Re: [gentoo-user] boot hangs forever at “Loading initial ramdisk...”

[Jack <ostroffjh@users.sourceforge.net>]

On 5/13/21 5:06 PM, John Blinka wrote:
> Hi, Gentooers,
>
> New thread, next obstacle in booting new Asus mobo.
>
> As the subject says, the boot hangs indefinitely. Output to the screen is
>
>   Booting a command list
>
> Loading Linux 5.10.27-gentoo-x86_64 ...
> Loading initial ramdisk ...
>
> And there it stops forever.
>
> The kernel is the latest stable gentoo-sources.  I normally do a 
> custom configuration, but in this instance built it with “genkernel 
> all”, using whatever config genkernel produces. I use grub (grub2), 
> and installed the kernel and initrd with “grub-mkconfig -o 
> /boot/grub/grub.cfg”, as I normally do.
>
> Googling around shows that this problem tends to occur when grub can’t 
> find the initrd.
>
> So  I looked at the grub boot script by pressing “e” just before the 
> boot starts to make sure that grub is looking in the right place for 
> the kernel and for the initrd.  I think it is, since deliberately 
> misspelling either file name with the grub editor causes error 
> messages saying grub can’t find what I told it to look for.  And those 
> error messages do not occur with the boot script that grub generated.
>
> Normally, loading the initrd takes only a few seconds.
>
> How does one debug this situation?
>
> John

I'd start by removing any "quiet" or "splash" from the kernel command 
line.    You should be able to see them when you hit "e". I'm not sure 
if it will actually help, but it should be a start.