Hello everyone, I’m trying to leave Windows and chose Fedora KDE as a replacement so I’m dual booting on a single drive, and the live USB I used installed version 6.14.0-63.fc42.x86_64 of the kernel, then while installing everything (including RPM Nvidia libraries) I was proposed to update the kernel via Discover, it downloaded 6.16.12-200.fc42.x86_64. Now neither it nor the rescue item in the boot loader can go past a nearly immediate kernel panic and I can’t figure out how to get any logs out of it to figure out what might be wrong. What I’m sure of is that I do have a seemingly ok initramfs file for the new kernel version, tried dracut several times, and tried removing the quiet from the loading script with no luck in any way. Looking at the /boot/loader/entries, comparing the working 6.14 vs the failing 6.16 didn’t seem to have any difference other than the version. Where can I begin troubleshooting this? Everywhere I look suggests a nonexistant initramfs file but I do have it.
What was the full dracut command you used, and have you double-checked your grub entry for that kernel to ensure it has the correct UUID or device in there to boot from?
I tried both dracut --regenerate-all --force -v which includes /usr/bin/dracut --kver=6.16.12-200.fc42.x86_64 --force -v which I also ran independently and neither seemed to print any errors.
The UUID for the booting 6.14 boot entry is the same as the one for the panicking 6.16 entry, in fact the entire entry files are the same save which vmlinuz and initramfs files they point at. Both initramfs files for each version also exist in /boot/.
I also have very little idea of what I’m doing so apologies in advance :0)
Yes, there is a 6.14.0-63.fc42.x86_64 entry on grub which boots. That’s the one that I’m using as a baseline to compare with the updated panicking kernel. I worry that there’s something fundamentally wrong with my setup and I won’t be able to update at all - in which case I’m in the same boat as in Windows. I also tried uninstalling the 6.16 kernel via dnf and reinstalling, with no luck.
Edit: the panic occurs almost immediately, and there’s no visible error message, is there a way to get more information from the boot log? Like a break on panic or something instead of clearing the screen and going to the penguin one. It seems the fs doesn’t even mount so there’s nothing I can find if I boot through the old kernel version.
No, you are okay. the kernel and your PC are incompatible, it is normal with 6.16.x kernels.
What you should do is increase the number of kernels you can keep to 5 so any updates don’t drop your working kernel. It should never delete your running kernel anyway, but better to be sure.
You could also dnf remove your non working kernels.
F43 with 6.17 is available as a beta, full release in a few weeks.
This is what I do too, but it very likely won’t fit into the default 1 GiB boot partition on a machine with Nvidia drivers. It takes about 1.2 GiB on my setup.
Maybe an update: I’m not sure if I changed something or broke something, but I managed to see very very briefly that there was an actual message before the screen cleared out into a fullscreen panic with the unhelpful penguin, so I recorded it and managed to see that it said Initramfs unpacking failed: invalid magic at start of compressed archive.
I’m really baffled that I have to literally do magic now, but nevertheless it seems dracut is generating the initramfs img file in an incorrect way? Running file on it returns /boot/initramfs-6.16.12-200.fc42.x86_64.img: ASCII cpio archive (SVR4 with no CRC) which doesn’t seem like a compressed file but I might be wrong.
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/nvme0n1p5 974M 402M 505M 45% /boot
Found this link that mentioned how to check compression and I can confirm both the working img for 6.14 and the panic img for 6.16 are zstd compressed, in case it’s relevant.
Yes, both entries are idenctial save for the paths to the vmlinuz file and initramfs files.
total 408701
dr-xr-xr-x. 6 root root system_u:object_r:boot_t:s0 4096 Oct 21 15:34 .
dr-xr-xr-x. 1 root root system_u:object_r:root_t:s0 216 Oct 13 23:02 ..
