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Doug avatar Ubuntu

Small update on ubuntu 20 and now stuck within initramfs prompt : Unable to find a medium containing a live file system

cn flag
Doug

I have been browsing through a lot of pages but I find myself helpless to try any of the suggestions. I have a very limited knowledge of Linux systems.

So I bought a Dell machine with Ubuntu 18 pre installed nearly 2 years ago. The machine has been working totally fine since then. I updated to 20 a few months ago. Everything was fine until now.

Today I see an update, I accept it. The window comes back, I accept it again, it comes back... I thought, "let's restart the computer to sort this out".

And here I am now stuck within the initramfs prompt. I saw suggestions of different command lines to try to fix this. "Exit" did not work, more error messages come and if entered once more, then I get even more error messages and I am not able anymore to type anything. Also it seems this prompt does not know sudo or fsck.

I can reboot the machine, but I don't manage to boot in recovery mode. Nothing happen if I hold left shift or press on spacebar multiple times. I arrive any how on a dell screen that offers me to either start with Dell recovery or Dell recovery (safe graphics mode). In both case, after seeing a black screen with ubuntu in white and some white and red dots below (I also tried to hold shift during this screen), I come back to the initramfs prompt.

I read related posts talking about a key, should I make a special usb key to launch the machine differently ? I feel helpless and I am surprised I can face such an abrupt problem so suddenly.

Any help will be highly appreciated. Thanks. Let me know if I can provide more helpful information.

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heynnema avatar
ru flag
heynnema
Are you able to see the GRUB menu? Do you have a Ubuntu Live DVD/USB? Please edit your question and show me the WHOLE initramfs message that you see. Do you have Windows installed?
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guiverc avatar
cn flag
guiverc
What OS are you talking about? Ubuntu Core 18 & Ubuntu Core 20? ie. a *snap* only product that uses the *year* format, or the more comment *year.month* format that is *deb* package based. They are different products, Ubuntu having had both since 2016.
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Doug avatar
cn flag
Doug
to heynnema: Thanks for your reply, no I cannot reach the GRUB menu. What I can reach is the dell bios but it turned out quite helpless. None of the diagnosti nor, repairing processes produced anything interesting. I called the dell tech support they recommend to reinstall ubuntu. I just made a Live usb stick and I have been able to backup my data with this. I don't have windows on the machine. The initramfs message was not longer than what I initially wrote but some other things were written above that I can copy if it can help.
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Doug avatar
cn flag
Doug
to guiverc: Thanks for your reply. Sorry I was talking about 18.04 and 20.04 (I would assume LTS for both).
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avatar Ubuntu
sd flag
Jeremy Schoemaker

Download and boot off of a live cd. Mount your drive. From here you can at least look at the grub file and other items to see whats going on. It's very possible it could be escape or cntrl + something (especially if it was pre-installed) to boot into recovery mode.

Instructions for liveCD/USB recovery are here: [https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCdRecovery][1]

Personally, once you can get at what you need I would copy configs off and do a clean install of Ubuntu. dist-upgrading a desktop seems to lead down a never-ending path of "small things" that eventually land on reinstall street anyway.

Wish I could be more helpful.

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Doug avatar
cn flag
Doug
Ok I created a live USB stick with Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. I managed to save my personal files. Could you please elaborate a bit on "copy configs off" I am not sure what are the stakes and what I would do of a saved config files. I guess use them during the clean install ? So far I copied the whole etc folder on an external hard drive, is this what you meant ? Tanks again for the help !
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