[Solved] new kernel boots exactly once, but not a second tim

[koslowj]

I had to re-install Gentoo and successfully built kernel 6.6.30, which booted fine. However, after shutting the machine down, I can no longer boot this kernel. Older kernels I had saved, like 6.6.21 and 6.6.13 still can boot.

I've since rebuild the kernel 6.6.30 after booting from 6.6.21, but still cannot boot 6.6.30.

All my kernels reside in a /boot partition, with a grub subdirectory and an efi partition linked to another subdirectory.

Even after building the kernel with "make && make modules_install", "make install", "genkernel --install initramfs" and finally "grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg", the attempt to reboot into 6.6.60 results in

Loading Linux 6.6.30-gentoo-x86_64-nvidia ...
error: file '/vmlinuz-6.6.30-gentoo-x86_64-nvidia' not found.
Loading initial ramdisk ...
error: you need to load the kernel first.

However, booting into 6.6.21 gives the meesage

Loading Linux6.6.21-gentoo-x86_64-nvidia ...
EFI stub: Loaded initrd from LINUX_EFI_INITRD_MEDIA_GUID device path

which then succeeds in booting.

Inspecting the file /boot/grub/grub.cfg so far I cannot make out a difference in the entries for 6.6.30 and 6.6.21

I don't recall changing anything inadvertently after the first successful boot into 6.6.30, but I may well have done so.

[NeddySeagoon]

koslowj

[logrusx]

Also show us the output of `make install`. Do not rebuild, just run it right away and it should give us an idea where it installs the kernel. Maybe also the output of `genkernel --install initramfs`.
The contents of /etc/fstab may also prove useful.

Best Regards,
Georgi

[koslowj]

The /boot directory is empty, if the boot partition is not mounted. There is no other vmlinuz-file anywhere but on the boot partition.

"make install" from the /usr/src/linux directory says

INSTALL /boot
Reading /usr/lib/kernel/install.conf...
/usr/lib/kernel/install.conf configures layout=compat
/usr/lib/kernel/install.conf configures initrd_generator=none
/usr/lib/kernel/install.conf configures uki_generator=none

and results in the previous 6.6.30 kernel to be saved with an .old suffix. It is identical to the newly installed 6.6.30 kernel.

/etc/fstab contains the line

UUID=... /boot ext4 noauto,noatime 1 2

OK, after reading up on the format of /etc/fstab, the second-to-last number should be 0 instead of 1, and indeed, then the 6.6.30 kernel does boot.
I guess I turned that 0 into a 1 because of older out-commented lines containing a 1 when I edited /etc/fstab in order to adjust some UUIDs... Those
lines are erased now.