initramfs + busybox trouble installing

[om1n[A]e]

i also have the problem with initramfs;

hardware:
MSI P965 Neo-F
250GB SATA HD (connected to ICH8)
DVDRW SATA (connected to Jmicron)

i also noticed that the system tries to read from floppy, so I'll try this recommendation tomorrow. however, i also think that canonical should fix this issue with a new live-cd

[Maqz447]

Hi folks, I updated from 7.10 to 8.04 using the Update Manager, and now I have the same problem. The Ubuntu splash screen hangs for a while trying to mount the root file system, then I'm dumbed into Busy Box and get the initframs error message repeatedly in some kind of infinite loop. The strange thing is that 2 times I did get Hardy up and running without doing anything different, and everything seemed to work fine, but when I restart it just hangs again!

I tried to change the "SATA mode" setting in my BIOS from "IDE" to "RAID" (my HD is a SATA, I have a Dell Inspiron 530), and that did do the trick insofar as I got Hardy to mount the drive, however it was extremely unresponsive to mouse and keyboard input for some reason, so much that it was practically unusable. And, I was then unable to get into Windows (I dual-boot with Vista). So now I've reset it to IDE, and I can't boot Hardy.

8.04 seems to have a major problem with SATA drives... I'll be following this thread to see if any solutions come up, I would deeply appreciate any suggestions anyone might have.

[mat.wojcik]

I do not have SATA drive, I tried to remove 'quiet splash' from boot options in Live CD and I got these errors before Busybox:

Add. Sense: Logical unit communication CRC Error (Ultra-DMA/32)
end request: I/O error, dev sr1, sector 1384512
Sense key: Hardware Error [current]
SQUASHES error: sb-brod failed reading block 0xa8789
SQUASHES error: unable to read uid/gid table

Can you help me with that?

[Jong]

Enabling floppy drive in BIOS even though I don't have one, made the "busybox initramfs" message disappear.

Now I'm stucked with the "buffer i/o error on device fd0" message. As described by other users, it just loops infinite...

I haven't tried changing the interface from "IDE" to "RAID" though.

Hardware:
AMD64 3700+
ASUS A8N-E mb
2 Samsung SP250 SATA-II hd

Edit: Tried installing from the alternate cd, but it can't even detect/mount my cd drive during installation. Very disappointing

[Aearenda]

Maqz447, try the all_generic_ide boot option mentioned in https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ux/+bug/153702 - this works on my 530 with Hardy, but then so does the RAID setting in the BIOS, for me!

[Maqz447]

Thanks for the link Aerenada, that's very interesting. Now, pardon my noobness, but I'm not entirely sure how to add the boot option "all_generic_ide" to GRUB. Can I do this from GRUB itself, or do I have to edit /boot/grub/menu.lst, or something else?

[wconstantine]

I enabled a floppy in the bios as well, though I don't have one. Now I just loads a really long time and then it drops me a black screen. After a few seconds this message appears with random digits in fron of them. Repeatedly.

Buffer I/O error on device fd0, logical block 0

[Maqz447]

Ok, so I appended "all_generic_ide" to the "kernel" line in GRUB. That did nothing, however. It still hangs when it's trying to mount the root file system. I changed the SATA setting to RAID in my BIOS again, and edited the same line in /boot/grub/menu.lst (typing s l o w l y because Ubuntu was so unresponsive to keyboard input, just like last time I changed this setting to RAID), but that still doesn't help when I switch the BIOS setting back to IDE.

Using the RAID setting is no option for me, as I sometimes need to use Windows, and Ubuntu becomes more or less unusable even though it does boot.

[tofuconfetti]

Okay after a lot of searching, I found a far simpler fix, and the only one that worked for me. I am running an Intel motherboard with an e6600 quadcore chipset. It has a Marvell 88SE61xx SATA controller. I got the same freeze with the same busybox message. So I did more searching in the bugs list and found this link that explains a possible workaround. Interestingly, when I booted into the graphical boot menu and hit 'esc' to go into the non-graphical menu and tried to hand edit the boot options, I got a "kernel not found" message. It dawned on me that the drives weren't being recognized by the kernel.

I could NOT use the directions listed in that workaround, so I experimented and found how how I could make it work. Try this:

1] Boot the Live CD and select your language.

2] When you are in the graphical menu, hit <F6> for "other options" and when you do you'll see the actual kernel boot line and at the end you'll see a ' -- ' and the cursor will be placed just after the end of the line just after the ' -- '.

3] At the cursor type: 'irqpoll' (obviously without the quotes).

4] Hit enter to start the boot process.

Worked like a charm and I booted into the Live CD.

Now I haven't tested this with an actual install, BUT if it hangs on a fresh install, boot into the live CD as above, mount the system partition, and edit the /boot/grub/menu.lst file and add 'irqpoll' to the kernel boot line. That is what I am going to try if it hangs on install.

I'm currently typing this from the Live CD, so haven't tried that yet.

[Maqz447]

Thanks for the tip on irqpoll! I added 'irqpoll' to the kernel line in GRUB, and am now typing this at full speed from Hardy Heron! There's only one small problem so far: CPU scaling isn't working, so that my 1.86 GHz Core 2 Duo is always running at 1.86 GHz, whereas it used to idle at 1.60 most of the time. Other than that, seems to be working fine.