Arch Linux

polillaoscura

Member

Registered: 2026-04-18

Posts: 5

[Solved] Arch start stuck at Multi-User System

Hi all.

A couple of days ago I decided to encrypt my root and disk_2 drives. It went well, and I was careful to not encrypt the /boot partition (I use refind to boot). I'm desparate asking for help, here is what is happening:

1. I added the kernel params to my refind boot rd.luks.uuid=<uuid> & rd.luks.name=<uuid>=root root=/dev/mapper/root
2. Whenever I try to boot I get asked the drive password, which I enter.
3. The process seems to work fine until it gets stuck in Multi-User system.

I'm not entirely sure what is going on so I would like to ask for your help. Here is a link(https://termbin.com/ly71) to the result of

journalctl -b -1

.

Last edited by polillaoscura (2026-04-19 19:52:31)

Scimmia

Fellow

Registered: 2012-09-01

Posts: 13,712

Re: [Solved] Arch start stuck at Multi-User System

And you're expecting it to ... do what?

side note, you use either rd.luks.uuid or rd.luks.name, not both.

polillaoscura

Member

Registered: 2026-04-18

Posts: 5

Re: [Solved] Arch start stuck at Multi-User System

Thanks for the quick reply.
I am expecting the boot process to finish and for the base tty to ask me for a login. I'm not sure what is the technical term, but the boot seems just stuck at "Reached Target Multi-User System" and it doesn't prompt the tty asking me for a login.

Will try just using rd.luks.name.

> Edit

After doing this, the boot gets stuck at Switch Root, showing a "[Failed] Failed to start Switch Root" message followed by 'see systemctl status initrd-switch-root-service' for details. I press enter to enter emergency mode, but it says:

Cannot open access to console, the root account is locked. See sulogin(8) man page for more details

.

Last edited by polillaoscura (2026-04-19 00:49:21)

polillaoscura

Member

Registered: 2026-04-18

Posts: 5

Re: [Solved] Arch start stuck at Multi-User System

Another thing I forgot to add is that I'm booting from an Arch Linux Usb ISO and arch-chrooting into the folder to update the initramfs and install pacman packages.

Last edited by polillaoscura (2026-04-19 01:04:40)

polillaoscura

Member

Registered: 2026-04-18

Posts: 5

Re: [Solved] Arch start stuck at Multi-User System

Another update:

I'm stuck again at the "Reached target Multi-User System".
It wasn't loading after removing the rd.luks.uuid because I put the wrong uuid, so I fixed it and I'm still stuck at the same place again.

I've tried to ctrl+alt+f(1,2,3,4,5,6) all of them show a black screen. tty1 is the one that is stuck at "Reached target Multi-User System".
I installed nvidia-open-dkms for my 5080 and am connected to the internet via ethernet. I am also using the linux kernel (not lts) and the linux-headers pacman pkgs too.

Last edited by polillaoscura (2026-04-19 01:27:27)

polillaoscura

Member

Registered: 2026-04-18

Posts: 5

Re: [Solved] Arch start stuck at Multi-User System

Hi all. Was able to fix it. (I've been at this for like 3 days).

In the end it was just misconfiguration of my /etc/fstab and all of my tty services being disabled.

These steps happened while arch-chrooted from a USB that i used to install Arch.
The fix was inspecting my machine's services by running

 ls -l -R /etc/systemd/system 

to see if they were poiting to the correct place. Then, I checked if they were enabled by running

 systemctl --root=/ list-units 

. I saw that all of my ttys, as well as a couple other services, were disabled so I enabled them.

Will close this. Thanks for you time.

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 74,659

Re: [Solved] Arch start stuck at Multi-User System

\o/
Please always remember to mark resolved threads by editing your initial posts subject - so others will know that there's no task left, but maybe a solution to find.
Thanks.

---

How to upload text · How to boot w/o GUI · Disable Windows Fast-Start! · Fix your xinitrc