initramfs + busybox trouble installing

[hal8000]

What would be nice to know is exactly where the bug is that's giving everyone these errors. They are obviously widespread. There is something strange in the kernel that's causing drives not to be recognized.

I have had the same problems booting Ubuntu since 6.10 (the last Ubuntu that installed from the CD without problems).

My solution was to compile my own kernel, this works, but its not the most elegant solution and outside the scope of a newbies. I have a feeling that its somehow tied in with the libata library as this is when my problems started.

I hope someone can provide an answer.

[wconstantine]

Would indeed be nice to have some attention over here from the developers of Ubuntu. I've had problems with installing Ubuntu with my JMicron system for as long as I can remember. First time I tried was 6.10 if I remember it correctly. 7.04 (or 7.10) was the first distrobution I succeeded in installing. I think it was due to a kernel fix that existed in the new kernel 7.04 used. Has that fix been stripped away due to this LTS stuff?

I'm going to try to download 7.04 again and try installing it and then doing a dist-upgrade. I've already tried with 7.10 and it didn't work. So I have little hope for 7.04.

This is one of Linux's issues folks. The average joe will need a working OS. Not some shell dropped before their eyes.

[hal8000]

For those of you still having problems -- can you verify that the UUID in the grub /bppt/grub/menu.lst matches your /etc/fstab and is actually the right value for your hard drive?

They were different in my case...and I got dumped into busybox too.

Hi, can you elaborate on this please? Are you saying that you modified your grub/menu.lst file and can now load Ubuntu 8.04 without problems.

I am multi booting, but using an alternative (PCLinuxOS) grub to control booting, however I still cannot boot Ubuntu without using a non ubuntu kernel. So far changing BIOS settings to non pata, sata, and adding generic_ide_devices irqpoll have all failed for me... however the live CD boots ok, but not the permanent install.

I will load the live CD, copy the kernel and modules into my installed 8.04 system and see if that cures my initramfs problems.

[wconstantine]

Hi, can you elaborate on this please? Are you saying that you modified your grub/menu.lst file and can now load Ubuntu 8.04 without problems.

I am multi booting, but using an alternative (PCLinuxOS) grub to control booting, however I still cannot boot Ubuntu without using a non ubuntu kernel. So far changing BIOS settings to non pata, sata, and adding generic_ide_devices irqpoll have all failed for me... however the live CD boots ok, but not the permanent install.

I will load the live CD, copy the kernel and modules into my installed 8.04 system and see if that cures my initramfs problems.

The boot parameters you have described there are wrong.

"all_generic_ide" is the right one. Anyways, I guess you have added the boot parameters in the /boot/grub/menu.lst file? If not, do it and it'll should work for you.

Adding the boot parameters when launching the live-cd is not enough. It doesn't remember the parameters given when launched so you need to add it yourself in the right line in the meny.lst file.

If you already have done so, sorry. Your reply is not quite so detailed, just wanted to make sure.

[tofuconfetti]

Hi, can you elaborate on this please? Are you saying that you modified your grub/menu.lst file and can now load Ubuntu 8.04 without problems.

When you get booted into the 8.04 installed system (not the Live CD), then you can hand edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst file. It will have a line that passes parameters to the kernel as it boots up. The line will look something like this ...

kernel  /vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic boot=UUID=349b7b5f-a9af-4f81-abb3-56bb54a72a70 ro quiet splash

At the END of that line add whatever parameters you want to pass at boot up. If you really get stuck and can't pass parameters from the graphical grub menu, you can actually boot into the Live CD, mount the system partition (or the partition with /boot on it, I put it on it's own paritition - an old habit from the Gentoo days) by loading up the terminal and typing ...

sudo mkdir /mnt/system
sudo mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/system
nano /boot/grub/menu.lst

NOTE: you will need to change the /dev/sda1 to whatever partition your /boot/grub/menu.lst is on.

Then add the parameters to that line, and SAVE it before you close it. Then shut down the Live CD, reboot into 8.04 and the parameters will be passed.

For the record, I did NOT have to add "all_generic_ide" to mine. I either had to set the USB Legacy settings to "off" in the BIOS, or had to pass "irqpoll" to the kernel. I don't know WHY this works, it just does. Until we have a firm answer, you may have to try them individually to see which one works for you.

I am multi booting, but using an alternative (PCLinuxOS) grub to control booting, however I still cannot boot Ubuntu without using a non ubuntu kernel.

Then boot into the PCLinuxOS and edit the Ubuntu boot line passing the parameter. That's even easier. Just edit /boot/grub/menu.lst and add it to the UBUNTU line (not the PCLinuxOS line.

So far changing BIOS settings to non pata, sata, and adding generic_ide_devices irqpoll have all failed for me... however the live CD boots ok, but not the permanent install.

Did you say you were using a non-Ubuntu kernel?? That's not good. Install 8.04 fresh using their kernel. That should work IF the Live CD works okay.

I will load the live CD, copy the kernel and modules into my installed 8.04 system and see if that cures my initramfs problems.

I wouldn't do that. Let the installer do it.

Maybe some of that will help you.