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root unconfined_u:object_r:boot_t:s0 283136 Mar 23 2025 config-6.14.0-63.fc42.x86_64
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root system_u:object_r:boot_t:s0 290048 Oct 1 21:00 config-6.16.10-200.fc42.x86_64
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root unconfined_u:object_r:boot_t:s0 290048 Oct 11 21:00 config-6.16.12-200.fc42.x86_64
drwx------. 5 root root system_u:object_r:dosfs_t:s0 1024 Dec 31 1969 efi
drwx------. 3 root root system_u:object_r:boot_t:s0 4096 Oct 21 15:40 grub2
-rw-------. 1 root root unconfined_u:object_r:boot_t:s0 181026355 Oct 8 16:25 initramfs-0-rescue-5b012c519c9d461a8d44fc2872ee241c.img
-rw-------. 1 root root unconfined_u:object_r:boot_t:s0 40635127 Oct 20 13:27 initramfs-6.14.0-63.fc42.x86_64.img
-rw-------. 1 root root unconfined_u:object_r:boot_t:s0 45153865 Oct 20 13:28 initramfs-6.16.10-200.fc42.x86_64.img
-rw-------. 1 root root unconfined_u:object_r:boot_t:s0 45552732 Oct 21 15:34 initramfs-6.16.12-200.fc42.x86_64.img
drwxr-xr-x. 3 root root unconfined_u:object_r:boot_t:s0 4096 Oct 8 16:24 loader
drwx------. 2 root root system_u:object_r:lost_found_t:s0 16384 Oct 8 16:16 lost+found
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root unconfined_u:object_r:boot_t:s0 45 Oct 8 16:24 symvers-6.14.0-63.fc42.x86_64.xz -> /lib/modules/6.14.0-63.fc42.x86_64/symvers.xz
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root system_u:object_r:boot_t:s0 47 Oct 8 19:42 symvers-6.16.10-200.fc42.x86_64.xz -> /lib/modules/6.16.10-200.fc42.x86_64/symvers.xz
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root unconfined_u:object_r:boot_t:s0 47 Oct 20 14:07 symvers-6.16.12-200.fc42.x86_64.xz -> /lib/modules/6.16.12-200.fc42.x86_64/symvers.xz
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root unconfined_u:object_r:system_map_t:s0 11588933 Mar 23 2025 System.map-6.14.0-63.fc42.x86_64
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root system_u:object_r:system_map_t:s0 11840761 Oct 1 21:00 System.map-6.16.10-200.fc42.x86_64
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root unconfined_u:object_r:system_map_t:s0 11847227 Oct 11 21:00 System.map-6.16.12-200.fc42.x86_64
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root unconfined_u:object_r:boot_t:s0 17656168 Oct 19 15:40 vmlinuz-0-rescue-5b012c519c9d461a8d44fc2872ee241c
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root unconfined_u:object_r:boot_t:s0 16968040 Mar 23 2025 vmlinuz-6.14.0-63.fc42.x86_64
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root unconfined_u:object_r:boot_t:s0 160 Mar 23 2025 .vmlinuz-6.14.0-63.fc42.x86_64.hmac
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root system_u:object_r:boot_t:s0 17656168 Oct 1 21:00 vmlinuz-6.16.10-200.fc42.x86_64
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root system_u:object_r:boot_t:s0 162 Oct 1 21:00 .vmlinuz-6.16.10-200.fc42.x86_64.hmac
-rwxr-xr-x. 1 root root unconfined_u:object_r:boot_t:s0 17656168 Oct 11 21:00 vmlinuz-6.16.12-200.fc42.x86_64
-rw-r--r--. 1 root root unconfined_u:object_r:boot_t:s0 162 Oct 11 21:00 .vmlinuz-6.16.12-200.fc42.x86_64.hmac
There’s a remaining 6.16.10 entry that I tried to delete at first since it failed to boot, then a few days later I was prompted another update which was 6.16.12 that spurred me to try again. Just in case I have checked countless times that everything I’m doing on this attempt is strictly on 6.16.12, the latest existing version, that appears on grub.
OK - that’s me out of ideas - they all look sensible, the right size, sensible permissions and owners.
All I can suggest is a dracut regen with sudo dracut --kver 6.16.12-200.fc42.x64_64 --force and post the output. It looks normal to me, unless I’m missing something obvious. You could stick a -L 4 on the dracut command to encourage a little more reporting.
However… first of all can you try to open one of the initramfs files that won’t boot - 7z should do it - you’ll get something like from 7z, but ark will open it if you’re on KDE (Gnome will have some form of archive tool too, I just don’t know what it is!):
sudo 7z l initramfs-6.16.8-200.fc42.x86_64.img 22:43 Tue 21-Oct
7-Zip [64] 16.02 : Copyright (c) 1999-2016 Igor Pavlov : 2016-05-21
p7zip Version 16.02 (locale=en_GB.UTF-8,Utf16=on,HugeFiles=on,64 bits,16 CPUs AMD Ryzen 7 3700X 8-Core Processor (870F10),ASM,AES-NI)
Scanning the drive for archives:
1 file, 43487384 bytes (42 MiB)
Listing archive: initramfs-6.16.8-200.fc42.x86_64.img
--
Path = initramfs-6.16.8-200.fc42.x86_64.img
Type = Cpio
WARNINGS:
There are data after the end of archive
Physical Size = 23484
Tail Size = 43463900
SubType = New ASCII
Date Time Attr Size Compressed Name
------------------- ----- ------------ ------------ ------------------------
2025-09-14 01:00:00 D.... 0 0 .
