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avatar Ubuntu

Laptop won't boot, ACPI errprs, initramfs unpacking failed, usb or disk

bt flag
artfulrobot

The laptop (dell inspiron 5502) runs 20.04 and was fine before. However I think /boot ran out of space (a combination of ubuntu's installer defaults being too small, and ubuntu not removing old kernels) which probably caused the initial failure.

screenshot

What's weird is that I get the same (well, v similar) errors trying to run Ubuntu 22.04 off a memory stick: get the Initramfs unpacking failed error.

I have tried update-grub and update-initramfs -c -k all from appropriate chroot environments

When it reaches this stage it hangs completely and I have to hold the power key for 10s to get to turn off.

I've tried it with Secure Boot on and off. The only other thing to add is the disk layout, in case it matters:

  • FAT partition: /boot/efi
  • EXT4 partition: /boot
  • LUKS partition
    • LVM Physical Volume
      • LVM Volume group
        • LVM Logical volume
          • EXT4 root file system /

EDIT: observation

While running update-initramfs -c -k all I notice it says:

cryptsetup: WARNING: target 'crypt' not found in /etc/crypttab

This itself is weird as my /etc/crypttab file does not have target crypt (I'm using nvme0n1p3_crypt)! My /etc/crypttab looks like

nvme0n1p3_crypt UUID=xxx-xxx-xxx-etc none luks,discard,initramfs

Where the xxx-etc bit is a valid UUID for nvme0n1p3.

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Esther avatar
es flag
Esther
https://askubuntu.com/questions/1429216/very-high-boot-space-requirement-to-go-from-20-04-to-22-04-preventing-upgrade/1429218 initramfs now uses a different compression method which should be faster to unpack at boot time but takes up more space, maybe try switching back to the previous compression methods and see if that helps
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Esther avatar
es flag
Esther
Also the ACPI errors have nothing to do with the issue, see https://askubuntu.com/questions/1333069/acpi-error-on-every-boot
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bt flag
artfulrobot
I have enough space in /boot now, and have re-run update-initramfs ok. Happy to ignore the ACPI errors. But still stuck with kernel hang!
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Esther avatar
es flag
Esther
same one as before, no working init found? https://docs.kernel.org/admin-guide/init.html possibly try reinstalling the kernel from a chroot
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bt flag
artfulrobot
Yes. Also, this happens when I boot a USB stick with ubuntu on it, too. I've never understood UEFI and can't help feeling it's to blame some how(!) Like even when booting from usb, is it reading from the disks' EFI partition? Probably stabbing in dark. Have added to the question with more info that might be relevant.
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Score:1
avatar Ubuntu
bt flag
artfulrobot

What fixed it seems to have been to switch to COMPRESS=xz in /etc/initramfs-tools/initramfs.conf

Changing that then recreating an initramfs meant I could boot that kernel.

The non compress and the lz4 option seem to have bugs in decompression; even a new Ubuntu (22.04) live USB would cause kernel panic. I don't understand this, it's not to do with space, but this is what I did to get around the problem. This happened on a newly installed kernel and a reinstalled one.

(The issue about cryptsetup warning that target 'crypt' was not in /etc/crypttab is a red herring - at the time I was running that code I had had to boot from an initrd> prompt, specifying my own cryptsetup command, then using lvm to identify the volume. I had used crypt as the device name, so cryptsetup was warning me that I currently had a partition mounted as crypt, but this was not in my crypttab. Since I am referencing things with UUIDs, the mapper name doesn't actually matter.)

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