initramfs + busybox trouble installing

[cc247]

azurehi,
Nice post. Do you think Ubuntu is listening?
How does one add: all_generic_ide?

Thanks,
Charles

[granny6989]

I can't imagine why this post is shown as SOLVED.,....,..

I have had the same problem mostly mentioned in this post and others since trying to install 8.10 (Ibex). 8.04(Hardy) has worked fine for me, as far as drives are concerned. Basic low down is this:

ASUS M2N-SLI board, AMD 64 with built in IDE and SATA controller.
2 IDE hard drives. 1 IDE CD drive. 1 SATA DVD drive.

When I use the live CD, or attempt an upgrade, etc.... to Ibex, i get: ((xx.xxx) = misc numbers)


(xx.xxx) ata 5: COMRESET failed (errno=-16)
(xx.xxx) ata 5: COMRESET failed (errno=-16)
(xx.xxx) ata 5: COMRESET failed (errno=-16)
(xx.xxx) ata 5: COMRESET failed (errno=-16)
ata 5: reset failed, giving up
initramfs


This always happens after some little blurb about Busybox. I tried enabling the RAID option in BIOS for the SATA drive. No luck. For fun(?), last night I tried enabling RAID for all SATA drives, even though I have only one. Live CD finally booted up ok, got to the demo. Today I booted the CD, and installed. Seemed to go ok, so first thing I tried to enable Nvidia drivers. Machine tried to reboot, and then fell back to evil death loop of initramfs, etc, etc errors, blank screens, lockups, blank screens, etc, etc. login prompts... Finally hard booted and reloaded Hardy.

At this point, the RAID enabling option seems to be a faulty patch at best. It only worked for me after enabling several drives that didn't exist, and even then the system was unstable. After reading a lot of posts and pieces here and there, it looks to be an issue if you have mixed IDE/SATA setups. But that is only a guess on my part. I am going to keep Hardy until Ubuntu can prove that some fix has been made on this, Ibex so far will not work on my machine. I'd like to think that each version will get better, and perhaps it has in some respects, but this is ridiculous, if you expect a new user to grab a disk and install it, and then say 'well, you just have to go into BIOS and lie to your PC that it has RAID drives..'. It really is a bit much for a lot of people who just want to try something different or new. I don't know enough about programming and configuration to fix it or add anything else right now.

I am going to launchpad to post a bug to them in hopes of seeing some fix in the near future. Linux is still better than, well,...., you know.

S*

[azurehi]

cc247, I am not skilled enough to clearly explain how to add "all_generic_ide" other than to say that with All 8.04 variants (Mint, etc.), when the .iso, burned to cd or dvd, loads and language is chosen, I press F6 and the "e" to edit, adding all_generic_ide at the end of the "line" (don't know even what to call it") and then choosing "b" to boot with that addition...mainly trial and error. I'm sure other readers here migh better help you. I do not need to do this with 8.10.

[knightrider37876]

I was able to boot from the LIVE CD to check things out on Ubuntu, but it hosed up on me... When I rebooted I was getting the initramfs, busybox deal... Thinking about trying Linux Mint now... Would have liked Ubuntu If I could have gotten into it...

[50words]

Fixing the problem on my Dell 530 turned out to be incredibly easy. Based on what someone else here said, I peeked inside the box. The wire that connects the hard drives to the motherboard has two plugs on it, and the hard drive was plugged into the plug in the middle of the wire, not the plug at the end of the wire.

On my other desktop, where I do not have this problem, the hard drive is plugged into the end of the wire. I switched the plug on my Dell so that the hard drive was plugged into the end of the wire, and no more initramfs problem.

Edit: Actually, now I am getting a "diskette drive 0 seek failure" error. Any ideas?

[danheeks]

This worked for me on my Dell Inspiron 530.
I changed the SATA setting from IDE to RAID.
I am a Linux Newbie, but fortunately I know what a BIOS is.
Even so, I was thinking of asking for my money back at one point.

[dymaxion]

For the record... I'm having the same problems as everyone else with 8.10

I'm trying to run/install on Sony VAIO TT, and end up at the BusyBox shell. Tried all different permutations of the command line boot options, nothing seems to work.

Can't believe they can release a new version with so many install problems for so many people!

Hope they fix it soon, otherwise I'll be stuck with evil Vista for the forseeable future on this laptop.

[knightrider37876]

Tried Kubuntu... Thought maybe some chance it would work, but get the same problem as Ubuntu...

[knightrider37876]

For the record... I'm having the same problems as everyone else with 8.10

I'm trying to run/install on Sony VAIO TT, and end up at the BusyBox shell. Tried all different permutations of the command line boot options, nothing seems to work.

Can't believe they can release a new version with so many install problems for so many people!

Hope they fix it soon, otherwise I'll be stuck with evil Vista for the forseeable future on this laptop.

Have you thought about trying Fedora 10?

[vs8]

Yeah, try other distros for the moment. Fedora is pretty good but not recommended for newbies there is also openSUSE and lots and lots of other distros.