[hal8000]

When you get booted into the 8.04 installed system (not the Live CD), then you can hand edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst file. It will have a line that passes parameters to the kernel as it boots up. The line will look something like this ...

kernel  /vmlinuz-2.6.22-14-generic boot=UUID=349b7b5f-a9af-4f81-abb3-56bb54a72a70 ro quiet splash

Maybe some of that will help you.

Hi, thanks for all your help.

Looking back through my own notebook, I have had trouble booting Ubuntu since 6.04, think this is when the Ubuntu kernel used the libata library.

Looks like I may have passed the wrong kernel parameter.
Looking back I to 6.04 a kernel module was missing.
I used the livd CD chroot'ed into my ubuntu system and added piix to /etc/initramfs-tools/modules and created a new initramfs

I have just added piix to the modules in Hardy Heron and updated the initramfs- for a brief second I thought this was going to boot, but after a few lines of text I get a black monitor screen (no text or graphic displayed) then drops to initramfs

One thing I notice between live install and hard drive install is that the boot splash screen changes. The live install gives the familiar Ubuntu logo, after a live install I see what looks like a TV test card, which hangs on waiting for root filesystem then drops to initramfs.



I am still convinced that libata is the problem, in Suse you can disable libata by appending hwprobe=-modules.pata to grub/menu.lst

This only works in Suse as it is parsed by Suse central config file /etc/sysctrl (I think,from memory).
If anyones knows a way to disable libata support from grub/menu.lst I'll give this a try.

I am going to go through your suggestions and all posts in this thread again. My hardware:
Asus P4P800-E motherboard
Intel P4 2.8G
Nvidia 7600GS
1G Ram
Maxtor UDMA100 HD (IDE not sata)

[silviutp]

OMG, I'm up running with Hardy now
No IDE to RAID switch, nor enabling the floppy drive (I disabled it again).

Using the desktop live cd, what did the trick for me was adding

all_generic_ide floppy=off irqpoll

to the boot options when pressing F6. I can't tell if you really need all three options. I'm just happy to be up running

Hope this may help someone - good luck to everyone.

Thanks for help. This did it for me too.

[wconstantine]

THIS DRIVES ME CRAZY.

Has ANYONE succeeded in even launching the live-cd for 8.04 with MSI P965 Neo?!

I have 2 sata drives and one IDE cd-rom. I've tried with Wubi, A LOT OF BOOT PARAMETERS on the live-cd and I've also tried 7.04/7.10 which I've successfully run before. But none of them works anymore. I'm not dropped into busybox with 7.04/7.10 but the computer locks up and the pc speaker beeps constantly.

In 8.04, you can't even hear the cd is being read. It just loads a little and then drops into busybox. So damn annoying.

Boot parameters I've tried:

irqpoll noirqdebug all_generic_ide noapic nolapic floppy=off pci=nomsi nomsi

LET ME TASTE THAT UBUNTU GOODNES, I CAN'T STAND WINDOWS ANY MORE.

[dartdog]

FWIW I did a wubi install, went through the entire install and reboot sequence with a Dell opti.. was happily in Ubuntu, went back to win xp for a while... had a thunderstorm shut down power and used the opportunity to go back into Ubuntu after the power came back...
Got the mysterious initramfs + busybox prompt...
rebooted , same thing... went to these forums after getting win XP back...read this thread and others.. was about to figure out how to apply some of the suggestions... but... when rebooting all went well and I'm writing this in Ubuntu... I guess running XP reset some bios? or cleared some hardware states that were not cleared with a powerdown...??? As I said.. Probably won't help anyone else but you never know>>>!

[herdivet]

Add this to the FWIW column. I have a dual boot system I put 8.04 beta on, and applied updates. Eventually I got the busybox, but if I chose an earlier version, it came up fine. I just did that for a while, until another update occurred and suddenly everything was fine.

On my 'working' system, I upgraded from 7.1 to 8.04. Yikes. It looked great immediately after the upgrade, but then I ran the 'updates' and it's been stuck with busybox everytime, unless I pick an older version from the grub menu. It actually has four versions (not counting recovery modes) on the grub menu, with linux-version-2.6.24.17 linux-version-2.6.24.16 linux-version-2.6.22.14 and linux-version2.6.20.16. The 2.2.24.17 ALWAYS busyboxed until I put the recommended all-generic-ide on the loader. That allowed it to boot -thanks for the help.

However - it boots with graphics set to 640x480 and only offers 320x240 as the other option (reminds me of the old PC XT with mode80 and mode40!) The card is an nvidia GeForce 6150LE but the driver, when I get it to load, still only offers 640x480. By booting to the 2.6.22 version, I can get 800x600 w/out the nvidia driver, but I sure miss Ubuntu 7.1 with 1024x768 and booting without having to drop back a few versions.

It appears some of these problems are with the Linux kernel, based on how it gets worse with 2.6.24. I' hoping to hang on with 800x600 for a while and hope an upgrade shows up soon to fix this.

Just FWIW and thanks for all the help. This has been the most informative thread on this topic I've seen. At least it gave a solution that got the system to boot. Thanks again!