Trusty daily live ISOs will not boot; "Waiting for network configuration"

[ajgreeny]

I am trying to boot Xubuntu and Lubuntu 14.04 live desktop i386 on an old Acer laptop with Celeron 2.66GHz CPU, 512MB ram (I know, it is low on ram) and a Radeon Mobility 9100 igp.

The system simply freezes at the Plymouth screen with Xubuntu/Lubuntu and coloured dots showing and eventually an error "Waiting for network configuration" appears and the system will go no further no matter how long I wait.

I have tried with and without a cable network connection to the Realtek RTL 8139 ethernet card, but can not try wireless as I need to use ndiswrapper for the only adapter I have, a Netgear WG511v2 using Marvell chips, showing as 88w8335 {libertas} in lshw output.

All previous versions of Xubuntu and Lubuntu up to and includiong 13.10 boot fine on this machine in spite of its low spec.

I have asked for help at Ubuntuforums http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2200517&p=12907617#post12907617 and it was suggested there that I file this as a bug.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.

To change the source package that this bug is filed about visit https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1272429/+editstatus and add the package name in the text box next to the word Package.

[This is an automated message. I apologize if it reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[ajgreeny (ajg-charlbury)]

Unfortunately I am not able to file this against any specific package as
I am not even able to get to a running OS. I shall therefore return to
the bug and file it against the kernel of the daily iso that is at fault
at my earliest opportunity.

If there is some way to get a USB live system to boot in text modeI
could try that and report at which stage the boot freezes. I have tried
a great number of key presses, alone and in combination to skip past the
network configuration but so far nothing has made any difference.

The same daily images boot fine on two other machines that I have tried
them on; it is just this one old laptop that is a problem.

On 24/01/14 20:23, Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot wrote:
> Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make
> Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a
> specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu
> in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source
> packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs
> about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your
> bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage.
> You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.
>
> To change the source package that this bug is filed about visit
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1272429/+editstatus and add the
> package name in the text box next to the word Package.
>
> [This is an automated message. I apologize if it reached you
> inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]
>
> ** Tags added: bot-comment
>

[ajgreeny (ajg-charlbury)]

Unfortunately I am not able to file this against any specific package as I am not even able to get to a running OS.

If there is some way to get a USB live system to boot in text modeI could try that and report at which stage the boot freezes. I have tried a great number of key presses, alone and in combination to skip past the network configuration but so far nothing has made any difference.

The same daily images boot fine on two other machines that I have tried them on; it is just this one old laptop that is a problem.

[Brad Figg (brad-figg)]

This bug is missing log files that will aid in diagnosing the problem. From a terminal window please run:

apport-collect 1272429

and then change the status of the bug to 'Confirmed'.

If, due to the nature of the issue you have encountered, you are unable to run this command, please add a comment stating that fact and change the bug status to 'Confirmed'.

This change has been made by an automated script, maintained by the Ubuntu Kernel Team.

[ajgreeny (ajg-charlbury)]

On the assumption that I need to run the
apport-collect 1272429
command on the OS at fault running on the computer that will not boot, I regret that I am unable to do so as the nature of the bug is that I can not boot the Trusty OS iso on that machine.

I could run the command on the machine which has LXLE installed (Lubuntu 12.04 based) but I presume that will not be helpful. Please let me know if it could assist with better hardware identification for you.

[Joseph Salisbury (jsalisbury)]

Was there a prior Trusty daily ISO that did not exhibit this bug? Can you see if it still happens with the latest daily image:
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/daily-live/current/

[ajgreeny (ajg-charlbury)]

All the Lubuntu and Xubuntu 14.04 image files I have tried on that laptop have failed so far.
I have just updated the Lubuntu iso file from Jan 23 to today's version, Jan 27, using zsync and the new one exhibits exactly the same problem, though so far after waiting for about 30 minutes there is no "Waiting for network configuration" error message; the system has just frozen with the Lubuntu plymouth splash screen, ie the word Lubuntu with 5 dots beneath.

[ajgreeny (ajg-charlbury)]

Just to confirm that I have just tried Lubuntu 13.10 which boots from a USB to a live system with no problem on the same old laptop. It is only 14.04 which has a problem.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Joseph Salisbury (jsalisbury)]

Thank you for taking the time to file a bug report on this issue.

However, given the number of bugs that the Kernel Team receives during any development cycle it is impossible for us to review them all. Therefore, we occasionally resort to using automated bots to request further testing. This is such a request.

  With the recent release of this Ubuntu release, would like to confirm if this bug is still present. Please test again with the newer kernel and indicate in the bug if this issue still exists or not.

You can update to the latest development kernel by simply running the following commands in a terminal window:

    sudo apt-get update
    sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

If the bug still exists, change the bug status from Incomplete to Confirmed. If the bug no longer exists, change the bug status from Incomplete to Fix Released.

If you want this bot to quit automatically requesting kernel tests, add a tag named: bot-stop-nagging.

 Thank you for your help, we really do appreciate it.

[ajgreeny (ajg-charlbury)]

I had managed to get 14.04 on to this laptop eventually by installing Lubuntu 13.10, then upgrading 13.10 to 14.04. On reboot this did not boot to a running system, even if I attempted to boot to a command-line by adding boot option text to the kernel line of grub; it just froze the same as when trying to install from CD or USB. I therefore booted to the most recent 3.11.0-19 kernel that I had from saucy from grub menu, completely uninstalled kernels 3.13.0-## and rebooted into the successful 3.11.0-19 again.

I have just upgraded as requested above to the kernel which is the default for today of 3.13.0-51 and rebooted to the exact same problem of a total freeze.

For now I have given up on getting the 3.13 kernel to work on this hardware combination (see above for details) and will continue with the 3.11.0-## kernel, which for the time being at least, is working well.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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