8.04 to 8.10: root partition not found after upgrade

[MKlemm]

Hi all,

I just upgraded from 8.04 to 8.10. When I was about to reboot after the upgrade, the boot stopped at the point where it tries to find the device for the root partition by UUID and drops to the BusyBox shell.
Using the BusyBox shell, I could see that there were no disk device nodes whatsoever in the initramfs's "dev" drectory, nor seem there to be any other "dynamic" (udev) device nodes.

As I had my previous 2.6.24 kernel still set up in the grub boot menu, I was able to boot 8.10. with a 2.6.24-19 kernel (which gives me issues with the nvidia module, which is installed once via DKMS and again - an older version - by the boot-up script of linux-resttricted-modules-common and it's temp module directory), but at least I could get the system running and tried to regenerated the initramfs with "update-initramfs" giving it the kernel version 2.6.27-7-generic.

I tried this several times, also with manually adding some disk driver modules to "/etc/initramfs-tools/modules", to no avail.

Comapring the list of modules loaded under a running 2.6.24 kernel with what I could see in the BusyBox emergency shell under /proc/modules after booting 2.6.27 failed, there doesn't seem to be any relevant difference.

However, when I was doing the upgrade from 8.04 (I did it using the update manager in Gnome),
the upgrade crashed when installing the "amarok" package. I don't know if it was coincidence, but just before the upgrade stopped, I removed a USB device from the computer.
after the upgrade had failed, I ran dpkg -- configure -a and then contuniued the upgrade using apt-get dist-upgrade (the GUI upgrade wasn't working anymore, maybe there were already packages replaced), and this time, it seemed to work OK.

Now can't tell whether the interrupted upgrade is somehow related to the boot issues, but personally i doubt that this is the case.

My root file system is on a SATA disk connected to an Intel 945 chip set.

Doesn anyone have an idea about a solution to this? Id it UDEV not working or not installed in the iniramfs? how do I get a working UDEV into the initramfs?

[MKlemm]

In the meantime, I've seen other people posting similar issues.
Interestingly, also the Live CD doesn't work and fails with more or less the same message.
The DVD drive from which I try to run the live CD is also connected to the same SATA controller (Intel 965P, 820801H, ICH8 Family...)

[MKlemm]

This really starts annoying me.

When I type "dmesg" at the (initramfs) prompt, I can see messages saying "SATA link down" for all four of my SATA channels. The ata_piix driver and everything seems to have been loaded OK, though.

When booting the 2.6.24 kernel, I can see how ata1 and ata2 are correctly recognized as my Seagate Harddisk and DVD-RW device.. besides that, there are no differences in the dmesg output I could tell being related with the issue...

EDIT: My Hardware isn't anything exotic, and I think it's a pretty common setup:
MSI P965 Neo2 Mainboard with One Seagate 300GB drive connected to the first SATA channel and a Samsung DVD Writer at the second SATA.

[aircode]

same problem here...

Kubuntu 8.04 is running fine.
" 8.10 fall back into initramfs console with

(initramfs) [ 63.072019] ata1: SRST failed (errno=-16)

dmesg say:
ata1: SRST failed (errno=-16)
ata1: SATA link up 1.5Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300)
ata1: link online but device misclassified, retrying
ata1: link is slow to respond, please be patient (ready=-19)
ata1: SRST failed (errno=-16)
ata1: SATA link up 1.5Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300)
ata1: link online but device misclassified, device detection might fail

ata2: SATA link up 1.5Gbps (SStatus 113 SControl 300)
ata2.00: ATA-7: WDC WD1500ADFD-00NLR5, 21.07QR5, max UDMA/133
ata2.00: 293046768 sectors, multi 1: LBA48 NCQ (depth 31/32)
ata2.00: configured for UDMA/133
scsi 1:0:0:0: Direct-Access ATA WDC WD1500ADFD-0 21.0 PQ: 0 ANSI: 5
sata_nv 0000:00:0e.1: PCI INT B -> Link[APSJ] -> GSI 23 (level, low) -> IRQ 23
sata_nv 0000:00:0e.1: Using SWNCQ mode
sata_nv 0000:00:0e.1: setting latency timer to 64
scsi2 : sata_nv
scsi3 : sata_nv
blah blah blah is an output from live CD dmesg

tried several configuration with my Bios SATA / RAID but nothing succeed. if anyone had ideas iam happy about ...

Intel Core2 Q6600, RAM4096MB Kingston HyperX, Asus Formula Striker II, GEFORCE 8600 GT, and a BTTV Frame Grabber Card

regards

[billrad1]

I have same issue. I have ubuntu on an SATA drive, attached to a PCI sata controller card, and an IDE windows drive connected to the SOYO Dragon motherboard. I can boot 8.10 with the older kernel fine, but the new kernel times out looking for boot devices.

it has always worked well before.

Chipset
VIA KT880 Northbridge

VIA VT8237 Southbridge


oh well. I can see that a lot of folks are having this issue.

billrad

[Nashova]

A solution to this problem right here.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=6107702&postcount=34

See you

[elitenoobboy]

A solution to this problem right here.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=6107702&postcount=34

See you
That's a way to fix it if you already have intrepid installed. How do you make it so that you can boot from the live cd to install in the first place?

[elitenoobboy]

bump

[elitenoobboy]

bump

[trendyabinash]

In my case I was having problem with booting the live cd because it was having scratches a fresh copy solved my problem. And yes the second time I burned it with a very low speed at 8x.

[elitenoobboy]

In my case I was having problem with booting the live cd because it was having scratches a fresh copy solved my problem. And yes the second time I burned it with a very low speed at 8x.
My cd passes it's self-integrity test when I try it on another computer, so it can't be a bad cd or anything like that.

[elitenoobboy]

It's bad enough that no one did any regression testing for intrepid, but no one even knows how to fix it at the same time?