[Bug 1835660] Re: initramfs unpacking failed

[Simon Repp]

I did a clean install of 20.04 on my machine (which has been running
Ubuntu, most recently 19.04, without issue so far) and I am facing this
- importantly in my case it is NOT a harmless message but actually
preventing boot - I am stuck in the initramfs prompt.

I tried the suggested workaround of editing "/etc/initramfs-
tools/initramfs.conf" to specify COMPRESS=gzip instead of COMPRESS=lz4
to no avail (issue remains on next boot attempt).

I can not run try elsewhere also suggested "sudo update-initramfs -u"
command because as I understand it I am lacking the proper context in
which this would be run - in the initramfs prompt I can not run it (or
at least don't know how), and if I boot into live ubuntu (which works
perfectly - this is also where I was able to edit the initramfs.conf
file) I could probably run this although it would be in the wrong
context (that of the live ubuntu, not the one on disk I installed
previously).

Thanks everyone for the effort to resolve this! I'll run 19.10 or
another distro in the meantime and hope this can be resolved soon.

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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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