Cannot Boot into Linux

[Mchar7]

Note: This is not exclusive to my Mint 18.3 install. In a Debian VM on a completely
separate machine I did the same thing (apt upgrade) and am receiving the same errors)

So, after running

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sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

my system fails to boot. Upon leaving the GRUB menu, I am put into an initramfs terminal (see pictures)

Oh, my Mint install has LUKS encryption, but I doubt this is the problem as my Debian VM did not.

I had expected this to be a common issue as it happened to me twice under 2 completely different
circumstances, but I cant seem to find any recent relevant threads here or on the Ubuntu forums.

You can see the sequence that the computer goes through with these images:

GRUB does sees the install fine...:


Startup procedure stops at "scanning for Btrfs filesystems":


After ~30s:

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Gave up waiting for root device. Common problems:
- Boot args (cat /proc/cmdline)
- Check rootdelay= (did the system wait long enough?)
- Check root= (did the system wait for the right device?)
- Missing modules (cat /proc/modules; Is /deu)

ALERT! /dev/mapper/mint--vg-root does not exist. Dropping to a shell! 
BusyBox v1.22.1 (Ubuntu 1:1.22.0-15ubuntul) built-in shell (ash) Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands. 
(initramfs) 

Thanks in advance!

[Laurent85]

Boot a live session and open a terminal. Provide the following commands output:

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sudo parted --list --script
sudo lsblk -o name,size,uuid,fstype,label,mountpoint

[Termy]

Sounds like you're quite familiar with Linux, so I would suggest you load up another installation or a LiveCD and chroot in; see if that works and have a poke around, particularly in the logs and I'd also check /etc/fstab, because I'd expect a mess like that to occur if fstab has some sort of error.

If you need further support while chrooted in, you can run:

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mount -t proc proc /proc
mount -t sysfs sysfs /sys
mount -t devtmpfs devtmpfs /dev
mount -t devpts devpts /dev/pts
source /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion

That will give you bash completion and allow you to do a lot more. Note, if you're not familiar with chroot, you'll want to do a little research. You may also want to run dhclient (possibly with your your network interface) to have an Internet connection going. Don't do too much in this environment, unless you have to, as you will be running as root, and the permissions for those mounts are abnormal. Good for diagnostics though, IMO.

Oh, almost forgot, you'll likely have to decrypt things yourself, if root is encrypted; I have absolutely no clue about that, as I don't deal with encrypted data like that.