I'm trying to get a working dual boot with Windows 10 (working) and Kali Linux (not working). After the "installation" (I'm not sure the term is correct), Kali was booting for the first boot and this error appeared:

[     7.078689] ata6.00: failed to set xfermode (err_mode=0x40)
Gave up waiting for root file system device

Then it prints a small list of the most common causes to the problem and drops to a initramfs shell (from BusyBox). At this point I get stuck on the shell: I don't know what I have to do to boot the system, of if I have to make one more (at the moment of writing, the third) fresh install.

To get the system on the drive (FORESEE 128GB SSD), I created a bootable USB following the Kali Official Documentation (even if earlier I used Balena Etcher to burn the iso, so I encountered this error for the first time, then I restored my USB stick and partitions and restarted from scratch) and installed the OS. On the other hand, Kali live works great.

SPECS
My PC is a Medion Akoya p62006 (website: Spanish; British), so most of its part are OEM (and there is some kind of custom boot). The "BIOS" looks like a BIOS (like a gray-blue old style BIOS) but it claims to be UEFI, moreover it seems like I have no bootloader (in the BIOS I can see a "Windows boot Manager" that manages nothing, so when there was Kali (not working obviously) along with Windows the PC automatically booted into Windows, I had to press F8 to get into kali GRUB bootloader. I think that is possible that Windows simply doesn't detect it as an OS, since it doesn't work but I'm not sure). Anyway if I run on Windows "msinfo32" it says that BIOS mode is UEFI.

I googled the problem and came out with the folling causes:

• Slow boot time: impossible (since I have an SSD, it takes just 12 sec to boot Windows...)
• Kernel Bug: impossible again (kali 2019.2's kernel is up to date, it is 4.19 or something)
• SSD incompatibility: I hope it's not, because I wouldn't know what to do then...

Does anybody know what xfermode is? And what should I try?
Thanks in advance

UPDATE 1

I tried to boot into kali recovery mode (no succes) and I was prompted again at the same initramfs shell, but this time I noticed something that previously I neglected:

ALERT! /dev/sdd6 does not exist. Dropping to a shell!

I then run the folling command to list partitions on the disk (in the shell I have to use there are few commands... I had to search to find some):

blkid -c /dev/null 

I got an overview of the partitions and I was able to recognize that the ext4 partition is the /dev/sdc6 and the swap /dev/sdc7.

But there's a problem, I clearly remember that when I installed Kali with the USB installer it showed me the partitions before writing to the disk and the one with ext4 was /dev/sdd6, while the swap was /dev/sdd7.

Could it be a kind of name conflict? Maybe the system checks for boot files into /dev/sdd6 but it should check into /dev/sdc6?

I also tried to use commands like "mount" to mount /dev/sdc6 and boot from there, but I can't do that (it's the fisrt time I use mount...). In case I get it to work I would also like to find a way to do the process automatically at start or, even better, tell the system to boot using the right partition.

UPDATE 2

This time I think I got some results.

The first thing I did was getting an overview of the disks from the initramfs shell and another from the Kali Live I have on USB and then compare.

This is a list of the commands I run in Kali Live:

• Listing partitions (someone asked me to use diskpart, but I don't like it, I prefer gparted and the following commands)

