Won't Boot After Update - Can't Change Kernel

Manjaro/Budgie 20.0.1 on Dell Inspiron 13 7000

After an update yesterday (Nov 20) my system won't boot. It displays the Dell logo and then hangs at a black screen. By pressing Esc > Advanced when booting I am able to see that the following kernels are available:

5.9.8-2-Manjaro x64
5.9.8-2-Manjaro x64-fallback initrams)
5.8.18-1-Manjaro x64
5.8.18-1-Manjaro x64-fallback initrams)

When I select either of the 5.8.18-1 listed I get:

[FAILED] Failed to start Load Kernel Modules
[FAILED] Failed to mount /boot/efi
[DEPEND] Dependency failed for Local File Systems
You are no in emergency mode.  After logging in, type "journalctl-xb" to view system logs, "systemctl reboot" to reboot, "systemctl default" or "exit" to boot into default mode.
Give root password for maintenance
(or press Control-D to continue):

The journalctl-xb option does show the system logs. The other options do nothing except circle back to this same return.

It appears that I need to get back to a previous kernel that was working as of shutdown yesterday. How to do that?

Seems to me something hurt your filesystem or partition layout. Can you boot a live medium and have a look at /etc/fstab and compare that to the kernel command in grub.cfg -- (dunno where that is on a GPT system I still use MBR)? Files on your hard disk of course ...

Originally Posted by JZL240I-U Seems to me something hurt your filesystem or partition layout. Can you boot a live medium and have a look at /etc/fstab and compare that to the kernel command in grub.cfg -- (dunno where that is on a GPT system I still use MBR)? Files on your hard disk of course ...

I cannot seem to get copy/paste to work in the live environment, even with chroot, so I unfortunately I will have to attach screenshot images.

Your /etc/fstab looks -- peculiar to me (which does not mean that it is surely broken). I guess you are using LVM or a raid configuration? If so, I'm out of my depth here.

You were to look at the lines starting with "linux ..." in the grub.cfg. That is kicking the kernel in the butt to do its thing. Just look whether its options are rational .

Originally Posted by JZL240I-U Your /etc/fstab looks -- peculiar to me (which does not mean that it is surely broken). I guess you are using LVM or a raid configuration? If so, I'm out of my depth here. You were to look at the lines starting with "linux ..." in the grub.cfg. That is kicking the kernel in the butt to do its thing. Just look whether its options are rational .

I am completely out of my depth and know far less than you. I have posted this issue on the Manjaro forum and I'm not the only one experiencing it. So far no one from the Manjaro team responsible for maintaining the distro with Budgie DE has stepped up to help.

I think I know what happened to break my system but I don't know how to revert to the status quo ante. My system was running fine with the 5.8.18-1 kernel. A bunch of package updates came from pamac, including 5.9.8-2 kernel and it seems not to play nice with something on my system. What I would like to do:
- revert to 5.8 kernel
- obliterate all traces of 5.9 kernel
- tell pamac never to include kernel updates in the package updates it rolls out. In other words, I only want kernel updates if I specifically request them.

To be honest, this is the 3rd issue I have had with Manjaro/Budgie in the recent past: two were caused by ubuntu messing with the Budgie DE and now this one. I have about had it with Manjaro and I'm on the brink of installing Archlabs Linux.