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I'm trying to boot up Ubuntu 14.04.1 on my machine which already has windows installed. I created a live usb using the Universal USB installer for windows. The flash drive boots fine but when i select "try ubuntu without installing" it moves ahead and gets stuck at an initramfs prompt.

I read through a bunch of threads but none match my problem. Any help would be appreciated.

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  • Is there any message shown when you are shown the prompt? Do you have a screenshot (eg taking photo of screen)? I don't know for certain it'd help but it may be worth a try. Sep 26, 2014 at 4:54
  • No @neon_overload, just the prompt. I can type in basic commands. Nothing more. Sep 26, 2014 at 5:03

3 Answers 3

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I had this issue, and my efi partition was full. I think this caused the issue because installation always stopped at that drive, and displayed the initramfs prompt as stated in this issue.

I tried many of the fixes on this page and many other pages. It took days to figure out which fix would work.

I finally created a USB boot drive on my WIN 10 machine using Lili USB Creator, and what do you know? I could install Ubuntu on my Linux-dedicated machine from that USB boot drive. I had tried at least three other USB Boot disk tools or command-line methods.

Now I have to figure out how to grow my efi partition. It's no longer full, but damn close. Oh and AND WiFi isn't working...yet.

HW: Lenovo s21e System (finally!): Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

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I will assume that your computer does not have an optical (CD) drive or you probably would have used a Live CD as opposed to bootable USB media.

There are several possibilities which could explain the difficulty you are having, and as you haven't told us very much about your computer, I'll just spell out a few of your options.

I would recommend that you first make sure that the your computer is compatible with the version of Ubuntu you are trying to boot to. If the version is 64bit and your computer is not, it won't work. In the past few years both myself and my friends have repeatedly found the 64bit versions of Ubuntu to be buggier so we tend to use 32bit Ubuntu even on certified 64bit computers. You might wish to do the same.

I've run into similar problems to the initramfs issue you describe when attempting to boot Ubuntu live CDs on old PCs with less than 384 megs of RAM.

I personally suspect the real problem is that either the ISO file you downloaded was defective or that it was okay but it failed to write to the USB flash drive adequately. In any case, purchasing a few extra 2gb flash drives and making extra copies with a variety of versions may prove handy in the future, at least it has for me. To this day I carry a quaint old copy of Ubuntu 9.04 Netbook edition in my toolkit, not that I'll ever install it, but it's fun to run now and then and works on just about anything.

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  • Okay @gyropyge, will try that. Just FYI, i'm using an AMD FX-6300 and i have 4 GB of RAM. I downloaded the .iso from the official website, so i don't think that would be bad. Sep 26, 2014 at 7:00
  • In my nine years using Linux I have both experienced bad downloads from good sites, and bad image writes to solid state media on at least two occasions. In one instance using the same utility I use to make bootable installable usb flashdrives, "Unetbootin" I inadequately wrote the file system for a raspberry pi, resulting in a computer that would boot perfectly but only so far as a command line. It worked well enough that I assumed it worked right and I was just too green to know how to access the GUI.
    – gyropyge
    Sep 26, 2014 at 7:08
  • Downloading the 32bit version now. Will also try creating a live-usb stick from a friend's Ubuntu machine using the Startup disk creator. Will see how that works out. Appreciate the help! Sep 26, 2014 at 7:17
  • It is very possible that Startup disk creator is more likely to work than almost anything that runs under windows. However, if your friend will permit you to install unetbootin from the Ubuntu software center, you may prefer the results. I'm really happy with it. In addition to making a bootable copy of just about any .iso file onto flash media, it also provides freeware OSen such as "freeDOS" which can be handy if you have to update the firmware on a netbook using DOS on a flashdrive, as I had to a couple years ago.
    – gyropyge
    Sep 26, 2014 at 7:22
-1

If you are getting the message like,

BusyBox v1.18.5 (Ubuntu 1:1.18.5-1ubuntu4) built-in shell (ash)

Enter 'help' for a list of built-in commands. (initramfs)

Then we have solution for this

Firstly, boot into a live CD or USB

Find out your partition number by using

sudo fdisk -l|grep Linux|grep -Ev 'swap'

Then, list all superblocks by using the command:

sudo dumpe2fs /dev/sda2 | grep superblock

Replace sda2 to your drive number

You should get a similar output like this

  Primary superblock at 0, Group descriptors at 1-6
  Backup superblock at 32768, Group descriptors at 32769-32774
  Backup superblock at 98304, Group descriptors at 98305-98310
  Backup superblock at 163840, Group descriptors at 163841-163846
  Backup superblock at 229376, Group descriptors at 229377-229382
  Backup superblock at 294912, Group descriptors at 294913-294918
  Backup superblock at 819200, Group descriptors at 819201-819206
  Backup superblock at 884736, Group descriptors at 884737-884742
  Backup superblock at 1605632, Group descriptors at 1605633-1605638
  Backup superblock at 2654208, Group descriptors at 2654209-2654214
  Backup superblock at 4096000, Group descriptors at 4096001-4096006
  Backup superblock at 7962624, Group descriptors at 7962625-7962630
  Backup superblock at 11239424, Group descriptors at 11239425-11239430
  Backup superblock at 20480000, Group descriptors at 20480001-20480006
  Backup superblock at 23887872, Group descriptors at 23887873-23887878

Choose an alternate superblock from this list, for this case alternate superblock # 32768

Now, to check and repair a Linux file system using alternate superblock # 32768:

sudo fsck -b 32768 /dev/sda2

You should get similar output like this:

fsck 1.40.2 (12-Jul-2007)
e2fsck 1.40.2 (12-Jul-2007)
/dev/sda2 was not cleanly unmounted, check forced.
Pass 1: Checking inodes, blocks, and sizes
Pass 2: Checking directory structure
Pass 3: Checking directory connectivity
Pass 4: Checking reference counts
Pass 5: Checking group summary information
Free blocks count wrong for group #241 (32254, counted=32253).
Fix? yes
Free blocks count wrong for group #362 (32254, counted=32248).
Fix? yes
Free blocks count wrong for group #368 (32254, counted=27774).
Fix? yes
..........
/dev/sda2: ***** FILE SYSTEM WAS MODIFIED *****
/dev/sda2: 59586/30539776 files (0.6% non-contiguous), 3604682/61059048 blocks

Now try mounting the partition

sudo mount /dev/sda2 /mnt

Now, try to browse the filesystem with the following commands

cd /mnt
mkdir test
ls -l
cp file /path/to/safe/location

If you are able to perform the above commands, you have most probably fixed your error.

Now, restart you computer and you should be able to boot normally.

Or if you hate commands--

Try running boot-repair from live mode: You can run the recommended repair

Ubuntu Boot-Repair

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  • I don't think this applies here. As i said, i don't have an installation on my machine. I just want to run ubuntu once off the live-usb. Also, the fdisk -l command won't work for some reason. Sep 26, 2014 at 5:15
  • thats Ok then, If you are saying that this does't applies here, then you should try Casper it is a hook for initramfs-tools used to generate an initramfs capable to boot live systems. Casper Hook And for fdisk, You need to do a sudo fdisk -l or first sudo su then fdisk -l Hope this helps you..
    – Pert8S
    Sep 26, 2014 at 5:34
  • Hey, you STOLE this from here askubuntu.com/questions/137655/… WORD FOR WORD and did not even give credit to the original author or even a link to the answer -1 Don't steal answers, flag as a duplicate.
    – Mark Kirby
    Dec 2, 2015 at 16:16

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