blkid -c /dev/null
/dev/sda1: PARTLABEL="Microsoft reserved partition" PARTUUID="772f7759-ff14-4474-b280-e9a73f27c337"
/dev/sda2: LABEL="HDD" UUID="38A4B57FA4B53FE4" TYPE="ntfs" PARTLABEL="Basic data partition" PARTUUID="72fe8b03-5b4d-4912-a306-7f07c95d134a"
/dev/sdb1: UUID="2019-05-08-08-05-42-00" LABEL="Kali Live" TYPE="iso9660" PARTUUID="825c29ed-01"
/dev/sdb2: SEC_TYPE="msdos" UUID="6D28-4B56" TYPE="vfat" PARTUUID="825c29ed-02"
/dev/sdd1: LABEL="Ripristino" UUID="4240332640331FD9" TYPE="ntfs" PARTLABEL="Basic data partition" PARTUUID="e9017011-2970-430d-bbde-0373203511e8"
/dev/sdd2: UUID="7034-ABBE" TYPE="vfat" PARTLABEL="EFI system partition" PARTUUID="edfd5c11-f9a0-4116-9341-c8cca78fd5be"
/dev/sdd3: PARTLABEL="Microsoft reserved partition" PARTUUID="f07bf20f-e015-4f4e-9e39-5d6c15f3eed9"
/dev/sdd4: LABEL="SSD" UUID="D01C380D1C37ECDA" TYPE="ntfs" PARTLABEL="Basic data partition" PARTUUID="868d10ab-7d59-4612-b5b7-09989f1b1a39"
/dev/sdd5: UUID="8CB63D4BB63D3754" TYPE="ntfs" PARTUUID="25fffadb-a834-40eb-8203-f5bf70e7a4e9"
/dev/sdd6: UUID="77b94261-8059-4070-bdd0-18253825ff78" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="85826a53-e4b6-496f-8ae9-293e5e5e9fa0"
/dev/sdd7: UUID="aafe6242-cc02-4722-a136-b87b1bbaa6d6" TYPE="swap" PARTUUID="e79b7378-371f-42fd-96ca-7c109d7362ea"
/dev/loop0: TYPE="squashfs"

IMPORTANT: sda is my Hard Disk, sdb is my USB, sdd is my HDD (where is Windows 10 and some kind of Kali Linux)

• Listing Filesystem, partitions and other info

df -aT
Filesystem     Type            1K-blocks    Used Available Use% Mounted on
sysfs          sysfs                   0       0         0    - /sys
proc           proc                    0       0         0    - /proc
udev           devtmpfs          8125976       0   8125976   0% /dev
devpts         devpts                  0       0         0    - /dev/pts
tmpfs          tmpfs             1630796    9968   1620828   1% /run
/dev/sdb1      iso9660           3273568 3273568         0 100% /run/live/medium
/dev/loop0     squashfs          2999296 2999296         0 100% /run/live/rootfs/filesystem.squashfs
tmpfs          tmpfs             8153972  231344   7922628   3% /run/live/overlay
overlay        overlay           8153972  231344   7922628   3% /
tmpfs          tmpfs             1630796    9968   1620828   1% /usr/lib/live/mount
/dev/sdb1      iso9660           3273568 3273568         0 100% /usr/lib/live/mount/medium
/dev/loop0     squashfs          2999296 2999296         0 100% /usr/lib/live/mount/rootfs/filesystem.squashfs
tmpfs          tmpfs             8153972  231344   7922628   3% /usr/lib/live/mount/overlay
securityfs     securityfs              0       0         0    - /sys/kernel/security
tmpfs          tmpfs             8153972   16648   8137324   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs          tmpfs                5120       0      5120   0% /run/lock
tmpfs          tmpfs             8153972       0   8153972   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
cgroup2        cgroup2                 0       0         0    - /sys/fs/cgroup/unified
cgroup         cgroup                  0       0         0    - /sys/fs/cgroup/systemd
pstore         pstore                  0       0         0    - /sys/fs/pstore
efivarfs       efivarfs                0       0         0    - /sys/firmware/efi/efivars
bpf            bpf                     0       0         0    - /sys/fs/bpf
cgroup         cgroup                  0       0         0    - /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu,cpuacct
cgroup         cgroup                  0       0         0    - /sys/fs/cgroup/freezer
cgroup         cgroup                  0       0         0    - /sys/fs/cgroup/net_cls,net_prio
cgroup         cgroup                  0       0         0    - /sys/fs/cgroup/rdma
cgroup         cgroup                  0       0         0    - /sys/fs/cgroup/memory
cgroup         cgroup                  0       0         0    - /sys/fs/cgroup/perf_event
cgroup         cgroup                  0       0         0    - /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio
cgroup         cgroup                  0       0         0    - /sys/fs/cgroup/devices
cgroup         cgroup                  0       0         0    - /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset
cgroup         cgroup                  0       0         0    - /sys/fs/cgroup/pids
debugfs        debugfs                 0       0         0    - /sys/kernel/debug
hugetlbfs      hugetlbfs               0       0         0    - /dev/hugepages
mqueue         mqueue                  0       0         0    - /dev/mqueue
systemd-1      -                       -       -         -    - /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc
tmpfs          tmpfs             8153972       0   8153972   0% /tmp
binfmt_misc    binfmt_misc             0       0         0    - /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc
tmpfs          tmpfs             1630792      44   1630748   1% /run/user/0
gvfsd-fuse     fuse.gvfsd-fuse         0       0         0    - /run/user/0/gvfs
fusectl        fusectl                 0       0         0    - /sys/fs/fuse/connections
/dev/sdb2      vfat                  716     688        28  97% /media/root/Kali Live