2025-09-14 01:00:00 ..... 2 2 early_cpio
2025-09-14 01:00:00 D.... 0 0 kernel
2025-09-14 01:00:00 D.... 0 0 kernel/x86
2025-09-14 01:00:00 D.... 0 0 kernel/x86/microcode
2025-09-14 01:00:00 ..... 22596 22596 kernel/x86/microcode/AuthenticAMD.bin
------------------- ----- ------------ ------------ ------------------------
2025-09-14 01:00:00 22598 22598 2 files, 4 folders
Warnings: 1
I just want to confirm that it really IS a cpio file, compressed and so on. This isn’t ideal but it’ll at least show us if there’s something weird going on with magic numbers (which are just the first few bytes of a file - the linux equivalent of calling something .doc if it’s a word document and so on).
That looks fine - I assume you’ve tried it, and it also fails to boot and spits out a flashed up message about a bad magic number?
Updated kernel today - 6.17. Totally borked in the same way for you?
One last thing to check before I’m entirely out of ideas; what do you have in /etc/dracut.conf and within the /etc/dracut.conf.d/ directory? Anything you have changed in there as a default?
Just tried updating the kernel to 6.17 (also uninstalled the 6.16 failures via dnf), seems to have the same problem. Dracut confs are all empty, and the requested output is
I see two subvols? Could that be relevant? This is a partition in a dual boot environment. Luckily 6.14 keeps booting but the new update failing has me worried a bit so I’ve halted my data migration.
I now have no idea what the cause of this actually is - maybe I’m overlooking something obvious but I can’t see any reason for it failng with that “broken magic” error message you posted. I know what that message means, but it doesn’t seem to be broken at all.
As far as I casn see, dracut should be building a perfectly good initramfs.
Actually, (and I’ve no idea if this will work!), does it boot or give an error message if you cp your perfectly good, working 6.14 initramfs over todays fresh 6.17 realease. i.e. take a working initramfs and copy it to act as the initramfs for 6.17.
It may be that it has the version number baked into the cpio image and you end up booting the 6.14 kernel anyway, but it might be interesting to try, given that it’s knackered anyway!
Hopefully a final update: it seems like I finally found a way to boot! My system was basically new, I didn’t even have time to properly bork it beyond recognition, and the only “big” change I’d done was install Nvidia drivers from RPM Fusion, so I looked into that again and randomly ran sudo akmods --rebuild, and since then, I can boot into 6.17 without problems repeatedly. I’m hoping that that was the end of it, but I’ll stay baffled as to why if that was the fix, the stated error was failing to mount the filesystem
Welp. Sadly, I decided to run an update today and I’m back on square one. I tried to rebuild akmods and to run dracut again in as many ways as possible with no luck. The breaking update according to dnf history info looks like this.
