Ubuntu 14.04 not booting, dropping to BusyBox (initramfs)

[PaulRSte]

After a power supply failure which also took out the motherboard, I have just got round to also replacing the motherboard, memory, and processor. New kit is an Asus M5A78L-M/USB3 with an AMD FX4300 Black Edition Quad Core processor, and 8GB HyperX Memory. Cooling is via a ThermalRight AXP-200R. The add-in cards from the old mother board are still working and are an Nvidia Graphics Card, Hauppauge twin tuner card, and additional ASUS Optical Out card which connects to a header on the motherboard (so I can connect the digital coax connector to the surround sound receiver).

Initially the system was connected to a normal PC monitor and all went well powering it up. After spending an hour auto checking the original hard drives - all OK - and the better part of 2 hours installing software updates it seemed to be working well so it was reconnected to our TV. Two days later and it has crashed again.

I have two 500GB disks with identical partition layouts which are (approximate sizes), in sequence:-
50GB Boot partition
5GB Swap Partition
12GB Home Partition
440GB Recordings Partition

The two Boot Partitions and the two Home Partitions run as software Raid 1 (Mirror)
The two recordings partitions are non RAID for MythTV (Recordings and Recordings2) which balances the load between them.

The fault started sometime during the night. Something was wrong but I wasn't sure what but it seemed that a reboot was in order.

On rebooting it reported that the Recordings partition could not be mounted and offered Skip or Manual mount options. After shutting down and rebooting I then noticed that the Recordings2 partition was not being mounted either. In retrospect though, I believe that the mount point for this is in the Recordings folder, which would obviously prevent the second one being mounted as well.

A further problem is that having skipped both recordings partitions to allow the boot to continue, the system came up with a smaller than usual screen size and a report that suitable parameters could not be found.

Having booted from the 14.04 LTS boot DVD (screen size normal) I ran GParted and did a check on all the partitions. All seemed to be ok but on rebooting it is now dropping to BusyBox (initramfs). If I exit out of this it displays a trace and then hangs.

Can anyone offer some help on how to progress this please. I have run the following commands having seen this as a starting point for a similar fault.




ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo fdisk -lu

Disk /dev/sda: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000d09e5

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sda1 * 63 97659134 48829536 fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sda2 97659135 109659689 6000277+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3 109659690 133644734 11992522+ fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sda4 133644735 976768064 421561665 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdb: 500.1 GB, 500107862016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 60801 cylinders, total 976773168 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x000dc53c

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdb1 * 63 97659134 48829536 fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sdb2 97659135 109659689 6000277+ 82 Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sdb3 109659690 133644734 11992522+ fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/sdb4 133644735 976768064 421561665 83 Linux

Disk /dev/sdc: 7864 MB, 7864320000 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 956 cylinders, total 15360000 sectors
Units = sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x092b268b

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/sdc1 * 2048 15359999 7678976 b W95 FAT32
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo parted -l
Model: ATA HDS725050KLA360 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sda: 500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 32.3kB 50.0GB 50.0GB primary ext3 boot, raid
2 50.0GB 56.1GB 6144MB primary linux-swap(v1)
3 56.1GB 68.4GB 12.3GB primary ext3 raid
4 68.4GB 500GB 432GB primary xfs


Model: ATA HDS725050KLA360 (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdb: 500GB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 32.3kB 50.0GB 50.0GB primary ext3 boot, raid
2 50.0GB 56.1GB 6144MB primary linux-swap(v1)
3 56.1GB 68.4GB 12.3GB primary ext3 raid
4 68.4GB 500GB 432GB primary xfs


Model: (scsi)
Disk /dev/sdc: 7864MB
Sector size (logical/physical): 512B/512B
Partition Table: msdos

Number Start End Size Type File system Flags
1 1049kB 7864MB 7863MB primary fat32 boot


Warning: Unable to open /dev/sr0 read-write (Read-only file system). /dev/sr0
has been opened read-only.
Model: Optiarc DVD RW AD-7173A (scsi)
Disk /dev/sr0: 4706MB
Sector size (logical/physical): 2048B/2048B
Partition Table: mac

Number Start End Size File system Name Flags
1 8192B 24.6kB 16.4kB Apple
2 3979MB 3989MB 9568kB EFI


ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ sudo blkid
/dev/loop0: TYPE="squashfs"
/dev/sda1: UUID="a413a2f7-07d5-a6d8-915d-4e9b9f101203" TYPE="linux_raid_member"
/dev/sda2: UUID="20aa22cf-da00-4e46-a279-0a161278c129" TYPE="swap"
/dev/sda3: UUID="432486f1-99b1-33aa-915d-4e9b9f101203" TYPE="linux_raid_member"
/dev/sda4: UUID="12544d66-0b05-478d-84f7-88d36a6a81f1" TYPE="xfs"
/dev/sdb1: UUID="a413a2f7-07d5-a6d8-915d-4e9b9f101203" TYPE="linux_raid_member"
/dev/sdb2: UUID="9ee3e3de-ea36-4778-9881-b55bb7b23e47" TYPE="swap"
/dev/sdb3: UUID="432486f1-99b1-33aa-915d-4e9b9f101203" TYPE="linux_raid_member"
/dev/sdb4: UUID="2295357c-ddac-46a8-b551-d6fead02bb78" TYPE="xfs"
/dev/sr0: LABEL="Ubuntu 14.04.1 LTS amd64" TYPE="iso9660"
/dev/sdc1: LABEL="7_9GB" UUID="46F6-6084" TYPE="vfat"
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$ gedit



Can anyone offer some help on how to progress this please.

[T.J.]

Have you tried booting the machine with a rescue disc, and then regenerating both the bootloader (update-grub or grub-install) and the initramfs (update-initramfs -k all -u)? If your initrd was generated using limited drivers, it may not boot properly on your new hardware until you do. It's also possible that your drive designations have changed. If you need more suggestions, please feel free to post back, and I'll try to walk you through whatever you need. =)

Have a fabulous day!

[PaulRSte]

Thanks for the update T.J. After posting this last night I did a little investigation of the live DVD (see next paragraph). The system had run ok for 2 days on the new hardware and had done some major updates. The system has been down since July but has had the least priority as I've also been replacing my SBS2003 server and my XP PC with an Apple MAC. The server has crashed as well since getting the MAC and getting the email working has been a nightmare.

One of the things I was trying to do with the HTPC was watching something from Channel Five's web site but have a huge issue with getting the Flash player updated in Firefox. This seems to be a bit of an issue generally so I loaded Firefox from the live DVD and it doesn't have any Flash player installed at all. Presumably this will be the case on a fresh install so getting the latest version of Flash should work ok. I tried to install it but it wouldn't when loaded from the live DVD. I have tried updating to the latest Flash on my system and whilst the install runs ok, Firefox still has the old version showing in add ons.

We've had a long think about it and we've decided to go for a total rebuild on new disks. This was the ultimate plan anyway as the system is 8 years old.

Thanks again for the reply but I'm going to close this now.