IMPORTANT: Remember this was run from Kali Live, so I don't think there is something important other than everything that starts with "/dev", but I may be wrong.

• Listing mounted device and other info

mount
sysfs on /sys type sysfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
proc on /proc type proc (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
udev on /dev type devtmpfs (rw,nosuid,relatime,size=8125976k,nr_inodes=2031494,mode=755)
devpts on /dev/pts type devpts (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,gid=5,mode=620,ptmxmode=000)
tmpfs on /run type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,size=1630796k,mode=755)
/dev/sdb1 on /run/live/medium type iso9660 (ro,noatime,nojoliet,check=s,map=n,blocksize=2048)
/dev/loop0 on /run/live/rootfs/filesystem.squashfs type squashfs (ro,noatime)
tmpfs on /run/live/overlay type tmpfs (rw,noatime,mode=755)
overlay on / type overlay (rw,noatime,lowerdir=/run/live/rootfs/filesystem.squashfs/,upperdir=/run/live/overlay/rw,workdir=/run/live/overlay/work)
tmpfs on /usr/lib/live/mount type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,noexec,relatime,size=1630796k,mode=755)
/dev/sdb1 on /usr/lib/live/mount/medium type iso9660 (ro,noatime,nojoliet,check=s,map=n,blocksize=2048)
/dev/loop0 on /usr/lib/live/mount/rootfs/filesystem.squashfs type squashfs (ro,noatime)
tmpfs on /usr/lib/live/mount/overlay type tmpfs (rw,noatime,mode=755)
securityfs on /sys/kernel/security type securityfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
tmpfs on /dev/shm type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev)
tmpfs on /run/lock type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,size=5120k)
tmpfs on /sys/fs/cgroup type tmpfs (ro,nosuid,nodev,noexec,mode=755)
cgroup2 on /sys/fs/cgroup/unified type cgroup2 (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,nsdelegate)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/systemd type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,xattr,name=systemd)
pstore on /sys/fs/pstore type pstore (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
efivarfs on /sys/firmware/efi/efivars type efivarfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime)
bpf on /sys/fs/bpf type bpf (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,mode=700)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/cpu,cpuacct type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,cpu,cpuacct)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/freezer type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,freezer)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/net_cls,net_prio type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,net_cls,net_prio)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/rdma type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,rdma)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/memory type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,memory)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/perf_event type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,perf_event)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/blkio type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,blkio)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/devices type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,devices)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/cpuset type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,cpuset)
cgroup on /sys/fs/cgroup/pids type cgroup (rw,nosuid,nodev,noexec,relatime,pids)
debugfs on /sys/kernel/debug type debugfs (rw,relatime)
hugetlbfs on /dev/hugepages type hugetlbfs (rw,relatime,pagesize=2M)
mqueue on /dev/mqueue type mqueue (rw,relatime)
systemd-1 on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type autofs (rw,relatime,fd=44,pgrp=1,timeout=0,minproto=5,maxproto=5,direct,pipe_ino=13614)
tmpfs on /tmp type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime)
binfmt_misc on /proc/sys/fs/binfmt_misc type binfmt_misc (rw,relatime)
tmpfs on /run/user/0 type tmpfs (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,size=1630792k,mode=700)
gvfsd-fuse on /run/user/0/gvfs type fuse.gvfsd-fuse (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,user_id=0,group_id=0)
fusectl on /sys/fs/fuse/connections type fusectl (rw,relatime)
/dev/sdb2 on /media/root/Kali Live type vfat (rw,nosuid,nodev,relatime,fmask=0022,dmask=0022,codepage=437,iocharset=ascii,shortname=mixed,showexec,utf8,flush,errors=remount-ro,uhelper=udisks2)

