[Karmic] Fatal error, live USB will not boot after package manager upgrades

[Tyson Williams]

Binary package hint: usb-creator

1) Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala
2) usb-creator is not installed (this might be the wrong package to file this bug against)
3) I expected to be able to update a live USB installation of Ubuntu (created via System -> Administration -> USB Startup Disk Creator.

I am reporting this bug on behalf of this Ubuntu forum thread:
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1354336

4) The problem is that a live USB installation of Ubuntu 9.10 does not boot after updating. After waiting for several minutes (as many as 10), pushing the power button causes the following error message to appear:
FATAL: Could not load /lib/modules/2.6.31-16-generic/modules.dep
No such file or directory
Unable to find a medium containing a live file system

The workaround that was posted to the thread is to change all occurrences of "initrd.lz" with "initrd.gz" in /syslinux/text.cfg. I found three occurrences. This workaround worked for me.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Wed Mar 31 19:49:27 2010
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
LiveMediaBuild: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release i386 (20091028.5)
Package: usb-creator (not installed)
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-20.58-generic
SourcePackage: usb-creator
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-20-generic i686
XsessionErrors:
 (gnome-settings-daemon:4273): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_propagate_error: assertion `src != NULL' failed
 (gnome-settings-daemon:4273): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_propagate_error: assertion `src != NULL' failed
 (nautilus:4329): Eel-CRITICAL **: eel_preferences_get_boolean: assertion `preferences_is_initialized ()' failed
 (polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1:4356): GLib-CRITICAL **: g_once_init_leave: assertion `initialization_value != 0' failed