Trying to fix: cannot open access to console, the root account is locked. but cannot mount Luks partition with live usb

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1

Hello all, first of all I am more or less a complete noob, as you will notice most likely later on anyway, sorry already if I missed anything important.
I am running Fedora 42. I have a boot partition and a luks encrypted root partition on my harddrive.
I was running a dnf upgrade forgot that it was still running and closed the laptop, which normally sends it to suspend. A few hours later I went back to the laptop, saw it was frozen on the screen and powered it off with the power off button.

Upon restart I get asked for my disk encryption password and then takes a while to load, after that it lets me choose between my fedora 42 workstation or a fedora 35 (why not an in between version, I dont know)

Whatever I choose I get

Warning: /dev/disk/by-uuid/UUID does not exist

and

Cannot open access to console, the root acount is locked.

in the fedora 42 I cant do anything in the shell in the 35 I can type journalctl and get a lot of stuff among other things I get

Warning: dracut-initqueue: starting timeout scripts

Things I have tried:

  • decrypt and mount via live/usb (plan was to follow these instructions: restore bootloader with live usb )
    sudo cryptsetup luksOpen /dev/nvm0n1p2 cryptdrive which asked me for password and was fine as far as i can tell as lsblk showed me the /dev/mapper/cryptdrive
    then sudo mount /dev/mapper/cryptdrive /mnt
    this came up with

mount: /mnt: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/mapper/cryptdrive, missing codepage or helper program, or other error.
dmesg(1) may have more information after failed mount system call.

  • wanted to try dracut -f --regenerate -all tried it in grub (prob wrong) and then it told me there is no dracut

  • in grub tried to remove rhgb and quiet and added rd.shell (which came with error msg that it cant find rd.shell) and then spit out the initqueue problem again

also sudo fdisk -l turns up with (dont know if that has anything to do with anything)

Device Boot Start End Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/nvme0n1p1 * 2048 2099199 2097152 1G 83 Linux
/dev/nvme0n1p2 2099200 500117503 498018304 237.5G 83 Linux
GPT PMBR size mismatch (5355839 != 121077760) will be corrected by write.
The backup GPT table is not on the end of the device.

as I am a fool I of course didnt make a backup before everything went south, so I would prefer to get it running again. Any help is majorly appreciated.

I already tried to skim the forum for ideas but it seems most people with a similar issue can still mount via live usb. And secretly I am of course hoping that because of my little understanding of this I have just not realised an easy solution. Also because often I am confused in which shell I am supposed to put my commands.

2

I’ve never been in that situation before, but just making sure you’ve tried some of the suggestions here: Mount LUKS partitions for System Recovery.

3

thanks for the reply, unfortunately all of the solutions there depend on being able to mount and this always ends in

mount: /mnt: wrong fs type, bad option, bad superblock on /dev/nvme0n1p2, missing codepage or helper program, or other error.
dmesg(1) may have more information after failed mount system call.

4

You have perhaps setup LVM on /dev/nvme0n1p2.

What gives lsblk -f at this point ? (ie: after the successful cryptsetup luksOpen )

5

Screenshot From 2025-12-29 09-04-13
Screenshot From 2025-12-29 09-04-131256×462 53.9 KB

6

This is not what I expected, but your screenshot is perhaps truncated.
It would be far better to cut&paste and use the </> button (Preformated text).

What gives the following commands ? (cut&paste please):

sudo file -s /dev/mapper/cryptdrive
sudo pvs -a
sudo lsblk -f
7

thanks for the answer, the screenshot is not truncated, it just doesnt give more information about the cryptdrive