• Printing to stdout the content of /etc/fstab (I read that it is the file that contains all the device partitions info necessary to mount them after every boot)

cat /etc/fstab
/etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# Use 'blkid' to print the universally unique identifier for a
# device; this may be used with UUID= as a more robust way to name devices
# that works even if disks are added and removed. See fstab(5).
#
# <file system> <mount point>   <type>  <options>       <dump>  <pass>
# / was on /dev/sdd6 during installation
UUID=77b94261-8059-4070-bdd0-18253825ff78 /               ext4    errors=remount-ro 0       1
# /boot/efi was on /dev/sdd2 during installation
UUID=7034-ABBE  /boot/efi       vfat    umask=0077      0       1
# swap was on /dev/sdd7 during installation
UUID=aafe6242-cc02-4722-a136-b87b1bbaa6d6 none            swap    sw              0       0
/dev/sr0        /media/cdrom0   udf,iso9660 user,noauto     0       0

REMARK: As I have already said, I also run these commands in the initramfs shell but I can't copy and paste in that so until now I copied by hand what I saw in that terminal. While I was writing this update, however, I realized that I can redirect the output of a command to my HDD (once I mount it, now I know...); the problem is that I have an orrible keyboard that doesn't have the ">", "<" keys so I can't redirect output to a file (it's also hard to code, I usually copy and paste the symbols from internet when needed, but with initramfs it's not the case, now I have to find another keyboard or a way to get at least the ">" sign). I'll add the outputs tomorrow, I think. Eventually I got to know the command "tee" and used it in place of ">", now I can paste what I copied to files.

This is a list of the commands I run in initramfs shell:

• Listing partitions

blkid -c /dev/null
/dev/sda1: PARTLABEL="Microsoft reserved partition" PARTUUID="772f7759-ff14-4474-b280-e9a73f27c337"
/dev/sda2: LABEL="HDD" UUID="38A4B57FA4B53FE4" TYPE="ntfs" PARTLABEL="Basic data partition" PARTUUID="72fe8b03-5b4d-4912-a306-7f07c95d134a"
/dev/sdc1: LABEL="Ripristino" UUID="4240332640331FD9" TYPE="ntfs" PARTLABEL="Basic data partition" PARTUUID="e9017011-2970-430d-bbde-0373203511e8"
/dev/sdc2: UUID="7034-ABBE" TYPE="vfat" PARTLABEL="EFI system partition" PARTUUID="edfd5c11-f9a0-4116-9341-c8cca78fd5be"
/dev/sdc3: PARTLABEL="Microsoft reserved partition" PARTUUID="f07bf20f-e015-4f4e-9e39-5d6c15f3eed9"
/dev/sdc4: LABEL="SSD" UUID="D01C380D1C37ECDA" TYPE="ntfs" PARTLABEL="Basic data partition" PARTUUID="868d10ab-7d59-4612-b5b7-09989f1b1a39"
/dev/sdc5: UUID="8CB63D4BB63D3754" TYPE="ntfs" PARTUUID="25fffadb-a834-40eb-8203-f5bf70e7a4e9"
/dev/sdc6: UUID="77b94261-8059-4070-bdd0-18253825ff78" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="85826a53-e4b6-496f-8ae9-293e5e5e9fa0"
/dev/sdc7: UUID="aafe6242-cc02-4722-a136-b87b1bbaa6d6" TYPE="swap" PARTUUID="e79b7378-371f-42fd-96ca-7c109d7362ea"

• Printing to stdout the content of /etc/fstab: in this case there's no output, the file is empty so I think it is not being used by initramfs. In particular I think it relies on /proc/partitions and what is inside of /dev/disk.

Next, I run "set" to see what variables were set and I tried to change the ROOT variable (it was set so: "ROOT='/dev/sdd6'") partition from /dev/sdd6 (the one listed by Kali Live) to /dev/sdc6 (the one listed by Kali on SDD).

I run "set ROOT='/dev/sdc6'", it returned no errors but did nothing, then I tried "set ROOT='/dev/sdd5'" (to be sure) and the variable changed! So I realized that the command worked but for some reasons "/dev/sdc6" wasn't good (although the "blkid -c /dev/null" could say the opposite).

