Plymouth causes update-initramfs to fail

[Joseph C. Sible]

I'm running Ubuntu 20.04 and plymouth 0.9.4git20200109-0ubuntu6. Whenever I run "update-initramfs -uk all", it fails and produces this output:

update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-5.4.0-14-generic
cp: cannot create regular file '/var/tmp/mkinitramfs_0bZgET/usr/share/plymouth/themes/spinner/watermark.png': No such file or directory
E: /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/plymouth failed with return 1.
update-initramfs: failed for /boot/initrd.img-5.4.0-14-generic with 1.

I found a workaround: if I edit /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/plymouth and find this line:

  cp /usr/share/plymouth/ubuntu-logo.png "${DESTDIR}/usr/share/plymouth/themes/spinner/watermark.png"

And add this line right before it:

  mkdir -p "${DESTDIR}/usr/share/plymouth/themes/spinner"

Then it runs successfully.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[satmandu (satadru-umich)]

Nice.

Patch for the lazy:

diff -Npaur a/usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/plymouth b/usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/plymouth
--- a/usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/plymouth 2020-03-06 12:45:51.563041573 -0500
+++ b/usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/plymouth 2020-03-06 12:50:15.335756844 -0500
@@ -119,6 +119,7 @@ case "${THEME_NAME}" in
   ;;

  *)
+ mkdir -p "${DESTDIR}/usr/share/plymouth/themes/spinner"
   cp /usr/share/plymouth/ubuntu-logo.png "${DESTDIR}/usr/share/plymouth"
   cp /usr/share/plymouth/ubuntu-logo.png "${DESTDIR}/usr/share/plymouth/themes/spinner/watermark.png"

[Jags Desai (jagsdesai)]

I ran into this bug too on Ubuntu MATE 20.04. After a reboot I was not able to log back in at all.

I had to boot the PC through Live-USB, chroot into the system, and applied Joseph C. Sible's workaround, which by the way worked perfectly.

Then I run:

`update-initramfs -c -k all`

and I was able boot back into the system.

Just in case if anyone is interested, some of the errors I ran into:

````
/etc/kernel/postinst.d/initramfs-tools:

update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-5.5.8-050508-generic

cp: cannot create regular file '/var/tmp/mkinitramfs_HrLIsw/usr/share/plymouth/themes/spinner/watermark.png': No such file or directory

E: /usr/share/initramfs-tools/hooks/plymouth failed with return 1.

update-initramfs: failed for /boot/initrd.img-5.5.8-050508-generic with 1.

run-parts: /etc/kernel/postinst.d/initramfs-tools exited with return code 1

dpkg: error processing package linux-image-unsigned-5.5.8-050508-generic (--configure):

installed linux-image-unsigned-5.5.8-050508-generic package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 1

Errors were encountered while processing: linux-image-unsigned-5.5.8-050508-generic

E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
````

Thanks alot, Joseph.

[Cruz Fernandez (cruz-fernandez)]

A better workaround is to install plymouth-theme-spinner (it fixed the OEM missing logo on Ubuntu 20.04 for my machine Dell XPS 9550)