Install CD dumps to busybox after toggling floppy

[Chorca]

Binary package hint: casper

This issue occurred with both Alpha 4 and Alpha 5 CDs.

I downloaded the Alpha 5 ISO and MD5summed it, it checked out. Burned the image with Brasero, and rebooted the machine.

This machine is a Gigabyte GA-7NNXP motherboard with a Nvidia FX-5200 card, 1GB RAM, ITE RAID controller, Sil SATA, and an Athlon 2800+ Socket A CPU.

I boot the CD as usual, and it comes up with the language select screen. I select English, and then select Install. It begins to boot the CD, going to the usplash screen with the bar that moves back and forth, where the kernel boots. It then begins to look at my floppy drive. I don't have any disk in it, but it tries to read the non-existent disk 19 times. Immediately afterwards, going to a BusyBox screen with an (initramfs) prompt. I've included a screenshot.

The interesting thing, is that if there IS a floppy in the drive, no matter what floppy, it'll boot. It toggles the floppy a bunch, and then proceeds to boot the CD properly. If I disable the floppy drive in the BIOS, it seems to try to access the drive even though it's disabled, then dumps me back to the same BusyBox prompt.

I've tested this with the Gutsy release CD. It toggles the floppy drive half as many times and slower, but proceeds to boot properly after finding no floppy. Hardy simply dumps to the BusyBox prompt.

('toggling the floppy' meaning an attempt to access the drive, the 'tick-tick' a drive makes when there is no disc)

[Jack Wasey (jackwasey)]

i have a similar issue, but no floppy drive to test with, and apparently no floppy related errors. looks like the cd root is not mounted.

note that booting the CD itself (not just ISO) in vmware works without a configured floppy.

[Nathalie Oldenburg (oldnat)]

I also have this on my Asus mainboard AMD64 machine, the i386 and the amd64 images I burned fail both back to the initramfs/busybox prompt (whatever that is, I am not a guru).
It makes no difference if there is a floppy in the drive or not. The first time it seeked the floppy several times, since that it does not (lits only the LED) but does not boot.

I tried the CD (the i386 one) on an IBM T42 Laptop in VMWare, is OK. I tried it on an hp compaq d330, it is ok (without any floppy).

What can one do to get the SW installed? I have currently a gutsy 386 on my 64-bit-AMD-box and am very happy with it, but wanted to install also a 64-bit version now hearing that it is really stable now.

Another question, shall this problem also have an impact on the "normal" upgrade procedure, have I have to be afraid to get my gutsy destroyed instead of upgrading to Hardy?

Thanks a lot

Nat

[ProtocolOH (protocoloh)]

Yanno, I just reported a new bug, and after re-reading this one closely, it seems related.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/226519

My difference was, I don't even _have_ a floppy drive attached, so I have no idea what Hardy is trying to do with my floppy drive. All I know is that, if I have BIOS configured for a 3.5" 1.44MB floppy drive, Install launches. If I have no drive configured, Install dumps to BusyBox. So there ya go.

[Luis Mondesi (lemsx1)]

I have the same issue. The mobo supports floppy but the drive is disconnected (not being used).

This fixed my problem:

all_generic_ide floppy=off irqpoll

As suggested by this post:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=767154

Background info:

The box was running Gutsy and upgraded from the update-manager GUI to Hardy. The Hardy kernel didn't work so we had to use the old kernel. That booted the system and we started digging to see why this happend, until we stumbled upon that forum post and then this bug.