installer fails to boot from USB on Dell Mini 9 if an SD card is present

I also tried the Maverick Netbook Live CD on the Dell Mini 9. Same symptoms. ("No init found. Try passing init= bootarg.")

Found an IRC log with someone having the same problem on an ASUS eeePC 1005p: http://ircanswers.com/ubuntu1/463128/downloaded-downloaded-unetbootin-initramfs-initramfs

I mounted my SSD in busybox and copied the casper.log file over. I hope it helps.

Thank you for reporting the bug.

The error says 'Try passing init= bootarg'
So did you try that?

Nitesh,

I assumed the init= argument requires a value and had no idea what to type there. I'll try with an empty value tomorrow.

Similar symptoms mentioned in this thread: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1532927

And Nitesh, using the init= argument without a value didn't help.

Possible solution at Question #63005 [0]. Let us know if it (didn't) work.

[0] https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/grub/+question/63005

Nitesh,

I couldn't find any references to fixing booting problems with USB sticks in bug 63005. Which of the comments did you mean?

Mind you, the USB stick boots just fine on another laptop (the HP Compaq nx6310), and the 10.04 ISO written on the same stick works fine on the netbook (the Mini 9).

The problem I see is that the grub is not able to see your init file
in /boot folder, probably because its not able to locate the partition
(wrong referencing).

So, try the following steps:
1. Boot in to your 10.04 laptop or any other computer that has linux installed

2. Insert your USB Stick

3. Now in the terminal, give "sudo blkid"

4. Copy the UUID value of the USB stick's partition (usually 'sdb1'
but it may vary)

5. Now open the '/boot/grub.d/40_custom' file located IN YOUR USB STICK

6. In this file, add the following lines:
menuentry "Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat" {
set root=(hd0,1)
linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-22-generic root=UUID=<the value copied in
step 4> ro quiet splash
initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.35-22-generic
}

7. Save the file and close

8. Now try this USB stick on your dell mini.

For reference on editing Grub2 entries, see
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Grub2#Creating%20the%20Custom%20Menu

Nitesh,

Thanks for your instructions. Unfortunately they didn't help in my case, see below for details. Based on all I've described, I'm curious to know if this is a genuine bug in the Maverick ISO image or usb-creator-gtk, or if my netbook or the USB stick is defective. I'll be happy to do further experiments and debugging to find out the reason for this behavior.

$ sudo blkid
/dev/sdb1: LABEL="MAVERICK" UUID="091E-1A5F" TYPE="vfat"

(I set the label manually since it was gibberish after emptying the stick with usb-creator-gtk.)

The directory /boot/grub.d didn't exist on the stick, there was just /boot/grub/loopback.cfg. I created /boot/grub.d/40_custom with the following content:

menuentry "Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat" {
  set root=(hd0,1)
  linux /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-22-generic root=UUID=091E-1A5F ro quiet splash
  initrd /boot/initrd.img-2.6.35-22-generic
}

Booting off the USB stick still drops me into Busybox. The boot menu still has the original five items.

The stick doesn't contain /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.35-22-generic nor /boot/initrd.img-2.6.35-22-generic. Instead, there is a /casper directory with:

-rwxr-xr-x 1 akaihola akaihola 38472 2010-10-23 11:45 filesystem.manifest
-rwxr-xr-x 1 akaihola akaihola 36500 2010-10-23 11:45 filesystem.manifest-desktop
-rwxr-xr-x 1 akaihola akaihola 10 2010-10-23 11:45 filesystem.size
-rwxr-xr-x 1 akaihola akaihola 692674560 2010-10-23 11:47 filesystem.squashfs
-rwxr-xr-x 1 akaihola akaihola 11409807 2010-10-23 11:47 initrd.lz
-rwxr-xr-x 1 akaihola akaihola 4289584 2010-10-23 11:47 vmlinuz

The first item in /boot/grub/loopback.cfg is originally:

menuentry "Try Ubuntu without installing" {
 linux /casper/vmlinuz file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper iso-scan/filename=${iso_path} quiet splash --
 initrd /casper/initrd.lz
}

I inserted a new first item:

menuentry "Ubuntu Maverick Meerkat" {
        set root=(hd0,1)
 linux /casper/vmlinuz file=/cdrom/preseed/ubuntu.seed boot=casper iso-scan/filename=${iso_path} root=UUID=091E-1A5F --
 initrd /casper/initrd.lz
}

This didn't change the boot menu, and the stick still drops into Busybox.

I also tried to tweak kernel options by hitting F6 in the boot menu and interactively inserting root=UUID=091E-1A5F or root=/dev/sdb1 into the kernel command line, but it had no effect.

While in Busybox, ls /dev/sd* reveals that the partition on the stick indeed is /dev/sdb1.

Found the reason: I had forgotten that I had an SD card in the built-in card reader slot. It's present as /dev/mmcblk0 in the attached casper.log (from a boot with the debug= option).

Would it be possible for casper to detect which mass media device it was originally booted? Apparently it currently just assumes the first one it happens to encounter.

I seems you don't have issue only with USB stick, but also with CD-ROM. In this case, could you update the bug title.
If issue is due to presence of SD card at start, why not removing SD card at start and hot-plug it after boot and before install ?
About mass memory enumeration, there are some issues since 10.10 as BIOS and some other software don't use same order (including Grub).

delance,

The Dell Mini 9 doesn't have a CD-ROM drive.

Sure, the installation worked just fine after I removed the SD card. But this will surely cause confusion to some users. I consider myself a very experienced Linux user, but the solution wasn't obvious to me.

Maybe usb-creator could remind that *all* other mass media should be removed when installing from a USB stick? Even better, the installer itself could suggest that if it isn't able to proceed with installation.

I have reassigned this issue to casper package for you

Is this still prevelent in 11.10 ?

[Expired for casper (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]