Intrepid LiveCD installer didn't set up boot files correctly

[RobertH]

Binary package hint: ubiquity

I have Ubuntu Hardy, Win-Vista and Gentoo all on a multi-boot system using Grub. /boot is a separate small ext2 partition.

When I installed Intrepid Kubuntu Alpha 4 from LiveCD on a separate (ext3) partition, it completed successfully. But the system wouldn't boot. The former menu.lst had been wiped out without saving any backup copy that I could see (but I'm used to Ubuntu installs doing that). The new entries pointed to initrd.img-2.6.26-5-generic and to vmlinuz-2.6.24-19-generic. (There are also symbolic links to these two files in the root folder.) vmlinuz-2.6.26-5-generic does not exist on the /boot partition (nor could I find it anywhere else). However, there is a file vmcoreinfo-2.6.26-5-generic on /boot.

Surely it's not correct to try to boot from vmlinuz and initrd files mixed from different Ubuntu versions? I tried reinstalling from the LiveCD again but the same problem. This seems weird. (I could fix up menu.lst if I could work out where to find a copy of vmlinuz-2.6.26-5 to copy onto my /boot partition.)

[RobertH (robert-hunt)]

Gave the same problem on Alpha 5 (except with 2.6.27-2. I still haven't been able to install Intrepid (64-bit). It only puts the initrd on /boot plus a vmcoreinfo file, but not the vmlinuz file.

When I changed menu.lst to boot from the Hardy kernel (2.6.24-19), I can boot Kubuntu. But if I try to mount /boot, I get "unknown ext2 filesystem". If I try to mount the CD, I get "unknown ISo9660 filesystem". So I haven't found a way to manual get the Intrepid kernel onto my /boot partition yet.

[peterfrank (zengmao)]

I have exactly the 'opposite' problem after installing Alpha5 today. I do have the vmlinuz file, but not initrd.img! I'm using 64 bit Core2 dual. (I've selected the option not to install the Grub, because I want to keep the original one.)

By the way, during the install, I found some mysterious error messages in the Ctrl+Alt+F2 terminal. (Maybe I need to post elsewhere?). One of them is:

SQUASHFS error: Can't find a SQUASHFS superblock on sda5

This is Absurd because sda4 is NOT where I want Intrepid to be installed, and should be left untouched!

[peterfrank (zengmao)]

I later booted into the amd64 Intrepid Alpha 5 livecd (downloaded on 13 Sep), and opened a terminal, typed: "sudo find / -name initrd.img* ". The two search results are both dead symlinks, with the actual file missing. Maybe it's a problem with this particular version of nightly build CD?

[Narthana Epa (narthana-epa)]

Same problem here.
I hypothesise that this has something to do with the linux packages not being installed by default. (It was not installed in the livecd as far as i can tell)
A solution would be to chroot into the installed partition, run "sudo aptitude update" and "sudo aptitude install linux".

[Narthana Epa (narthana-epa)]

Ok I put the hypothesis into practice, I logged into my normal environment (I had to edit the menu.lst file to do this, but it seems that many people are down with that)
I think these steps will rectify the problem, but I being a little n00bish mucked up the order and ended up breaking my fresh Intrepid system so proceed with extreme caution.

Create a directory:
           sudo mkdir /mnt/disk

Mount the partition with Intrepid (/dev/sda6 replace this):
           sudo mount /dev/sda6 /mnt/disk

Mount the boot partition (if you don't have one then I don't know what to do)
           sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/disk/boot

chroot into the mount:
           sudo chroot /mnt/disk /bin/bash

Setup the chroot:
           mount -t proc proc /proc
           mount -t sysfs sysfs /sys

Install the requisite packages:
           aptitude update
           aptitude install linux

Its too late to reinstall intrepid to test this so I cannot comment further.

[Phillip Susi (psusi)]

Intrepid reached end of life some time ago, are you able to replicate this on 12.04 or higher?

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for ubiquity (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]