[Bug 1835660] Re: initramfs unpacking failed

[Con Kolivas]

The issue appears to be that update-initramfs creates uncompressed
images.

I have the same error but have been dealing with a different issue of it
failing to boot with a custom kernel by UUID which is why I haven't
posted a bug report. However, since this issue appears to be related,
upon further inspection I find that none of the initramfs images being
created are actually compressed at all.

file /boot/initrd.img*
/boot/initrd.img:                  symbolic link to initrd.img-5.4.0-40-generic
/boot/initrd.img-5.4.0-33-generic: ASCII cpio archive (SVR4 with no CRC)
/boot/initrd.img-5.4.0-37-generic: ASCII cpio archive (SVR4 with no CRC)
/boot/initrd.img-5.4.0-39-generic: ASCII cpio archive (SVR4 with no CRC)
/boot/initrd.img-5.4.0-40-generic: ASCII cpio archive (SVR4 with no CRC)

These should all be lz4 images. I tried changing the initramfs config to
gzip but it still did not show a compressed file.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1835660

Title:
  initramfs unpacking failed

Status in initramfs-tools package in Ubuntu:
  Invalid
Status in linux package in Ubuntu:
  Confirmed

Bug description:
  "initramfs unpacking failed: Decoding failed",  message appears on
  boot up.

  If I "update-initramfs" using gzip instead of lz, then boot up passes
  without decoding failed message.

  ---

  However, we currently believe that the decoding error reported in
  dmesg is actually harmless and has no impact on usability on the
  system.

  Switching from lz4 to gzip compression, simply papers over the
  warning, without any benefits, and slows down boot.

  Kernel should be fixed to correctly parse lz4 compressed initrds, or
  at least lower the warning, to not be user visible as an error.

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