Then, I have been able to mount my /dev/sdd6 using "mount -t ext4 /dev/sdd6 /mnt" (there was no /mnt so I used "mkdir /mnt" to create it) and I finally saw my loved Kali Linux filesystem! To check if it was really Kali, I used (in /mnt) "find -executable -type f -name maltego" (and there was, I also checked some other Kali tools). After a bit, I tried to mount /dev/sdd6 in "/" but even if the command was successful (no errors) nothing changed. At this point, my purpose was to start the GNOME Kali desktop and then find a way to get it permanent. I eventually found the "gnome-session" command that didn't worked, it returned an error concerning missing file in an "absolute" path (it printed that "line 16: /usr/something/gnome-something_else is missing", but it should have seek for "./usr/something/gnome-something_else" because the filesystem had its root in /mnt and not in /; that's what I think, tomorrow I'll add the exact error).

What I'm gonna do next is one of these two things:

• find some way to mount /dev/sdd6 in / and run GNOME

• create a new session with tty and hope I can mount /dev/sdd6 in that / and run GNOME

My theory

Kali Live swares that /dev/sdd6 exists, Kali SDD Persistent argues it's not but, at the same time, it contradicts itself when some commands don't work well (see set command above). Personally I trust Kali Live terminal (and gparted), that's why I think I'm dealing with a kernel bug (maybe) and a workaround or a modification of something very deep is needed.

The Mistery of initramfs

I never used this shell before and I have some doubts.

The first thing that I asked myself is how is it even possible that it appears? I mean, every time I try to boot into Kali it declares that there's no /dev/sdd6, so there's no ext4 partition, so there's no Kali, no Linux, but anyway this thing every time cames to life (after the system waits some time for boot). I asked me where this terminal is running (which partition) or where it is stored. I used df -h . (in "/") and df -h /, it returned df: /: can't find mount point.

Then I noticed is that it has its own filesystem! Or something very similar, if you "ls /" you get all direrectories a normal Linux has (bin, sbin, etc, usr, ...), it has no /mnt and some others are missing. It has also a "init" folder that Kali hasn't got, BTW it has "initrd.img" and "initrd.ing.old", I suppose is a kind of img is loaded every time it boots (Windows sometimes has a dir called "Windows.old", for the old Windows OS), I was interested because I tried to run busybox switch_root.

Also important is the conflict that appears to be with drives and commands concerning them (compare set, blkid and /proc/partitions responses above).

I read of people having problems similar to mine that solved them just with few commands in initamfs and then rebooting, I tried many times (things like: set, switch_root, start[number], gnome-session, etc.) but in my initramfs you can't create nothing permanent: like folders and files (but it is not a problem at the moment, I would like just to boot once...), but also if you can set a variable with export it's just the current session, next time the the variables are the same.

NOTES Why can't I use "Add Comment"?

UPDATE 3

I GOT INTO KALI ROOT

After a lot of time and struggle, I was able to change the root of my shell to a new filesystem root (Kali on my SSD) and so I left initramfs (but, let's say, "not completly" in my opinion). I run (many times):

mkdir /mnt
mount -t ext4 /dev/sdc6 /mnt      #As you can see I had to use the "wrong" notation with "sdc6" in place of "sdd6"
chroot /mnt                       #Surprisingly for me, it worked! Although I wanted to run busybox switch_root, but it returns error and prints the command syntax every time

Then I tried to run gnome-session, startx (x is a number) and others to get the GUI, without luck. In particular, it seems like I don't have any startx command (I run find -executable -type f -name *start* but nothing useful came out).

The gnome-session command displayed many errors in this format (I can't copy them, I have photos though):

** (gnome-session-failed:[some number]): WARNING **: [num1]:[num2]:[num3]:[num4]: Cannot open display:
[Some Error: Terminated, Unable to init sever, etc...]

