FAT-fs (nvme0n1p1): IO charset iso8859-1 not found

I am running a LUKS partition on /dev/nvme0n1p1 and after applying yesterday's kernel patches and after reboot my system now acts a fool.

After that I typed in my boot password (LUKS) I am greeted by the famous recovery terminal with several repeats of:

libkmod: ERROR ../libkmod/libkmod-conf.c:712 kmod_config_parse: /etc/modprobe.d/$l_mname.conf line 1: ignoring bad line starting with '-e'
libkmod: ERROR ../libkmod/libkmod-conf.c:712 kmod_config_parse: /etc/modprobe.d/$l_mname.conf line 2: ignoring bad line starting with '-e'

And asking for my password to continue.

Then reading dmesg I notice:

device-mapper: table: 253:1: crypt: Error allocating crypto tfm
device-mapper: ioctl: error adding target to table
FAT-fs (nvme0n1p1): IO charset iso8859-1 not found

If I type exit I then get:

Failed to start default target: Transaction for graphical.target/start is destructive (emergency.target has 'start' job queued, but 'stop' is included in transaction).

I have tried selecting the previous kernel off the GRUB menu but it gives the same result.

After checking online for those messages I have found some resources suggesting to fsck the partition or to depmod then exit, it should fix it.

Of course none of that works.

What can I do to save my installation and restore my system's sanity?

Hi, @DLS (Daniel LaSalle).

I haven't been in the situation that you described, but I've done a web search for that "IO charset iso8859-1 not found" error message and I've found the following blog post in a blog called "When In Doubt, Return Nothing": https://blog.toddlichty.com/ubuntu-fat-fs-nvme0n1p1-io-charset-iso8859-1-not-found/

In that blog post (published on 27 November 2019), the blog author (Todd Lichty) has written the following:

"(...) I tried many of the suggestions that I found on askubuntu.com (like this one) but none of them solved the issue. After more Googling (and some panic), I was able to resolve the issue by:

1. Selecting Advanced Options on the GRUB boot menu.
2. Selecting recovery mode using the OLDEST version of the Linux kernel I had installed.
3. This booted me to the recovery screen.

4. I selected dpkg from the menu. This ran for a few minutes and when it completed successfully, I rebooted.

All seems to be well with the ThinkPad. I do not know what caused the problem, but the solution was quick and painless. (...)"

@DLS: Have you tried already that step of running "dpkg" from the "Recovery Menu" to "Repair broken packages"?

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Thanks a lot for that reply.

I did ended up doing something that made me boot for a one time into my TTY7 session.

However I was not able to redo it. And ended up reformatting.

I did tried using the Recovery Menu but I had problem cycling through the options normally (It ghosted the options a lot, I don't know how to explain this...).

Hopefully this thread will help somebody in the future....

I had also found this which sadly ended up as an orphan thread: boot - Ubuntu not starting after a reboot - unable to read RDB block 8 - Ask Ubuntu

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