 As someone that uses Arch Linux based distributions for the most part here in the last few years, being on rolling release distributions does sometimes present some interesting challenges. For one thing, because you're on rolling release distributions, you're constantly getting a new kernel. Every time there's a kernel update, you get the latest version of that kernel. And the kernel, of course, is the most important program on the system. Without a working kernel, you do not have a working operating system. And today, I ran an update on my Arch Linux installation. I did a Pacman SYU, and at some point during the package installation, I'm assuming it was during the kernel installation, something happened. My window manager crashed. I hit a key on the keyboard that I shouldn't have. Anyway, I killed the window manager I was in, which killed the terminal that was running that update. And I'm pretty sure it was in the middle of that kernel installation. So when I rebooted the machine, the machine doesn't boot. I get an error. I get an error about VM liners dash Linux, that's a file or program on the system that can't be found. It's typically found if you install the Linux kernel. But for whatever reason, I'm getting that error. So my system won't actually boot. I can't get to a TTY. You can't get to anything without a working kernel. So get my handy USB stick. And I've got a copy of Arch Linux on this USB stick. And let me show you how I solved this problem rather easily. I know a lot of people, especially new to Linux users, would probably freak out. They reboot their machine, they get an error about the kernel, they can't do anything. Many people probably just assume, well, I've got to reinstall at this point. No, the fix actually was really simple. So the first step, obviously, is to have a USB stick with another Linux operating system installed so you can boot into the live USB stick. So I already had this USB stick with Arch Linux. And I plugged it in to my workstation here, the one that was having the issues. And I went ahead and booted directly into the live environment off that USB stick. And then once the live environment loaded up, just imagine that this was the live environment on this Arch Linux USB stick. I opened a terminal and we need to change root. We need to change root from the file system that is on the live USB stick to the file system that is actually on my NVMe drive on this system. Because that is what I need to reinstall the Linux kernel on. I need to install it on that drive, not the file system on the USB stick. So that is what the chroot command on Linux is for, change root. Now if you're using Arch Linux or most Arch Linux based distributions, you have the arch-chroot command available for you. If you're on Manjaro, they have a similar alias, a little script for chroot called Manjaro-chroot. But before you do any of that, you need to make sure that you're actually changing root over to the right drive, to the right device. So go ahead and do a LSBOK list block and then find the device that you want to write to. So there is my NVMe drive, I've got one partition on it. So what I needed to do at that point, I need to go ahead and mount that partition somewhere. So I did a sudo mount, you need root privileges if you're not the root user. Then I did slash dev slash NVMe01, I'll just copy that. We're going to mount that over to slash mnt is where I chose to mount that. And then if I hit enter, it would mount that over to slash mnt. Now that you have that drive in the physical machine mounted, then you would want to do a sudo chroot or in my case sudo arch chroot. And then I would get a new prompt, I'll be the root user inside the chroot. And then at that point inside the chroot, all I would need to do is pacman dash s linux to install the linux kernel or linux dash LTS. If I was a LTS linux kernel user or in my case, what I did is I installed both. I keep both the kernels on my system and that's it. Now I've reinstalled linux properly to the drive in the physical machine. And at that point, all I need to do at that point would be to exit out of the chroot and then run a U mount for unmount slash mnt. So it unmounts that drive and then reboot. Reboot the machine as it reboots, unplug the USB stick and voila, I got my machine back. And seriously that took just a few minutes where again, it's one of those problems that a lot of people, especially when you're new and you don't know what the problems are because I was like this as a new linux user. Sometimes you would have these bad updates and you'd reboot and you'd get a black screen for example. Now a black screen is different because typically you'll get the grub menu and then it'll log you in and you'll get a black screen. That's a driver issue. That's your video driver is bad. That's why it's trying to display a graphical environment for you but it can't. You just get a black screen. Well that's much easier. You don't even have to fool with the USB stick for the driver issue. You just drop to a TTY. So control alt F3, for example, to switch to TTY3, run a sudo pacman dash capital S Nvidia for the Nvidia drivers or whatever it happens to be. Whatever driver you need to install and reboot. You don't even have to fool with Charoot or anything like that. Really, you only have to fool with Charoot for just a couple of packages on your system. The kernel obviously, you may want to Charoot for grub issues is another one that commonly comes up. So when you reboot, you don't even get your grub screen. So what you'd have to do is instead of installing linux like I did, you would install the grub package and then you would also need to make the grub config. You can check the Arch Linux wiki. If you've ever done a base Arch Linux install, basically you just redo what you would do in an Arch Linux install. Install grub and then make the config, which is the automated process. Reboot. Voila. Your machine works again. So just some quick tips. One thing I do want to strongly recommend everybody that is strictly a linux user like myself. I always keep a USB stick with another linux operating system on it. Always. I have a laptop bag that a lot of times I keep with me. It's got a USB stick of Ubuntu LTS on it. I use that mainly as a rescue USB stick. This Arch Linux stick I had, I just happened to have it because I installed Arch Linux not too long ago off of this stick and I still had it, thankfully. And of course, the live USB rescue stick also serves a dual purpose because sometimes you'll meet friends and family that are not familiar with linux and they want to try it out and you can actually install linux for them or just give them the USB stick if you want. Let them try it out on the live USB stick. Now before I go, I need to thank a few special people. I want to thank the producers of this episode. Kate James Maxim, Matt Mimic, Mitchell Paul, Roy West, Armored Rack and Bash Potato, Chuck Commander Ingrid, George Lee, Methos, Nate Erion, Paul Pease, Archimdor, Polytech Realities for Let's Red Profit, Roland, Tools Devler, and Willie. These guys. They're my high steered patrons. Over on Patreon. Thanks for watching guys. This episode about me screwing up a Pac-Man SU update earlier today. It wouldn't have been possible. The show is also brought to you by each and every one of these fine ladies and gentlemen. On these names you're seeing on the screen right now, these are all my supporters over on Patreon without these guys. I couldn't do what I do. If you like my work and want to support me, subscribe to DistroTube over on Patreon. Alright guys, peace.