Sympthoms:

i) after a kernel upgrade, usb devices don’t work on system boot: “error”, “usb”, “descriptors file” shows up when detaching the usb device.

Solution:

i) Boot into fallback mode (initramfs). usb devices should work.

ii) Edit /etc/default/grub and append your kernel options to the GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT line:

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="/boot/vmlinuz-linux root=UUID=XXXXXXXX rw cryptdevice=/XXXXXX quiet"

replace the XXXX of this line with the information found in the fallback initramfs section of /boot/grub/grub.cfg

iii) regenerate grub config :

# grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

iv) regenerate mkinitcpio

# mkinitcpio -p linux

v) reboot your system.