Transaction ID : 53
Begin time : 2025-10-27 18:12:39
Begin rpmdb : b313acf8913b61ec5da2e1e37d4de8b26dffc72716de502c50dc28e89a47ac48
End time : 2025-10-27 18:12:42
End rpmdb : 221d7c4605d981e3f0e13fed266d69ab66179027e374020254f7da2428be627b
User : 1000 janq <janq>
Status : Ok
Releasever : 42
Description : dnf update
Comment :
Packages altered:
Action Package Reason Repository
Upgrade amd-gpu-firmware-0:20251021-1.fc42.noarch Group updates
Upgrade linux-firmware-whence-0:20251021-1.fc42.noarch Dependency updates
Upgrade qcom-wwan-firmware-0:20251021-1.fc42.noarch External User updates
Upgrade iwlwifi-mld-firmware-0:20251021-1.fc42.noarch External User updates
Upgrade amd-ucode-firmware-0:20251021-1.fc42.noarch Group updates
Upgrade atheros-firmware-0:20251021-1.fc42.noarch Group updates
Upgrade brcmfmac-firmware-0:20251021-1.fc42.noarch Group updates
Upgrade cirrus-audio-firmware-0:20251021-1.fc42.noarch Group updates
Upgrade intel-audio-firmware-0:20251021-1.fc42.noarch Group updates
Upgrade intel-gpu-firmware-0:20251021-1.fc42.noarch Group updates
Upgrade intel-vsc-firmware-0:20251021-1.fc42.noarch Group updates
Upgrade iwlegacy-firmware-0:20251021-1.fc42.noarch Group updates
Upgrade iwlwifi-dvm-firmware-0:20251021-1.fc42.noarch Group updates
Upgrade iwlwifi-mvm-firmware-0:20251021-1.fc42.noarch Group updates
Upgrade libedit-0:3.1-56.20251016cvs.fc42.x86_64 Dependency updates
Upgrade libedit-0:3.1-56.20251016cvs.fc42.i686 External User updates
Upgrade libertas-firmware-0:20251021-1.fc42.noarch Group updates
Upgrade linux-firmware-0:20251021-1.fc42.noarch Weak Dependency updates
Upgrade mt7xxx-firmware-0:20251021-1.fc42.noarch Group updates
Upgrade nxpwireless-firmware-0:20251021-1.fc42.noarch Group updates
Upgrade realtek-firmware-0:20251021-1.fc42.noarch Group updates
Upgrade steam-devices-0:1.0.0.101^git20250927.d3f7cd6-4.fc42.noarch External User updates
Upgrade tiwilink-firmware-0:20251021-1.fc42.noarch Group updates
Replaced amd-gpu-firmware-0:20251011-1.fc42.noarch Group @System
Replaced amd-ucode-firmware-0:20251011-1.fc42.noarch Group @System
Replaced atheros-firmware-0:20251011-1.fc42.noarch Group @System
Replaced brcmfmac-firmware-0:20251011-1.fc42.noarch Group @System
Replaced cirrus-audio-firmware-0:20251011-1.fc42.noarch Group @System
Replaced intel-audio-firmware-0:20251011-1.fc42.noarch Group @System
Replaced intel-gpu-firmware-0:20251011-1.fc42.noarch Group @System
Replaced intel-vsc-firmware-0:20251011-1.fc42.noarch Group @System
Replaced iwlegacy-firmware-0:20251011-1.fc42.noarch Group @System
Replaced iwlwifi-dvm-firmware-0:20251011-1.fc42.noarch Group @System
Replaced iwlwifi-mld-firmware-0:20251011-1.fc42.noarch External User @System
Replaced iwlwifi-mvm-firmware-0:20251011-1.fc42.noarch Group @System
Replaced libedit-0:3.1-55.20250104cvs.fc42.x86_64 Dependency @System
Replaced libedit-0:3.1-55.20250104cvs.fc42.i686 External User @System
Replaced libertas-firmware-0:20251011-1.fc42.noarch Group @System
Replaced linux-firmware-0:20251011-1.fc42.noarch Weak Dependency @System
Replaced linux-firmware-whence-0:20251011-1.fc42.noarch Dependency @System
Replaced mt7xxx-firmware-0:20251011-1.fc42.noarch Group @System
Replaced nxpwireless-firmware-0:20251011-1.fc42.noarch Group @System
Replaced qcom-wwan-firmware-0:20251011-1.fc42.noarch External User @System
Replaced realtek-firmware-0:20251011-1.fc42.noarch Group @System
Replaced steam-devices-0:1.0.0.101^git20240522.e2971e4-2.fc42.noarch External User @System
Replaced tiwilink-firmware-0:20251011-1.fc42.noarch Group @System
I also tried your suggestion of using the working 6.14 initramfs and just renaming it to 6.17 — which also failed! So it’s extremely likely that the problem is something completely different. The weirdest part is that (and this is something that happens seemingly randomly), when I tried that, I chose 6.17 on grub, things turned black, then I was again on grub, chose 6.17 again, then it decided to boot Windows which is like the fourth option in grub, though it might have also been a BIOS failover though I don’t know if that’s even a thing. After that, checking the file hashes of both 6.14 and 6.17 confirm they’re still identical.
My new theory is that grub is what’s broken. Is there another bootloader I could use?
Edit: Oh and I found out about bootctl which says this
systemd-boot not installed in ESP.
/boot/loader/entries/5b012c519c9d461a8d44fc2872ee241c-6.14.0-63.fc42.x86_64.conf:6: Unknown line 'grub_users', ignoring.
