Laptop boots into BusyBox, says /dev/mapper/system-root doesn't exist

[stactk49]

When I boot my system, it goes through the Grub screen, accepts the password for decryption, then gives some errors saying "Gave up waiting for root file system device"

And

"/dev/mapper/system-root does not exist. Dropping to a shell" One issue with similar errors appeared on this forum about 13 years ago
https://www.kubuntuforums.net/forum/...or-root-device
From what I could get out of this, the only command that produces anything is "blkid", "cat /etc/fstab" produces nothing and it says "fdisk" doesn't exist, neither does "start *"

The system is a Tuxedo Polaris with Kubuntu preinstalled, though I've made one modification l likely relevant to this issue.

It's an encrypted LVM over 2 internal nvme drives. The original was 2 terabytes and the one I added is 4 to make it work like one 6tb volume. This has worked without any problem for several months.

The day before this started, I had to force the system to shut down. It worked fine for several hours after that until giving me error messages saying it could not write to the disk every time I opened a window. I had dealt with this before on another system and simply shutting down, booting to BusyBox and using fsck on the affected volume was enough to completely fix it then.

My searching has also turned up things related to kernel updates, and though I update things as soon as possible, the only update in the days before this was a browser.

Apologies for any formatting issues, I'm stuck with a cellphone and a > decade old netbook for the moment.

Thanks and regards,
stactk49

[Snowhog]

I don't do encryption, so...

No idea if the information contained here will be useful, but it might give you a direction to pursue.

[stactk49]

Thanks for your help, it's really pointed me in the right direction.
For something made for Linux, this laptop seems very fussy about what it will boot. I’ve ended up been using Kaisen Linux.

When I ran the command "vgchange -ay" I got this result.

WARNING: Couldn't find device with uuid fDdmP7-SFfH-hIns-B81u-FmCn-CH9q-Avnpm3.
WARNING: VG system is missing PV fDdmP7-SFfH-hIns-B81u-FmCn-CH9q-Avnpm3 (last written to /dev/nvme1n1).
Refusing activation of partial LV system/root.
Use '--activationmode partial' to override. 1 logical volume(s) in volume group "system" now active

Running "pvdisplay", it shows the 4tb drive has no physical volume name, full results of that:

WARNING: Couldn't find device with uuid fDdmP7-SFfH-hIns-B81u-FmCn-CH9q-Avnpm3.
WARNING: VG system is missing PV fDdmP7-SFfH-hIns-B81u-FmCn-CH9q-Avnpm3 (last written to /dev/nvme1n1).
--- Physical volume ---
PV Name /dev/mapper/nvme0n1p3_crypt
VG Name system
PV Size <1.82 TiB / not usable 4.00 MiB
Allocatable yes (but full)
PE Size 4.00 MiB
Total PE 476543
Free PE 0
Allocated PE 476543
PV UUID HlMBSi-DqNo-ZWCd-4hJ3-TwRd-MMcV-igurRO

--- Physical volume ---
PV Name [unknown]
VG Name system
PV Size <3.64 TiB / not usable <3.84 MiB
Allocatable yes (but full)
PE Size 4.00 MiB
Total PE 953861
Free PE 0
Allocated PE 953861
PV UUID fDdmP7-SFfH-hIns-B81u-FmCn-CH9q-Avnpm3

Following advice found here: golinuxcloud dot com/fix-pvs-shows-unknown-device-redhat-linux/ (not allowed to post external links yet)
I ran "vgreduce root --removemissing"
However I was unable to create a new /dev/nvme1n1

I physically removed the 4tb drive and replaced it checking dmesg for any potentially useful information.
with the 4tb nvme removed

kaisen@kaisenlinux  ~  sudo dmesg | grep nvm
[ 1.625380] nvme 0000:03:00.0: platform quirk: setting simple suspend
[ 1.627362] nvme nvme0: pci function 0000:03:00.0
[ 1.635466] nvme nvme0: missing or invalid SUBNQN field.
[ 1.635492] nvme nvme0: Shutdown timeout set to 8 seconds
[ 1.652048] nvme nvme0: 16/0/0 default/read/poll queues
[ 1.659296] nvme0n1: p1 p2 p3

With the 4tb nvme reinserted:

kaisen@kaisenlinux  ~  sudo dmesg | grep nvm
[ 2.310063] nvme 0000:03:00.0: platform quirk: setting simple suspend
[ 2.311909] nvme nvme0: pci function 0000:03:00.0
[ 2.313683] nvme 0000:05:00.0: platform quirk: setting simple suspend
[ 2.315461] nvme nvme1: pci function 0000:05:00.0
[ 2.320752] nvme nvme0: missing or invalid SUBNQN field.
[ 2.320768] nvme nvme0: Shutdown timeout set to 8 seconds
[ 2.337174] nvme nvme0: 16/0/0 default/read/poll queues
[ 2.345620] nvme0n1: p1 p2 p3
[ 22.818510] nvme nvme1: Device not ready; aborting reset, CSTS=0x1
[ 22.821409] nvme nvme1: Removing after probe failure status: -19

About here is where I'm not sure how to proceed.