[Feisty] Fail to boot (with initramfs-tools_0.85dubuntu5)

[Chad Waters]

Binary package hint: initramfs-tools

I have a complete failure to boot with after an upgrade to initramfs-tools_0.85dubuntu5.

Its hanging at the very start of usplash. I don't see any tty or dmesg output.

I had successful booting at initramfs-tools_0.85dubuntu3.

-C

[Marco Paulo Martins Sousa (marcomsousa)]

I confirm that..

[Cedric Schieli (cschieli)]

Same problem here.

I then tried that :

boot with break=top then ctrl-d -> failed
boot with break=premount then ctrl-d -> failed
boot with break=mount then ctrl-d -> success

There seems to be a resource conflict problem when initializing my piix ide controller

I will try to post some logs
(how are we supposed to capture initramfs output ?)

[tokj (tokj-deactivatedaccount)]

In my case only the 2.6.20 kernel doesn't boot.

Kernel 2.6.17 works fine.

[Marco Paulo Martins Sousa (marcomsousa)]

The only way to boot intro 2.6.20-2 is to download the Initramfs to 0.69ubuntu26, doing this:

[CODE]wget http://librarian.launchpad.net/5270535/initramfs-tools_0.69ubuntu26_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i initramfs-tools_0.69ubuntu26_all.deb[/CODE]

[Cedric Schieli (cschieli)]

The problem is :

init-premount/udev initiates modules loading, but when local-top/udev_helper is run the pci-ide module (piix in my case) is not loaded yet and ide-generic is then loaded

removing "modprobe -q ide-generic" in local-top/udev_helper solved the problem for me

maybe something takes longer in recent kernels (I tried 2.6.19-7-generic and 2.6.20-2-generic)

[chantra (chantra)]

in can confirm this. It happened either when upgrading
from initramfs-tools 0.69ubuntu26 to 0.85dubuntu2
or from initramfs-tools 0.85dubuntu2 to 0.85dubuntu3

both updates were done the same day.

I can also confirm Cedric Schieli's workaround:

 sudo vi /usr/share/initramfs-tools/scripts/local-top/udev_helper
comment out modprobe -q ide-generic
then run
sudo update-initramfs -u -k 2.6.20-2-generic
or whichever kernel is not booting anymore
then uncomment modprobe... so you get a vanilla version of /usr/share/initramfs-tools/scripts/local-top/udev_helper

[Sparkeh (sparkehloveslyne)]

I can cofirm the bug and chantra's workaround

[Emilio Pozuelo Monfort (pochu)]

I can confirm the bug.

I have initramfs-tools 0.85dubuntu5.

I can't boot with 2.6.20-2, but can with 2.6.19-7. Haven't tried with 2.6.20-1 (all generic).

Regards
Pochu

[Sebastian Breier (tomcat42)]

I get the bug as well; Workaround seems to work.

[iKs (iks279)]

I do confirm the bug.

Trying workaround...

Waiting for a 6th ubuntu version ;)

[tokj (tokj-deactivatedaccount)]

Chantra's (or Schieli's) workaround solved the problem in my case.

[Susan Cragin (susancragin)]

Noted "fix released" comment above so tried re-installing this a.m., ending at noon EST.
Fix did not work on my AMD64 Acer Ferrari or has perhaps not made its way to the 64-bit repository.

[Marco Paulo Martins Sousa (marcomsousa)]

0.85eubuntu1 should fix this now.

[Jonathan Hudson (jh+lpd)]

I still have this or a closely related issue with the latest initramfs and 2.6.20-5.

If I set break=mount, the initramfs prompt appears well before the HDD are detected.

If I wait until disks are detected and run scripts/local-top/mdadm, the raids are created, but the system hangs waiting for root device (/dev/mapper/vg00-root).

If I set the boot device to /dev/evms/lvm2/vg00/root, and do the "wait for disk detection", scripts/local-top/mdadm (or even just exit the initramfs shell) trick, then the system boots (first time for a month).

There are still timing / probing issues here; the latest initramfs does not fix it.

[Fabian (fwin-deactivatedaccount)]

I still had this bug with latest initramfs-tools (0.85eubuntu5); although it could be that I dragged it with me since herd 2. The workaround did it for me.