Ubuntu
kernel-package package

make-kpkg does not create an initrd image

Bug #592927 reported by Delan Azabani
38
This bug affects 6 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
kernel-package (Ubuntu)
Confirmed
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

When using make-kpkg to build the Ubuntu-distributed kernel sources, no initrd.img is created which causes the computer to kernel panic on boot being unable to mount the root filesystem. Running mkinitramfs is not optimal as make-kpkg should do this, and if I manually create an initrd, any further update-grub action will cause my initrd line to disappear.

Here's the sequence of commands I have used:

sudo -i
cd /usr/src
tar xvjf linux-source-2.6.35.tar.bz2
cd linux-source-2.6.35
make menuconfig
< during this, the only thing I changed was the arch, from generic x86-64 to Core 2 >
make-kpkg --append-to-version=-delan --jobs 16 --initrd kernel_image kernel_headers modules
dpkg -i ../*.deb

For creating the initrd image:

mkinitramfs -o /boot/grub/initrd.img-2.6.35-rc1-delan

Revision history for this message
Javier López (javier-lopez) wrote :

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Judging from your description, I am going to assign this bug to the “kernel-package” package in hopes that it will have a faster response. If you believe that I have chosen the wrong package, please change your bug to the correct one. Good luck on getting it fixed!

affects: ubuntu → kernel-package (Ubuntu)
Revision history for this message
DarkJavi (darkjavi) wrote :

Same problem here!

Used "make-kpkg --initrd --append-to-version=-amd-preempt-1000hz --revision=1 kernel-image kernel-headers" to build the kernel, then installed with dpkg, after reboot there is no initrd image so kernel panics because is unable to mount root filesystem.
then "mkinitramfs -k -o /boot/initrd.img-2.6.32.15+drm33.5-amd-preempt-1000hz 2.6.32.15+drm33.5-amd-preempt-1000hz" solved the problem

Changed in kernel-package (Ubuntu):
status: New → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
Giorgio Vazzana (mywing) wrote :

You can try this:

sudo cp /usr/share/doc/kernel-package/examples/etc/kernel/postinst.d/initramfs /etc/kernel/postinst.d/initramfs
sudo mkdir -p /etc/kernel/postrm.d/
sudo cp /usr/share/doc/kernel-package/examples/etc/kernel/postrm.d/initramfs /etc/kernel/postrm.d/initramfs

it solved the problem for me.

Revision history for this message
Anders Ossowicki (aowi) wrote :

I think the "real" bug here, is that the postinst-script (usr/share/kernel-package/pkg/image/postinst) from newer versions of kernel-package stopped building initrds but the version of initramfs-tools in lucid doesn't install the necessary files in /etc/kernel/post{inst,rm}.d/ to pick up the slack. Newer versions of initramfs-tools (in maverick) does this correctly:

aowi@otto ~ $ diff -Naur <(ssh bonnie dpkg -L initramfs-tools) <(dpkg -L initramfs-tools)|grep /etc/kernel
+/etc/kernel
+/etc/kernel/postinst.d
+/etc/kernel/postinst.d/initramfs-tools
+/etc/kernel/postrm.d
+/etc/kernel/postrm.d/initramfs-tools

(otto is maverick, bonnie is lucid).

Backporting the newer initramfs-tools to lucid would solve this problem for those of us desperately clinging to a long-term support release :-)

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