/boot/loader/entries/5b012c519c9d461a8d44fc2872ee241c-6.14.0-63.fc42.x86_64.conf:7: Unknown line 'grub_arg', ignoring.
/boot/loader/entries/5b012c519c9d461a8d44fc2872ee241c-6.14.0-63.fc42.x86_64.conf:8: Unknown line 'grub_class', ignoring.
/boot/loader/entries/5b012c519c9d461a8d44fc2872ee241c-0-rescue.conf:6: Unknown line 'grub_users', ignoring.
/boot/loader/entries/5b012c519c9d461a8d44fc2872ee241c-0-rescue.conf:7: Unknown line 'grub_arg', ignoring.
/boot/loader/entries/5b012c519c9d461a8d44fc2872ee241c-0-rescue.conf:8: Unknown line 'grub_class', ignoring.
/boot/loader/entries/5b012c519c9d461a8d44fc2872ee241c-6.17.4-200.fc42.x86_64.conf:6: Unknown line 'grub_users', ignoring.
/boot/loader/entries/5b012c519c9d461a8d44fc2872ee241c-6.17.4-200.fc42.x86_64.conf:7: Unknown line 'grub_arg', ignoring.
/boot/loader/entries/5b012c519c9d461a8d44fc2872ee241c-6.17.4-200.fc42.x86_64.conf:8: Unknown line 'grub_class', ignoring.
System:
Firmware: n/a (n/a)
Firmware Arch: x64
Secure Boot: disabled
TPM2 Support: no
Measured UKI: no
Boot into FW: supported
Current Boot Loader:
Product: GRUB 2.12
Features: ✗ Boot counting
✗ Menu timeout control
✗ One-shot menu timeout control
✗ Default entry control
✗ One-shot entry control
✗ Support for XBOOTLDR partition
✗ Support for passing random seed to OS
✗ Load drop-in drivers
✗ Support Type #1 sort-key field
✗ Support @saved pseudo-entry
✗ Support Type #1 devicetree field
✗ Enroll SecureBoot keys
✗ Retain SHIM protocols
✗ Menu can be disabled
✗ Multi-Profile UKIs are supported
✓ Boot loader set partition information
Partition: /dev/disk/by-partuuid/cc0a9b2d-a25d-41ea-a4a1-3a21d8112508
Random Seed:
System Token: not set
Exists: no
Available Boot Loaders on ESP:
ESP: /boot/efi (/dev/disk/by-partuuid/cc0a9b2d-a25d-41ea-a4a1-3a21d8112508)
File: ├─/EFI/BOOT/bootx64.efi
├─/EFI/BOOT/BOOTIA32.EFI
├─/EFI/BOOT/fbia32.efi
└─/EFI/BOOT/fbx64.efi
Boot Loaders Listed in EFI Variables:
Title: Fedora
ID: 0x0006
Status: active, boot-order
Partition: /dev/disk/by-partuuid/cc0a9b2d-a25d-41ea-a4a1-3a21d8112508
File: └─/EFI/FEDORA/SHIM.EFI
Title: Windows Boot Manager
ID: 0x0000
Status: active, boot-order
Partition: /dev/disk/by-partuuid/cc0a9b2d-a25d-41ea-a4a1-3a21d8112508
File: └─/EFI/MICROSOFT/BOOT/BOOTMGFW.EFI
Boot Loader Entries:
$BOOT: /boot (/dev/disk/by-partuuid/fa34888d-9df0-4466-9acf-926412d53456)
token: fedora
Default Boot Loader Entry:
type: Boot Loader Specification Type #1 (.conf)
title: Fedora Linux (6.17.4-200.fc42.x86_64) 42 (KDE Plasma Desktop Edition)
id: 5b012c519c9d461a8d44fc2872ee241c-6.17.4-200.fc42.x86_64.conf
source: /boot//loader/entries/5b012c519c9d461a8d44fc2872ee241c-6.17.4-200.fc42.x86_64.conf (on the Extended Boot Loader Partition)
version: 6.17.4-200.fc42.x86_64
linux: /boot//vmlinuz-6.17.4-200.fc42.x86_64
initrd: /boot//initramfs-6.17.4-200.fc42.x86_64.img $tuned_initrd (No such file or directory)
options: root=UUID=f140b1da-f1a6-4c89-8860-9621497cc1ed ro rootflags=subvol=root rhgb quiet rd.driver.blacklist=nouveau,nova_core modprobe.blacklist=nouveau,nova_core $tuned_params
WARNING: default boot entry is broken
