initramfs: what does it mean?

[twbdan]

initramfs, what does it mean, when ubuntu won't load and uou get this message?

[ago]

That something get wrong in the boot stage and you are thrown into a console

[dadani]

i have the same problem after I have installed Kubuntu 7.10 with wubi 7.10. I do this several times but it's at each time the same problem

that appears on my screen:

BusyBox v1.1.3 (Debian 1:1.1.3-3ubuntu3) Built-in shell (ash)
Enter 'help' for a list of built in commands.

(initramfs)_

what can I do?

Dani

[antimatter15]

the same error is happening to me.

i think it means that ubuntu/wubi can't find the boot disk ?!?

[ago]

What version are you using and when exactly does it happen? First reboot after windows installation or second reboot after linux installation?

[dadani]

I tested it with all wubi 7.10 versions (every time the same error). And it happends after the kubuntu installation, when linux reboots the system.

thx

[ago]

Originally Posted by dadani I tested it with all wubi 7.10 versions (every time the same error). And it happends after the kubuntu installation, when linux reboots the system. thx

when you boot, press esc when given the chance, then press 'e'. Edit the kernel line, remove "quiet splash" and add "debug". Then press enter and "b"

[kinyua]

Originally Posted by ago when you boot, press esc when given the chance, then press 'e'. Edit the kernel line, remove "quiet splash" and add "debug". Then press enter and "b"

Thank you heaps, you are my hero!

[Gralgrathor]

I have a similar problem.

I have a simple machine, 32 bit architecture mainboard, dual core Intel cpu, 4 sata channels, 2 IDE, to which I added an additional 4 IDE channels using a PCI IDE controller. The machine came with a Samsung 500G SATA drive (ch. 1/4), and I added 2 WD 1T SATA drives (ch. 2 and 4/4), and 2 older WD 500G IDE drives (those last two I plugged into the PCI controller, both as master).

The base install works like a charm. I just enter through the program, sacrifice my entire (hd0) 500G SATA drive to the "guided partitioning" process, remove the CD, hit enter - and -

End of story. The thing won't boot no matter what I do. The machine just stopped dead right after the POST check.

So here's what I did: I re-installed Debian, my previous installation, using the same harddrive, and told the installation program to tweak the MBR and /boot partition (why doesn't the ubuntu install livecd have nifty options like that? sure, the installer is easy to use - unless it doesn't work!). Then I re-installed ubuntu, again using (hd0).

Now, at boot, at least I got the grub menu. But keying enter got me in the BusyBox. So I rebooted and got myself into a grub commandline, to try some stuff. I couldn't get it to boot no matter what "root (hd#,#); setup (hd#)" I entered.

I did discover one thing though:

Debian assigns a completely different range of drive numbers to my drives than ubuntu.

My machine has 3 SATA drives, and 2 IDE drives on a plugged in PCI IDE card. It also has a combination card reader internally on USB. It's starting to look like with ubuntu, USB is numbered as the first 4 SCSI devices, while the SATA and IDE drives are given drive designations higher than those. I want to install ubuntu to the same disk Debian was first on: the first sata drive - but apparently my BIOS, Debian and Ubuntu *all* have different ideas as to which drive is which.

I still don't know why the ubuntu installer can't figure out how to correctly configure my MBR and grub, but at least I know the direction to look in.

If any of you knows anything about this; don't hesitate to lemme know: my system's been offline for 3 days now, and it's starting to hurt

Thanks!

G.

[nickinuse]

I'm trying to do an install from an external USB-CD drive (I believe it's NEC inside) onto an IDE drive inside a Thinkpad R51.
It seems that the installation process/hardware probing drops the power of the drive or gives wrong instructions to the CD-ROM or something, because even when I reboot from the initramfs screen winxp fails to attach the cd drive giving the usual device malfunctioned talk until it's turned off and on again (not just disconnected).
However I'm sometimes able to boot the install/demo by turning the usb-cd power off and on again, then selecting "help me to boot the CD" from the autorun menu, thus adding an entry to wubi loader to boot.ini (again, not always, usually this involves turning the cdrom on/off somewhere at the beginning of the screen with ubuntu log and progress bar running).

Another suspicion (actually two) is incorrect operation of gparted and the results in the partition table. I went to install a tripple-boot system. I used gparted to shrink and move my C: (winxp, obviosly NTFS) partition so there would be free space at the beginning of the HDD to install Mac Leopard to a first primary partition to avoid problems with booting into it. Experimented with the installation to no avail, though I believe it added its own GPT besides MBR. So I try to move the C: partition back to it's initial place (Ubuntu is planned be at the end of drive). Although the initial drive had ~17Gb at all for C:, of which ~3Gb taken by windows's files and programs, gparted now shows ~13gb as used on the partition and is taking forever to re-shrink/restore the space. Windows checkdisk shows no errors adn the correct size of ~3Gb taken, PartitionMagic however warns of partition table sectors moved (wrong MBR) and warns not to edit partitions in this state.
I know incorrect size may reported either be due fragmentation, which gparted thus may have produced moving the partition for the first time or it's picking incorrect entries from GPT/MBR (I did fdisk /MBR from windows startup cd to be able to boot into windows).
Also I've been running into similar problems on another laptop with a SATA drive, grub not being able to "predict" the Ubunutu's partition at correct place for a newly-created ext3 partition (re-grubbing from command line is a real pain, there really should be some "auto re-grub" / fixmbr / fixgpt command utilities on the install cd).