I think this is old and to be honest I partially knew it but either way I think it would be better documented now. What I learned today was a better way to fix my Arch Linux system after forgetting about mounting the boot partition and upgrading the kernel; needless to say that you don’t want to do that. So, with further ado here are the steps:

  • In grub press e - to edit the menu configuration options
  • Go to the line in which the command linux is written
  • Go the end of that line and type init=single
  • Hit ctrl-x

At the new prompt type the following:

  • mount /dev/sda1 /new_root/boot -> If sda1 is the partition in which you have boot
  • mount
  • mount -t proc proc /new_root/proc
  • mount -t sysfs sys /new_root/sys
  • mount -o bind /dev /new_root/dev
  • chroot /new_root bash

And voila, you will be in your more or less normal system waiting for you to fix it.