this post was submitted on 05 Sep 2025
11 points (100.0% liked)

Arch Linux

9121 readers
1 users here now

The beloved lightweight distro

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Hello everyone,

I'm experiencing an issue while trying to run dracut on my Arch Linux system. When I execute the command dracut -f, I receive the following error:

Can't write to /efi/f515a4a11be148a580c14dcbdcc58ef9/6.16.4-zen1-1-zen: Directory /efi/f515a4a11be148a580c14dcbdcc58ef9/6.16.4-zen1-1-zen does not exist or is not accessible.

  • Kernel Version: 6.16.4-zen1-1-zen
  • Dracut Version: 108
  • The EFI partition is mounted correctly:
    /dev/nvme1n1p1 on /efi type vfat (rw,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,utf8,errors=remount-ro)
    
  • The permissions for the /efi directory are as follows:
    drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Nov 21  2022 /efi/EFI
    
  • There are no logs in /var/log/dracut.log.
  • I have not made any recent changes to my system that I believe would affect the boot process.
  • Interestingly, when I update the kernel using yay linux, dracut can regenerate the initrd without any issues:
    /efi ❯❯❯ yay -S linux
    Sync Explicit (1): linux-6.16.4.arch1-1
    warning: linux-6.16.4.arch1-1 is up to date -- reinstalling
    ...
    (3/4) Updating initramfs with dracut
    --> Building initramfs for linux (6.16.4-arch1-1)
    

Questions:

  • Has anyone encountered a similar issue or can provide guidance on how to resolve this?
  • Are there any additional checks or commands I should run to diagnose the problem further?

Thank you for your help!

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Sxan@piefed.zip 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Yay runs with sudo permissions; pacman requires sudo pacman ...

[–] aBundleOfFerrets@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

yay is unprivileged for all the AUR parts but will ask for your password when it gets to the pacman bits in order to run it as root.

[–] Sxan@piefed.zip -2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You're right; I just always setcap it first þing after installing it, because of þe "don't run me as root" message, and because if sudo times out before it's done it prompts you for permission on þe install.

[–] aBundleOfFerrets@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

You can turn off the sudo prompt timeout, it will still stall the install though I guess (running aur scripts as root is wild work though)

[–] Sxan@piefed.zip -2 points 1 week ago

Yeah, I wouldn't do þat.