liveuser@localhost-live:~$ sudo file -s /dev/mapper/cryptdrive
/dev/mapper/cryptdrive: symbolic link to ../dm-0
liveuser@localhost-live:~$ sudo pvs -a
PV                     VG Fmt Attr PSize PFree
/dev/live-base                —     0     0
/dev/mapper/cryptdrive        —     0     0
/dev/nvme0n1p1                —     0     0
/dev/nvme0n1p2                —     0     0
/dev/sda1                     —     0     0
/dev/sda2                     —     0     0
/dev/zram0                    —     0     0
liveuser@localhost-live:~$ sudo lsblk -f
NAME FSTYPE FSVER LABEL             UUID                                 FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS
loop0
erofs                          742b82e5-946a-41fc-8d1d-fa5acc9610f4       0   100% /run/rootfsbase
sda  iso966 Jolie Fedora-WS-Live-43 2025-10-23-04-15-58-00
├─sda1
│    iso966 Jolie Fedora-WS-Live-43 2025-10-23-04-15-58-00                     0   100% /run/initramfs/live
└─sda2
vfat   FAT16 BOOT              AD6C-5955
zram0
swap   1     zram0             3b19e322-9d36-4140-8862-41b81957a5aa                [SWAP]
nvme0n1
│
├─nvme0n1p1
│    ext4   1.0                     17d68e72-24fe-4d7c-a194-b4c48a856901
└─nvme0n1p2
│  crypto 2                       fb162e75-7003-4789-aa5b-cd1811be2718
└─cryptdrive

liveuser@localhost-live:~$
8

I dont know if this is in any way relevant
after running sudo mount /dev/cryptdrive /mnt
and getting the same error msg as in the first post I ran sudo dmesg -H -l err

which gave me this output

Dec29 12:48] EXT4-fs (dm-0): VFS: Can’t find ext4 filesystem
[ +0.000351] EXT4-fs (dm-0): VFS: Can’t find ext4 filesystem
[ +0.000215] EXT4-fs (dm-0): VFS: Can’t find ext4 filesystem
[ +0.000271] FAT-fs (dm-0): bogus number of reserved sectors
[ +0.000548] erofs (device dm-0): cannot find valid erofs superblock

9

I vaguely remember that the autoactivation of LVM volumes changed recently (but I’m not an
LVM expert and do not use LVM anymore). I missed also the -L option to the file command.

The dmesg trace shows I think the attempts of the mount command.

What gives:

sudo parted /dev/nvme0n1 print
sudo file -s -L /dev/mapper/cryptdrive
sudo pvscan --cache -aay
sudo lsblk -f
10 
liveuser@localhost-live:~$ sudo parted /dev/nvme0n1 print
Model: SAMSUNG MZVLW256HEHP-000L7 (nvme)
Disk /dev/nvme0n1: 256GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos
Disk Flags: 

Number  Start   End     Size    Type     File system  Flags
 1      1049kB  1075MB  1074MB  primary  ext4         boot
 2      1075MB  256GB   255GB   primary

liveuser@localhost-live:~$ sudo file -s -L /dev/mapper/cryptdrive
/dev/mapper/cryptdrive: data
liveuser@localhost-live:~$ sudo pvscan --cache -aay
liveuser@localhost-live:~$ sudo lsblk -f
NAME FSTYPE FSVER LABEL             UUID                                 FSAVAIL FSUSE% MOUNTPOINTS
loop0
     erofs                          742b82e5-946a-41fc-8d1d-fa5acc9610f4       0   100% /run/rootfsbase
sda  iso966 Jolie Fedora-WS-Live-43 2025-10-23-04-15-58-00                              
├─sda1
│    iso966 Jolie Fedora-WS-Live-43 2025-10-23-04-15-58-00                     0   100% /run/initramfs/live
└─sda2
     vfat   FAT16 BOOT              AD6C-5955                                           
zram0
     swap   1     zram0             01c457cc-87c2-4c1e-88e7-5c70af042ed3                [SWAP]
nvme0n1
│                                                                                       
├─nvme0n1p1
│    ext4   1.0                     17d68e72-24fe-4d7c-a194-b4c48a856901                
└─nvme0n1p2
  │  crypto 2                       fb162e75-7003-4789-aa5b-cd1811be2718                
  └─cryptdrive
                                                                                        
liveuser@localhost-live:~$

so if it is ext4 shouldnt fsck help?

11

This confirm, as mount and lsblk did, that this cryptdrive is of unknown type: not
ext4, not lvm (LVM2_member).

No: it will fail as well.

Sorry, I am lost here. Let’s hope that someone else may help.

12

ah yes i didnt see that the ext4 was refering to the boot partition.

thanks a lot for your help and effort anyway, lets hope someone else chimes in with more ideas