Spurious errors from update-initramfs

[Pappan]

Binary package hint: initramfs-tools

Symptom:

During update-initramfs, we see error messages from mkinitramfs of the following form.

sudo update-initramfs -u
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-2.6.17-10-386
[: 89: Eft: unexpected operator
[: 89: Scene: unexpected operator

The command completes successfully but these errors are annoying.

[Pappan (ppadman)]

This can be easily reproduced by having files or directories that contain spaces in "/"

The sequence of the problem is below:

In /usr/sbin/mkinitramfs:

 87 # Check that we're using a new enough kernel version, first for ourselves,
 88 # then for each of the hooks, which can have a MINKVER variable defined
 89 check_minkver ${version}
 90 check_minkver ${version} /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks
 91 check_minkver ${version} ${CONFDIR}/hooks

The "check_minkver ${version}" calls without a second paramter.

In /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hook-functions

set_initlist was called whether or not a second parameter was given to check_minkver

In /usr/share/initramfs-tools/scripts/functions:

set_initlist()
{
        unset initlist
        for si_x in ${initdir}/*; do
                if [ ! -x ${si_x} ]; then
                        continue
                fi
                initlist="${initlist} $(basename ${si_x})"
        done
}

$(initdir} is empty so it became "/*" and resulted in the bug

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package initramfs-tools - 0.92bubuntu1

---------------
initramfs-tools (0.92bubuntu1) intrepid; urgency=low

  * Merge from debian unstable, remaining changes:
    - Change Build-Depends to Build-Depends-Indep.
    - Use busybox-initramfs for Depends.
    - Do not source udev.conf.
    - Set BUSBOXDIR properly.
    - Keep kinit and gzip in initrd.
    - Use -Qb for for module loading to honor blacklists via the use of
      MODPROBE_OPTIONS.
    - all_generic_ide script.
    - Remove lvm local-top script (conflicts with lvm-common).
    - takeover=1 in update-initramfs.
    - Allow the mounting of a root filesystem as a loop device on top
      of a host filesystem, used for wubi installs.
    - Add vfat support to the initramfs.
    - Reduce timeout to 30 seconds -- corner cases (giant
      disk arrays, clusters) will need to provide their own rootdelay=
      boot arg.
    - Keep more meaningful text for no root device panic.
    - Provide a clearer error on mount failure of the Windows host
      filesystem.
    - Add 2>&1 to the run-init line.
    - Source /scripts/functions in resume script.
    - resume UUID upgrade.
    - Add mountroot failure support, to allow meaningful messages when
      no root device can be found.
    - Panic if either the root device doesn't exist, or vol_id cannot
      identify it. Allows for mountroot failure hooks for md devices
      to be displayed.
    - Ignore blacklist for forced vga= usage.
    - Loop for 5 seconds waiting for $suspend to show up, adjustable
      with the resumedelay= command-line arg.
    - Load virtio_pci for MODULES=most.
    - Usplash pulsates until the real init takes over.
    - Drop scripts/init-premount/thermal as force_load can do this
      for us during initramfs creation.
    - Load thermal modules on lpia.
    - Allow for alternative PREREQS to be specified using | as the
      separator.
    - Add udf to auto_add_modules. It was originally added to
      dep_add_modules, however dep_add_modules now auto-detects the
      modules needed for the root filesystem.
  * hook-functions:
    - Refer to /lib/firmware/${version} where version is the kernel
      version we are building an initramfs for.
    - Do not copy /lib/udev/firmware.agent to the initramfs. Ubuntu's
      udev has /lib/udev/firmware_helper instead, and the udev hook
      copies this to the initramfs for us.
    - Dropped the manual_add_firmware function, as initramfs-tools now
      checks the firmware field in the module it is copying, and copies
      the firmware required by that module if its available.
  * Drop hooks/keymap and the KEYMAP variable setting in
    conf/initramfs.conf as console-setup takes care of keymap loading.
  * hooks/udevhelper: Drop, udev already copies what it needs.
  * hooks/legacylvm: Drop, as it refers to binaries and directories our
    lvm package doesn't have.

initramfs-tools (0.92b) unstable; urgency=low

  [ maximilian attems ]
  * update-initramfs: mbr_check() fix for /dev/md/X naming. (closes: #469312)
    Thanks to Axel Beckert <email address hidden> for report.
  * hook-functions: MODULES=dep fix error message.

  [ Glennie Vignarajah ]
 ...