There were also things like:

[num1]:[num2]:[num3]:[num4] Gtk: cannot open display! (the first part was green, the second red)
(tracker-miner-fs:[num4]): GLib-GObject-CRITICAL **: [num1]:[num2]:[num3]:[num4]: g_object_unref: assertion 'G_IS_OBJECT (object)' failed

While in initramfs, I retrived some other informations:

cat /proc/partitions
major minor  #blocks  name
   8        0  976762584 sda
   8        1      16367 sda1
   8        2  976744448 sda2
   8       32  125034840 sdc
   8       33     307200 sdc1
   8       34     101376 sdc2
   8       35     131072 sdc3
   8       36   99019776 sdc4
   8       37     896000 sdc5
   8       38   21680128 sdc6
   8       39    2896896 sdc7
  11        0    1048575 sr0

and I compared it with the one of Kali Live (the difference is easy to see):

cat /proc/partitions
major minor  #blocks  name
   8        0  976762584 sda
   8        1      16367 sda1
   8        2  976744448 sda2
   8       32  125034840 sdd
   8       33     307200 sdd1
   8       34     101376 sdd2
   8       35     131072 sdd3
   8       36   99019776 sdd4
   8       37     896000 sdd5
   8       38   21680128 sdd6
   8       39    2896896 sdd7
  11        0    1048575 sr0

I also copied it into the /proc/partitions of my Kali on SSD (I thought that gnome-session missed the partition location to start and the output changed in some way)

Then I run this:

ls /dev/disk/by-path
pci-0000:00:14.0-usb-0:4:1.0-scsi-0:0:0:0
pci-0000:00:14.0-usb-0:4:1.0-scsi-0:0:0:0-part1
pci-0000:00:14.0-usb-0:4:1.0-scsi-0:0:0:0-part2
pci-0000:00:14.0-usb-0:8:1.0-scsi-0:0:0:0
pci-0000:00:17.0-ata-1
pci-0000:00:17.0-ata-1-part1
pci-0000:00:17.0-ata-1-part2
pci-0000:00:17.0-ata-2
pci-0000:00:17.0-ata-6
pci-0000:00:17.0-ata-6-part1
pci-0000:00:17.0-ata-6-part2
pci-0000:00:17.0-ata-6-part3
pci-0000:00:17.0-ata-6-part4
pci-0000:00:17.0-ata-6-part5
pci-0000:00:17.0-ata-6-part6
pci-0000:00:17.0-ata-6-part7

I was despaired and I tried to switch pci-0000:00:17.0-ata-6-part6 with pci-0000:00:17.0-ata-6 and I renamed them with success, but it was useless because of the fact that my initramfs doesn't retain data after boot.

What to do next

• I read that all programs except Fedora Media Writer can't create a bootable USB for BIOS in UEFI mode, so I could try this (I don't think this is the problem anyway)

• I would like to use Kali Desktop, this time I have access to Kali filesystem and commands so I just need some clues to actually get GNOME to work

• I'm almost sure there's a problem with kernel, so could someone tell me how to update it or how to be sure it detects /dev/sdd6 on boot?

UPDATE 4

KALI BOOTED! (BUT NOT SO WELL..)

I replaced the initrd.img-[etc..] in /boot of Kali SSD Persistent with the one from Kali Live, in my BIOS I pressed F8 as usual to boot into Kali and this time it worked, so I thought the problem was fixed (hehehe!). It printed

[     7.078689] ata6.00: failed to set xfermode (err_mode=0x40)

Then the screen tuned black and then kali appeared (I know that normally Kali shows much more text, so I was a little confused, but worked anyway...)

I changed the boot order so that Kali was the first to boot and then rebooted. This time I was confident, but again:

[     7.078689] ata6.00: failed to set xfermode (err_mode=0x40)
Gave up waiting for root file system device

So I realized that it worked only by pressing F8 at boot (why is that?). This was a solution but a not satisfing one; moreover I'm not 100% it would work every time I boot with F8.

I even tried binwalk GenuineIntel.bin (after extracting initrd.img-[etc..]), but there was no output. I edited a line of the init file that is in the / of initramfs, the line was

export ROOT=

and I changed it to

export ROOT=/dev/sdc6

Because even if I think it is the wrong name I have to use it to mount that partition in initramfs, so initramfs, I think, just recognizes that name and not /dev/sdd6.

Then I reinstalled Kali (it's the third time) with my USB flashed with Fedora Media Writer, I got back to the inital condition (with the error that started the question).

Asked by user362443 (11 )
Jul 15, 2019 at 19:59