Ubuntu – Installation of 64-bit Ubuntu 13.04 server fails with “Unable to install busybox-initramfs”

Ubuntuubuntu-13.04

I tried installing the 64-bit 13.04 Ubuntu server on a fairly generic superMicro box with dual OCZ SSD's I plan to software RAID. The install failed with a "Unable to install busybox-initramfs" message. This appears to be a bug documented on launchpad. (I got the same error message even when ignoring the second SSD.)

I checked console 4 for details:

apt-install or in-target is already running, so you cannot run either of them again until the other instance finishes.
You may be able to use `chroot /target ...` instead.

in-target: Unexpected error; command not executed:
`sh -c debconf-apt-progress --no-progress --logstderr -- apt-get -q -y --no-remove install busybox-initramfs`

I'm not sure what to do with this error message without sifting through the installer code, but the person who reported the bug originally on launchpad suggested that he found a workaround by "preseeding the installation with linux-server". Does anyone have any idea what this means / how to do this?

Best Answer

I have had the same issue and did two things to solve it. Dont exactly know, which one solved it... Installing to LVM too.

erased the USB stick again, with the Ubuntu Boot Media Creator(dont know the exact english name sorrz)
/boot partition separate, outside of LVM, formated with ext3(with error it was ext4)

After that, the installation succeeded.

Related Solutions

Linux – Ubuntu 10.04 on virtualbox gives error: Target filesystem doesn’t have /sbin/init \ No init found. Try passing init= bootarg

Everything looks normal on the bootloader prompt. So I fear that the filesystem has been damaged.

I suggest the following process:

Create a new virtual machine, and make fresh Ubuntu installation.
Install the etckeeper package, and run etckeeper init. This will put /etc under version control. If you have a favorite version control tool amongst Bazaar, Darcs, Git and Mercury, select it in /etc/etckeeper/etckeeper.conf before running etckeeper commit.
Your changes under /etc will be automatically committed before and after package management tasks, and once per day. You can commit manually by running etckeeper commit or invoking the underlying version control tool directly.
Now is the time to try to save the old VM. Shut down the new VM, then add the disk of the old VM to the new VM and boot the new VM.
Try mounting /dev/sdb2. If you're prompted to run fsck, do so.
Recover what you can from the old VM.
Remember to include the repository for /etc, as well as anything you might do in /usr/local and /home in the VM, in your backup setup.

Ubuntu – Install openssl-dev on Ubuntu server

If the likelihood that the dependencies for the version of a package that is in the release of Ubuntu (or other Debian derived arrangements) is the same as the deps for the version you are trying to build, you could run apt-get build-dep nginx or aptitude build-dep nginx - this will not install the nginx package but will instead install all those listed as dependencies (and their dependencies, as usual) which includes libssl-dev (the package that you are currently looking for).

In most cases this will allow the build of the other (presumably newer) version to be completed successfully, and it saves you installing each library and its header files one by one yourself. Even if there are new dependencies in the other version you are trying to build, build-dep <package> is a good place to start as it means that you only have to manually install the extra new dependencies.

As an example, the result on one of my servers is:

user@host:~$ sudo aptitude build-dep nginx
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Reading extended state information
Initialising package states... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  autotools-dev cvs{a} debhelper gettext{a} html2text{a} intltool-debian{a}
  libcroco3{a} libmail-sendmail-perl{a} libpcre3-dev libpcrecpp0{a}
  libssl-dev libsys-hostname-long-perl{a} po-debconf{a} zlib1g-dev
0 packages upgraded, 14 newly installed, 0 to remove and 19 not upgraded.
Need to get 7,217kB of archives. After unpacking 22.9MB will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n/?]

It is intending to install some libraries and headers, to enable an nginx build, but not nginx itself.

One thing to note is that if you are compiling your own copy because you want different build options rather than needing a different version for some reason, you may be better of compiling from the repository's source for the package rather than using the upstream sources directly. This SO question is the first useful page that came out of a quick search, though you are likely to find more detailed tutorials easily if you need that.

_{An other small thing to note: the packages installed as a result of apt-get build-dep will be marked as manually installed as if you have done this by hand as you are currently doing. That means you can't remove them all in one go (there is no apt-get unintall-dep or similar) - though that is no different from the situation you'll get from manual library/header installs anyway (I only mention the fact as some people expect there to be a one-step way to undo a build-dep operation, and there is not).}

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Linux – Ubuntu 10.04 on virtualbox gives error: Target filesystem doesn’t have /sbin/init \ No init found. Try passing init= bootarg

Ubuntu – Install openssl-dev on Ubuntu server

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