did the very same thing a couple of weeks back and had to use my Android phone + EtchDroid to get myself out of that bind. Fingers crossed it goes well for you too!

7

I was able to get back into the live CD and back into chroot at which point I remounted the drive and from there ran initcpios to rebuild the image, changed the GRUB config time out to 10 sec instead of 0, and crossed my fingers and rebooted. Was able to do the usual snapper restore workflow from there. So thanks again for your response, you averted a meltdown after a bad day at work lol :sweat_smile: